I just saw Elephant. ow ow ow. If you are feeling too chipper, this'll deflate the mood in no time. I like it a lot, though, as a document and a marker in time. I like that it is so clearly Columbine, but at the same time clearly fiction. This ain't no mock-u-mentary, but rather knock-down, drag 'em out, expressionistic narrative. The first part of the film, before the shooting started, hit me hard with all the bad, remembered pain and hopelessness of high school. By the time the violence kicked in I was tear-streaked and numb. My own indifference to the bloodshed was in itself the most bleak and, I think (hope), informative part of the experience. I felt similarly about Larry Clark's Kids: painful to sit through but important to see. Now, 9 years later, I am sick of Larry Clark and his self-indulgent, self-serving fetishization of adolescence. And I have felt similarly about Gus Van Sant in the past. But maybe it takes a salacious point of view to provide otherwise clear-eyed, judgement-free pictures of the dark interior of teenager-dom.
Bowling for Columbine is the only place where I've seen a direct connection made between the amorality of youth (which we distance our selves from) to the amorality of the military industrial complex (in which, as adults, we are complicit). While Elephant, is paralysing and despair-inducing, Bowling for Columbine, is a call to action. I'd suggest seeing both.
All that said, here's a good angry rant by Michael Niederman, who hated Elephant and does a very nice job of saying why .
Niederman is right that if Van Sant were straight, he would have taken all kinds of heat for that shower scene. I thought it rang a false note but I didn't get mad about it. I also agree about the vomiting--that was almost "teen comedy" material. Though it's only in that one scene with the 3 girls, right? I also thought the killer playing Beethoven on the piano was a bit much.
Niederman spends a lot of his rant on the failure of the film to live up to intentions that may or may not be the director's:
1. "Elephant is Gus Van Sant’s attempt to explain, or at least illuminate, the causes of the Columbine School tragedy. Or, at least that’s what the press notes says." It's usually not a good idea to critique the hype.
2. "I understood...the director was...trying to take on high school violence, a subject CNN and Fox News are most fond of talking about in high moralistic tones, and take it back from those talking heads. He wanted to present a complex study about high school violence and violence in general. He didn’t want to judge his characters, be they the perpetrators or the victims of said violence." Where were these intentions declared? It didn't seem to me that Van Sant meant to do any of those things.
It's a gorgeous film. I kept thinking, "Christ, what a beautiful, rich high school." The kids are insanely passive, though. The black kid who gets shot doesn't try to "stop the murder," he walks around like a zombie with no sense of his own survival. I loved seeing the "hall scene" repeated from different angles and POVs. All the attention paid to the photographer and the shy girl makes their sudden deaths incredibly sad. There's a lot of black humor in the scene where the main shooter pulls out the map and says things like "You'll get a lot of kids here" and "Remember, have fun."
I was surprised and mystified when the main shooter shot his accomplice. I love the football game where the camera position cuts off half the action and the shy girl enters the center of the frame and just breathes, like she's having a private religious experience. I found the film poetic, exhilirating, and horriifying. It's completely postmodern in that it expects the audience to map known events on top of it, to complete it.
That's my (positive) rant.
Your post set me off on a tangent... It's weird, but I refused to watch Bowling for Columbine for a couple years, till my 17-year-old sister forced me to rent and sat down and watched it with me. I don't know what my problem was. It's hilarious! Michael Moore displays dubious morals (but an intense commitment to uncover the truth about the opponents of gun control) when he lies to get into Charlton Heston's home.
Lately, I've had some kind of mental block about watching or reading anything that is supposed to be good for me. I rarely read the news (though, somehow, I still seem to absorb a certain amount of it) or read books that are quality literature (particularly if there's a chance they might be something I could review and make a buck off). Recently, my sister had to blackmail me (by refusing to allow me to have trashy mysteries we purchased together) into reading Life of Pi. I admit it's good. OK? So why didn't I want to read it? Maybe because everyone else was and I hate doing what everyone else is doing...I dunno.
God, I'm regressing to semi-literate white trash!
maybe you maxed out your 'worthy literature' quota in your adolescence. I know I did.
ha ha. i think that's it! except in my case it was literature "that was good for me" or that made a worthy point about the nature of humanity.
so what's your guiltiest reading pleasure now?
Let's see. Um, probably right now it's probably Laurie R King's mystery novels about Mary Russell, Sherlock Holmes' apprentice. Ooh, then there's just about anything by Val McDermid...
I like Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlin's series but I don't feel that guilty about it. My ex, sitting behind me, is reading Rushdie's, Fury. She checked out for me this fat novel by a guy named Richard Powers, The Time of Our Singing. I have been less than prolific as a reader for over a year now. I'm hoping to get over that.
I like your bookshelf browsing strategies, jimlouis. Kissmachine, now that I think of it, I have to say that there was a lot of pleasure in watching Elephant. Tom's right, they had a damn nice looking school. It was brutal, and I did feel somewhat duty-bound to see it, but it's not what I'd call "worthy". Sorry if I gave that impression.
I swore off mysteries about a year ago in favour of science fiction. That was a good decision - just as absorbing, but more inspiring. However, I need to read some more Patricia Highsmith soon. I keep thinking about this one god-awful, nasty (ie: great) scene in Ripley Underground when the guy tries to burn a body in a hand-built fire. It doesn't go so well.
Highsmith is great.
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I just saw Elephant. ow ow ow. If you are feeling too chipper, this'll deflate the mood in no time. I like it a lot, though, as a document and a marker in time. I like that it is so clearly Columbine, but at the same time clearly fiction. This ain't no mock-u-mentary, but rather knock-down, drag 'em out, expressionistic narrative. The first part of the film, before the shooting started, hit me hard with all the bad, remembered pain and hopelessness of high school. By the time the violence kicked in I was tear-streaked and numb. My own indifference to the bloodshed was in itself the most bleak and, I think (hope), informative part of the experience. I felt similarly about Larry Clark's Kids: painful to sit through but important to see. Now, 9 years later, I am sick of Larry Clark and his self-indulgent, self-serving fetishization of adolescence. And I have felt similarly about Gus Van Sant in the past. But maybe it takes a salacious point of view to provide otherwise clear-eyed, judgement-free pictures of the dark interior of teenager-dom.
Bowling for Columbine is the only place where I've seen a direct connection made between the amorality of youth (which we distance our selves from) to the amorality of the military industrial complex (in which, as adults, we are complicit). While Elephant, is paralysing and despair-inducing, Bowling for Columbine, is a call to action. I'd suggest seeing both.
All that said, here's a good angry rant by Michael Niederman, who hated Elephant and does a very nice job of saying why .
- sally mckay 1-08-2004 5:55 am
Niederman is right that if Van Sant were straight, he would have taken all kinds of heat for that shower scene. I thought it rang a false note but I didn't get mad about it. I also agree about the vomiting--that was almost "teen comedy" material. Though it's only in that one scene with the 3 girls, right? I also thought the killer playing Beethoven on the piano was a bit much.
Niederman spends a lot of his rant on the failure of the film to live up to intentions that may or may not be the director's:
1. "Elephant is Gus Van Sant’s attempt to explain, or at least illuminate, the causes of the Columbine School tragedy. Or, at least that’s what the press notes says." It's usually not a good idea to critique the hype.
2. "I understood...the director was...trying to take on high school violence, a subject CNN and Fox News are most fond of talking about in high moralistic tones, and take it back from those talking heads. He wanted to present a complex study about high school violence and violence in general. He didn’t want to judge his characters, be they the perpetrators or the victims of said violence." Where were these intentions declared? It didn't seem to me that Van Sant meant to do any of those things.
It's a gorgeous film. I kept thinking, "Christ, what a beautiful, rich high school." The kids are insanely passive, though. The black kid who gets shot doesn't try to "stop the murder," he walks around like a zombie with no sense of his own survival. I loved seeing the "hall scene" repeated from different angles and POVs. All the attention paid to the photographer and the shy girl makes their sudden deaths incredibly sad. There's a lot of black humor in the scene where the main shooter pulls out the map and says things like "You'll get a lot of kids here" and "Remember, have fun." I was surprised and mystified when the main shooter shot his accomplice. I love the football game where the camera position cuts off half the action and the shy girl enters the center of the frame and just breathes, like she's having a private religious experience. I found the film poetic, exhilirating, and horriifying. It's completely postmodern in that it expects the audience to map known events on top of it, to complete it.
That's my (positive) rant.
- tom moody 1-08-2004 6:46 am
Your post set me off on a tangent... It's weird, but I refused to watch Bowling for Columbine for a couple years, till my 17-year-old sister forced me to rent and sat down and watched it with me. I don't know what my problem was. It's hilarious! Michael Moore displays dubious morals (but an intense commitment to uncover the truth about the opponents of gun control) when he lies to get into Charlton Heston's home.
Lately, I've had some kind of mental block about watching or reading anything that is supposed to be good for me. I rarely read the news (though, somehow, I still seem to absorb a certain amount of it) or read books that are quality literature (particularly if there's a chance they might be something I could review and make a buck off). Recently, my sister had to blackmail me (by refusing to allow me to have trashy mysteries we purchased together) into reading Life of Pi. I admit it's good. OK? So why didn't I want to read it? Maybe because everyone else was and I hate doing what everyone else is doing...I dunno.
God, I'm regressing to semi-literate white trash!
- kissmachine 1-09-2004 9:32 pm
maybe you maxed out your 'worthy literature' quota in your adolescence. I know I did.
- sally mckay 1-09-2004 9:47 pm
ha ha. i think that's it! except in my case it was literature "that was good for me" or that made a worthy point about the nature of humanity.
- kissmachine 1-10-2004 7:24 am
so what's your guiltiest reading pleasure now?
- sally mckay 1-10-2004 7:27 am
Let's see. Um, probably right now it's probably Laurie R King's mystery novels about Mary Russell, Sherlock Holmes' apprentice. Ooh, then there's just about anything by Val McDermid...
- kissmachine 1-11-2004 3:22 am
I like Walter Mosley's Easy Rawlin's series but I don't feel that guilty about it. My ex, sitting behind me, is reading Rushdie's, Fury. She checked out for me this fat novel by a guy named Richard Powers, The Time of Our Singing. I have been less than prolific as a reader for over a year now. I'm hoping to get over that.
- jimlouis 1-11-2004 3:42 am
I like your bookshelf browsing strategies, jimlouis. Kissmachine, now that I think of it, I have to say that there was a lot of pleasure in watching Elephant. Tom's right, they had a damn nice looking school. It was brutal, and I did feel somewhat duty-bound to see it, but it's not what I'd call "worthy". Sorry if I gave that impression.
I swore off mysteries about a year ago in favour of science fiction. That was a good decision - just as absorbing, but more inspiring. However, I need to read some more Patricia Highsmith soon. I keep thinking about this one god-awful, nasty (ie: great) scene in Ripley Underground when the guy tries to burn a body in a hand-built fire. It doesn't go so well.
- sally mckay 1-11-2004 7:47 am
Highsmith is great.
- jimlouis 1-12-2004 8:01 pm