Elephant

Directed and written by Gus Van Sant

Starring Alex Frost, Eric Deulen, John Robinson and Elias McConnell

Rated R for disturbing violent content, language, brief sexuality and drug use - all involving teens

81 minutes runtime

“Elephant” doesn’t start out to be a thriller.  It starts out a “day in the life” movie about average high school kids in the average city of Portland, Oregon.  But by the last third of the movie, things are deteriorating quickly and the reality of the lives of the students falls on the audience like a Portland hail storm.

John McFarland plays John Robinson, a young man charged with keeping his out-of-control alcoholic father in check and dealing with the outrage his mother directs at his father as a result (McFarland, like all the teenage actors in this movie, has no previous movie credits).  He forces his father to turn over the keys to the car, leaves the keys at the front desk of the high school, calls his brother and arranges for dad to be picked up by his brother.  As a result of this amazingly mature sequence of actions, he is called on the carpet by the clueless principal and reprimanded for being late.   Thus begins the interplay between the kids and the adults in “Elephant,” the adults pretend to be in charge, but are only kidding themselves.  It’s the kids who know the score.  But the responsibilities the adult world has unknowingly pressed onto the kids will cause consequences that their parents can’t even imagine.  Or are the parents ignoring the obvious because they are incapable of stopping the juggernaut, the elephant in the living room?

There is something exceptionally sad in the death of a child.  Adults live their lives and make of them what they will; a child has no chance to do the right thing.  Adults see the death of a child as a failure to protect their children, but in the final analysis, how many adults do the right thing?

Next we meet Elias, played by Elias McConnell, who is studying photography and “building up his portfolio.”  Elias pops in and out of the story as he snaps pictures of the protagonists.  Two of his subjects ask him if he wants them to take off their clothes for the photographs.  They have an even-handed discussion of the issue and John tells them they don’t have to take off their clothes.  After all, the pictures are just on the surface anyway, aren’t they?  In fact, the whole first two-thirds of the movie is the outward appearance of the reality of the high school,  Only the last third shows what two of the students are actually feeling.

As the director and writer of this remarkable film, Gus Van Sant continues to tempt the fates and stick his neck out into new territory.  The script is very spare and the characters tell their story more through their actions than by their words.  Half the dialogue in the story is phrases like, “Hi, how’s going?” and “What do you want to do now?" phrases that force the audience to watch the actor’s expressions and listen closely to the intonation of their voices to extract meaning from the sound track.  Three upscale socialites chit chat about insignificant conquests real and imagined as they file into the girls room and vomit their lunches in the stalls; uncomplaining victims of their adult role-models’ stereotype.  Sheep marching, willingly, to the slaughter.

Of all of the spare scripts in the movie, Kristen Hicks as Michelle says the least and does the most.  Michelle is so racked with anxiety at her body that she can hardly bare to change into her gym clothes.  Just as the school principal is incapable of understanding the pressure and responsibility heaped on John Robinson as he covers for his addicted father, Michelle’s gym teacher doesn’t even consider that there might be an underlying reason why Michelle doesn’t change into her gym clothes.  As Van Sant takes the movie through its paces, Michelle’s distress is thrown at the audience with more intensity as time goes on.  She is never photographed by Elias to “build up his portfolio.”  She is not part of anybody’s portfolio; changing her clothes like a mouse in the locker room and running scared to her job in the library.  She is the first to go, suffering a death as unfair as her life.

Alex is played by Alex Frost and Eric by Eric Duelen, who join Michelle in the outcast category.  Alex sits in chemistry class while his fellow students ask shallow and meaningless questions of their teacher, who takes the questions seriously and responds back with suitably limp answers; rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.  As the teacher is preoccupied with his pedagogy, the students are pelting Alex with wet paper towels, creating a mess that he leaves on his clothing until after class, when he walks purposely to the restroom to clean himself; a humiliating experience that he appears to have accepted, until we see him at home flopping down on the couch with Eric to play some action video games. 

As Van Sant flips back and forth across the time-line of the movie’s plot, scenes are repeated from the different points of view of the various charactors.  The movie progresses ahead in time, but does so in a halting, one step back, two steps forward manner that emphasizes the uncertainties and insecurities of the teenage charactors.  It also repeats scenes for the audience and challenges them to understand what the photography is saying based on precious few clues.

Alex and Eric have vague discussions about Hitler and Naziism and the music of Beethoven is in stark contrast to the pop the audience would expect.  The action video games present a movie of their own, a movie populated by unknowing zombies wandering across a blank screen.  A movie within a movie, presented in Alex’s bedroom, with Alex and Eric directing.  Alex surfs the Net and finds a web site offering guns for sale.  Powerful guns.  The doorbell rings and a faceless adult hands a box through the door.  No questions asked.

Harris Savides' Steadicam work in “Elephant” is reminiscent of “The Blair Witch Project,” another very successful effort populated by actors, and a cinematographer, with no prior professional credits (we have certainly heard more from them since).  If you like the way Van Sant slowly turns up of the temperature in “Elephant,” “Blair Witch” might also be your cup of tea (if you want to see the same technique done wrong, see “Cabin Fever”).

This is a very powerful, but disturbing, movie.  The R rating is for real.  Leave the kids at home.