Elephant (2003)

Starring John Robinson, Elias McConnell, Kristen Hicks and Alex Frost.  Cinematography by Harris Savides. Edited by Gus Van Sant.  Produced by Dany Wolf.  Written and Directed by Gus Van Sant.

It seems to be a normal day at an average American high school.  Elias (played by Elias  McConnell) takes pictures trying to build a decent portfolio. John (played by John Robinson) has taken the keys away from his drunken father (played by Timothy Bottoms) and pleads for him to stay in the car until his brother can come pick him up.  Michelle (played by Kristen Hicks) receives her predictable taunting from the popular girls while she tries to avoid embarrassment in gym class. Nate and Carrie (played by Nathan Tyson and Carrie Finklea) have met for lunch.  Alex and Eric (played by Alex Frost and Eric Deulen) have just marched into school with duffle bags full of high powered firearms, ready to kill everyone in sight.

The commercial success that Gus Van Sant has achieved with films like Good Will Hunting and Finding Forrester has given him the freedom to go back to his roots and rediscover the raw and energetic filmmaking of his past.  For his second trip back to low-budget productions, he decided to focus on something more edgy and controversial. The recent increase of school shooting sprees caught his attention enough to where he wanted to “capture the atmosphere of kids going to school in that time.”  He discussed the idea with novelist J.T. LeRoy and asked him to write up a treatment.

LeRoy developed a screenplay but after making Gerry without the aid of a script, Van Sant decided to use the same approach for Elephant.  LeRoy’s ideas were left in tact, but most of the action and dialog was improvised on set. Much of the secondary plotlines are based on the lives of the young actors who played them.  Though his script wasn’t used, LeRoy earned himself a credit as associate producer on the project.

The title Elephant was inspired by a 1989 BBC documentary by Alan Clarke.  Clarke’s film depicted youth violence in Ireland that he claimed was “as easy to ignore as an elephant in your living room”.  But Van Sant envisioned a different meaning. 

He has referenced it to the ancient parable where several blind men are touching different parts of an elephant.  Each man has a different understanding of what the animal is based on the way that they are experiencing it. Van Sant meant for Elephant to portray a similar experience in that the problem of school violence is difficult to identify based on one person’s limited view.  In almost all of Van Sant’s pictures there is a common thread of young people searching for identity, but in Elephant this search is taken to a deeply intimate and terrifying level. He offers no explanations, no resolutions, and no redemption for what is happening with these teenagers.  He simply shows how seemingly random and unpredictable these events are.

The violence in the film, while horrific, is not sensationalized or glorified in any way.  The killings are pointless and random and ultimately empty. All in all Elephant is a beautifully crafted film and features Van Sant as his creative best, but be warned that the dark and disturbing material makes for a difficult watch.

Budget: $3,000,000

Total US Gross: $1,257,377

Genre: Drama

Runtime: 81 Minutes

US Release Date: 10/24/03

Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1

Awards:
Cannes Film Festival: 
Won for best director, the Cinema Prize of the French National Education System, and the Golden Palm. 

Tagline: An Ordinary High School Day. Except That It’s Not.

Quote: “So foul and fair a day I have not seen.”