Elephant
Gus Van Sant

Nathalie Rothschild

In Alan Clarke's 1989 film about the violence in Northern Ireland, 'the elephant' refers to the problem everybody knows about but nobody deals with. Gus Van Sant has borrowed Clarke's title for his own film in which 'the elephant' looms in gloomy high school corridors, and hints but not explanations are offered to suggest how it got there.

Elephant (winner of Palme D'or at Cannes 2003) is about a killing spree like the one documented in Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine, but it is not based on a particular event. It follows an ordinary day in an American high school where kids flirt, bully, gossip and deal with relations to peers, teachers and parents. In this sense, the characters are easily recognisable; the artsy deep kid works on his photography portfolio, the nerd wears glasses and does not want to undress in front of other girls after gym, the outsider is more intelligent than the cool jock who gets all the good-looking girls who throw up after hardly eating anything for lunch.

But the revenge of the nerds takes a completely different form in Elephant than in other films in high-school settings. When their delivery arrives from a weapons website, the two teenage mass-murderers-to-be are watching a documentary about Nazi Germany, which explains Hitler's loathing of intellectuals and shows massive bonfires of books. The suggestion is that intellectual engagement may improve (and save) lives led without thoughtful insight. This true in the case of high school girls who care only for shopping, boys and weight control, in the case of the repressed nerd who never speaks up and in the case of the boys who too easily turn themselves into suicidal killers (despite the fact that one of them is intelligent and talented enough to draw, play classical music and quote Macbeth).

The film is unsettling and chilly, progressing slowly and elaborating on events by repeating them from different angles and points of view. The only story deviating from the single spring day which the rest of the film describes, is that of the killers plotting their actions the day before going into school dressed in combat gear and carrying bags full of weapons and ammunition.

There is no description of characters, no direct finger-pointing or speculation into possible root causes of the 'antisocial behaviour'. At times Elephant seems like an observational documentary, other times the actors seem clearly instructed. Sometimes the camera seems uncomfortably imposing, refusing to cut away from close-up shots and manipulating the atmosphere by shifting to slow-motion.

The detached attitude, the fact that the film does not delve into teenage dilemmas and the easy access to guns, is almost a relief, but at the same time there is also a danger that the few hints given to the elephant-sized problem insinuate a few easy conclusions. For example, one day a boy sits in the back of the class experiencing insult and mocking from fellow classmates, the next he is a trigger-happy avenger. Meanwhile, the other boy plays shooting games on his laptop and the next day makes reality imitate the computer screen.

The question of whether or not the characters and their behaviours are stereotypical or easily recognisable is repeatedly turned on its head. On the one hand, we 'know' them from American high school films, on the other hand we also remember them from our own teenage years. On the one hand, we think they are predictable, on the other hand their actions are incredible. This is where the power of Van Sant's film lies. In showing without giving analysis, in leaving the wider questions open, but still not being superficial, the film leaves the viewer wondering, thinking. And although the film is short and in a sense simple, it takes time to take it all in, and meanwhile one realises how complex the subject actually is.