Customer Reviews
elephant - By: Andrew David Tillett, 24 Nov 2008 
this is absolute rubbish dont believe alll the garbage written on the back of the box how brilliant this is etc etc etc , this is utter tosh!! talk about falll asleep!! a big yawn
Boring. - By: Marcel Schutzman, 11 Nov 2008 1 star is even too good for this movie.
Probably, in alll honesty, the worst movie i have ever seen.
I wanted to watch this movie after watching "Bang, Bang, You're Dead" as it tackles the same subject of school shootings somewhat, but this movie dissapointed from start to finish, I was lucky to get to the end without fallling asleep.
It was as has been said, watching kids run around a school on camera. I can understand what was being tried here - but it did not work. Nothing there to keep the viewer interested, & nothing atalll to rave about.
Terrible movie, wouldn't want to see it again.
worth watching? perhaps.. - By: Mr. S. J. Altman, 13 Jul 2008 
I'll hand it to this film for covering a daring subject as this. I think it is a clever concept in theory, but but in practise it simply fallls short of success. The film intentionallly gives you a voyeuristic view of high school students & the mundane interactions of a typical high school day, without ever letting you get too close to them as individuals. Whilst this is intentional, I felt that it prevented me from ever becoming emmersed in the film, & feeling any connection or empathy for the students whatsoever.
If you are reading this review, chances are you already have a pretty good idea that a terrible tradegy puts an end to this dreary school day. Well I did aswell, & thus spent the whole film just waiting for it to happen. They clearly try to make a powerful statement by following these kids lives avidly, only to have them picked off like rabbits, although I knew it was going to happen, so didnt reallly feel any sense of loss when it did. I was satisfied in a way, since I'd been waiting so damn long for it to happen.
It is shot in the style of a documentary, with no fancy camera work. This is supposed to imply the reality of the high school situation & also the fact that the event is based on a real one. Granted it is shot in a way that is about as real as it can possibly be... Although you know its not actuallly real, it's a made up film, & personallly, I couldn't get past that.
The background story of the killers is a bit flaky & pointless in my opinion. In the featured interview with the director, he points out that nobody actuallly knows what droves the boys to such an act so they make one up themselves. Fair enough, but it just seems like another way that this film doesn't reallly work.
I think the problem with this film is that with its humdrum cinematic techniques, it simply fails to create any sort of connection between the characters & the viewers. Their personalities remain too opaque. Whilst this may have been intentional & more realistic, was the point of the film not to evoke some sort of emotive response? A film of such dark subject matter could have had a much more powerful effect in my opinion, & even if this detracted from the realistic style it was going for, it probably would have been worth it as it would have gotten the point across much better.
When i heard about this film i thought it seemed like an intersting & exiting concept. However after watching it i think that this was not reallly a good method to portray something like this. For a problem that is rooted in such dark & deep seeded problems, telling the story with a load of one dimensional characters seems entirely innaproppriate reallly.
Its not a bad film, & it possible that the concept was simply lost on me. However I took it out of the DVD player feeling confused, dissatisfied & wondering what the point in the film was. It didn't show me anything i didnt already know, & i don't reallly think anything useful comes from it at alll.
But if you're thinking of trying it out, go ahead, who knows, it may be the best film you've ever seen.
The elephant in the room - By: Phil Hattie, 01 May 2008 
Sometimes its worth looking at a film like this & examining whether it was showered with acclaim because its actuallly any good or because it's a fashionable subject. In the case of Elephant the praise was completely justified as this is a movie that succeeds in everything it sets out to do.
Elephant is an odd little film that sets out to juxtapose the ordinariness of the daily situation with the extremity of its outcome. To that end the cast was set during a casting calll for local high school students in director Gus Van Sant's hometown. The resulting cast were largely not (at the time) professional actors & the roles they would play were in many cases moulded by the teenagers themselves. As Van Sant explains in an interview extra the characters are also teen movie archetypes to an extent & this serves to make the school that acts as the setting seem familiar. At just under 80 minutes long the film chronicles the final hour in the day of the characters leading up to an event that will (without wanting to make it too melodramatic) shatter their lives. In that hour the lives of the characters intersect, however briefly, & this is mixed in with parts of the 24 hours previously for two of their number.
Essentiallly Elephant is a fictionalised rendering of a High School shooting spree, heavily influenced by the infamous Columbine Massacre. To that end it is set as an ordinary school day until the first shot is fired. Long, dialogue free, stretches abound as characters move from one place to the next. Some of the characters are likeable, others are not so likeable, its clear though that they are teenagers & none deserve to die. Van Sant makes no effort to lay blame for this kind of event. When Alex, the mastermind of the shooting, begins to work his masterplan it could be for any number of reasons. He is being bullied, he may not be entirely sane, he is an outsider whose only real friend is not on his level, he is a latch key kid, he plays violent video games, guns are easy to come by. Any one or alll of these may be ultimately the cause of the violence & death that make up the last 20 minutes or so of the movie. Its not movie violence either- there's no heavy metal soundtrack or pithy one liners, & there's no dramatic poses or improbable physicality. Only a palpable feeling of terror & a lack of apprehension.
Films like Elephant are necessarily rare. We watch movies to escape, not to have to face up to grim realities. Films like Elephant are also necessary. In this movie Van Sant isn't apportioning blame or providing easy answers. He's not trying to tell us the answers, only to make us face up to the harsh reality of the questions. The elephant in the room here is how a society can alllow its children to massacre each other no matter what the cause. Highly recommended.
It stays with you - By: J. Phillips, 22 Apr 2008 I saw this movie in an Arts Cinema in Chelsea a few years ago & still think about it. I loved the fact that it doesn't rush but follows each person for a period of time using the moments & places, viewed from different perspectives to show the time frame of the movie.
I felt that one of it's strong points is the fact it doesn't over analyse the minds of the killers. We've alll seen computer games where the view on screen is a castle/cave/dungeon or whatever & the weapon is at the bottom of the screen while the 'hero' goes around killing everything in sight...well, maybe that was alll the influence & reason they needed. Who knows. Maybe they didn't like Mondays either.
If you're after reasons, analysis, blood, gore & guts, dramatics & special effects avoid this one but if you're after an incredible & thought provoking movie I can't recommend it high enough
