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Elephant [DVD] [2004]

Staring: Elias McConnell, John Robinson, Alex Frost, Eric Deulen, Jordan Taylor
Director: Gus Van Sant
Average Customer Rating:

List Price: ~~£19.99~~
Our Price: £3.45

Product Details
Audience Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
Binding: DVD
EAN: 5060034571162
Format: Colour, PAL
Label: Optimum Home Entertainment
Manufacturer: Optimum Home Entertainment
Number Of Discs: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Optimum Home Entertainment
Region Code: 2
Release Date: 2004-07-26
Running Time: 80
Studio: Optimum Home Entertainment
Theatrical Release Date: 2004-04-08

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Editorial Review
Amazon.co.uk Review
Elephant, the elegant and unsettling movie from Gus Van Sant (My Own Private Idaho, Good Will Hunting), depicts students at a high school before and during a harrowing, Columbine-style shooting. The movie follows one young boy who takes over the wheel from his drunken dad while returning from lunch, then loops back in time and follows another student who crosses paths with the first, then loops back and follows another--all captured in long, unedited tracking shots that are serene and unhurried, even when two boys in camouflage gear, carrying heavy bags, arrive at the school and begin shooting. Elephant doesn't attempt to explain their behaviour; it simply places the audience back in the brief yet interminable window of adolescence, when life is trivial and painfully important at the same time. Your reaction to Elephant will depend as much on your life experiences as anything in the movie itself. --Bret Fetzer

Customer Reviews

Slow paced though often mesmerizing., 2010-07-19
Loosely based on the 1999 Columbine high school massacre, 'Elephant' presents the viewer with the uncomfortable feeling of having to watch events take place in real time. But the whole point of 'Elephant' is to show just how mundane everyday life is, and a how a seemingly routine school day for these kids turned into something truly horrific, and for this reason it makes it so much more effective when the shootings finally take place.
Gus Van Sant's film shows an American high school in all it's meaningless triviality suddenly becoming frighteningly, sickeningly real and inescapable. The film doesn't pass judgement on the killers, there's no single explanation for their behaviour and it doesn't leave the viewer with any form of closure. If you like low key slow paced indie film then this is one to watch.

haunting, 2009-11-02
Gus Van Sant demonstrates once again that he is a master filmmaker and artist of unique vision. This perfect, understated little film is remarkable and striking on every level.

'Elephant' is an inspired rendering of the school shootings at Columbine, despite its disclaimer against resemblance to people living or dead. Mr. Van Sant developed a unique approach for this compelling issue and eschews normal cinematic artifices. There is no soundtrack as such; just the ambient sounds of nature and the usual cacophony of a high school. The only music we hear -- an amateurish rendering of Beethoven -- is played on an out-of-tune piano by one of the young killers.

The cinematography is stunning and the narrative architecture ingenious. The story unfolds in a Faulknerian manner by identifying and following a number of students one at a time, but over the same time period. Long tracking shots, slow pans, and minimal dialogue imbue the film with a real-time feel. Use of extremely shallow focus renders the point-of-view of each student both intimate and personal. They seem unrelated at first, but these individual narrative threads begin to interweave, becoming one fabric in the eerily low-key finale. The movie builds inexorably to one end but, through its methodology, underscores the random perversity of tragedy, and paths crossing at the wrong place and time.

Throughout its 81 minutes, the film makes no moral judgments, offers little sentiment and, most important, comes to no gratuitous conclusions. It is simply a hyper-realistic depiction of a day in the life of an ordinary high school which ends most extraordinarily.

There is only one professional actor in the film. Timothy Bottoms, who had demons of his own as a teenager in 'The Last Picture Show' 45 years ago, plays an ineffectual father. Mr. Van Sant recruited all the actors from the Portland high school where he filmed, and draws the most amazing natural performances from these startlingly beautiful young people. Using the simplest of elements, this distinguished artist has produced one of the great cinematic allegories of our time.

You won't forget, 2009-12-07
wasting your money and you won't forgive Mr van Sant for wasting your time. If you can find art and beauty in this then you can find them by staring at a blank screen. It's the most pathetic piece of film-making I've ever seen (and also has the most cliched example of the pathetic fallacy). I really can't believe that people think it's good.

Save your money..., 2009-08-17
I bought this film on the balance of reviews as there are those who call it brilliant whilst others call it boring. I can take a boring film with a subtle storyline but this film was too much.

The director has taken an interesting subject and come at it from a different angle. Instead of primarily focusing on the attackers, as many would have, he has turned his attentions to a select few schoolchildren. The first 50 or so minutes of this film contains very little dialogue as it shows the children going about their day in school. A camera focused on a child walking through a school corridor for 5 minutes does not make for a good film. It is, in fact, relentlessly boring and I can't help but feel that the director would have been better served building up the characters of these children by having more dialogue.

It is only in the last 20 or so minutes that the attackers are actually introduced to the audience. Only then does the film start to get going. However poor acting soon gets rid of any drama or realism. The fact that this film only includes amateurs (admittedly some have gone on to feature in other films) shows and it really hasn't worked.

Superficial and exploitative with extra cod-psychology feature., 2009-03-23
Gratuitous violence but done in a Cool way so that's all right then and it wins a Palm D'Or.