Thursday, July 22, 2004
Elephant
[Film] Gus Van Sant's Elephant is a different film, if what you're used to is typical hollywood fare. Not much happens for most of the film, there's a lot of static and over-the-shoulder camerawork and there's little in the way of scoring.
Van Sant spends a lot of the time introducing the audience to some highschool students on a day that none who survive it would likely forget. For some of them life looks simple, straightforward and happy. For others the day holds different challenges; the drunk father, the bitchy clique and the bullying jocks.
We get a glimpse of two boys kitted-up in cams & webbing, we see glimpes of their last hours, but get little in the way of finger-pointing at any one thing that pushes them towards the shooting spree to come. A shower scene is left vague and open to interpretation. The concluding violence, like the rest of these kids' lives, is dispassionate and (personally) unsettling.
For Canberra folk it's playing at Electric Shadows for one week only. Only consider seeing it if you could handle Kids or Ken Park.
Elsewhere:
What David & Margaret thought.What Peter Thompson thought. (I'm sure I saw PT review this one, but was unable to find the review on the Sunday site)
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