< Elephant
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- autonoma0
How does he blame video games? Of course kids that are into guns and weaponry are into war games. You're just perceiving that it's what he was doing. I didn't see that at all. He showed a long shot of the boy playing "Fur Elise" too. Is he blaming Beethoven as well?
- Axel0
twas a good film
- nodh0
he is mixing everything anyway: video games, classical music, nazis (but one of the 2 boys doesn't even understand what they're watching), homosexuality (which is wierd because Van Sant is gay himself - and the way he depicts the school girls makes it obvious) ... add a spread of pseudo-poetry, 2 or 3 drops of "deep-thinking" and you get that empty/blurry movie that is Elephant ...
anyway, this is my point of view and you do whatever you want with it but I'd be curious to know the reasons why ppl loved this movie ...
- rabattski0
i liked the movie a lot. but not that it was all that. i liked the camera work. but big thing i missed was motivation, why kill? there's just one small scene where one of 'em is bullied. not enough for me. a little bit more character development would have been appropriate.
and to be honest that gay shower scene isn't called for. it really doesn't contribute to the story at all. to me it was more like van sant going: look at me how progressive i am, i'm not afraid to use gay scenes. unless he thinks that there's a link or a metaphor between having sex with eachother and killing people together.
- nodh0
you got it Rabbatsky, a lot of questions remain unanswered and i'd even push it to the camera work ... what's the point?!
- rabattski0
it has a lot to do with the subject. it's pretty loaded and still a current issue. if you take such a subject and leave so many questions unanswered you're bound to run into critique.
but i can imagine why he doesn't go into the motivations or he doesn't develop the characters. see these kids were basically anonymous. no one knew these kids were able to do this. once it happened a storm raged about how this could have happened etc. also because no one knew. maybe some other kid new that one of them was bullied. hence that one short scene. maybe he wanted to keep the same impact. just the fact that it happened and later people wonder why, like we do right now.
still have the same critique though as posted before. would have been better in this case.
- nodh0
back in France when it was released a lot of critiques (even the best ones) found Van Sant was giving enough reasons to why it happened ... I guess we have to keep in mind they were kids and the reasons were very complex if there even were any ... I believe it was a gratuitous act, as gratuitous as this movie can be (however a movie is harmless whereas Columbine was a tragedy).
- ********0
Dont think there was a good or logical reason why thoose kids started killing their classmates, I mean if there was one that'd be even scarier actually.
Totally think it was Gus Van Sants intention to leave the audience thinking 'why' after the film, just like we where thinking after the Columbine tragedy.
- autonoma0
The way I feel about the movie is that it's basically like a small chunk of the teens lives. There's no beginning and no end, necessarily. That's because it's not supposed to come across like a scripted story (which is why it wasn't scripted but improvised). I think this is also why a lot of people find it boring. The camera's like a metaphorical fly on the wall.
These are all of the reasons that I liked the movie. I thought it was completely effective from start to finish.
- ********0
I saw it in London.
As for the acting - some of the actors were played by themselves, don't know if people were aware of that.
I think it's very good. If he had made a drama of it that would be reason to get upset. Think of it a documentary... reinactment...
- lvl_130
oh damn! i had to search for this thread to post my opinion if that has any merit.
I had read great things about this movie on this site (and being an unreleased (nationwide at least) movie I thought I would give it a shot). Let me tell you...DO NOT RENT THIS MOVIE! it is seriously bad all around. I kept waiting for something to happen. through all the bad acting. through all the pointless scenes. I just kept waiting. This was honestly the worst movie I have seen in a year, no kidding. I am actually curious as to why people on here found it so intriguing. No offense to anyone that found it worthwhile/entertaining but this movie was a serious letdown.
- versa0
saw it last night finally.....
yeah.......kinda disappointing
- ********0
i am with autonoma on this one.. i really enjoyed the film.
- cre2done0
sorry, i gotta jump in on this. I saw it like 2 weeks ago and it's still pretty fresh in my shitty memory.
i thought it was really good. I liked the long shots. Fuck, have you seen Jerry? Those shots are like 10 mins of open desert. I liked the long shots and especially the minutea of high school life, being stupid, talking about boys/girls, especially the social hierarchy. The banality made me think that everyday was like that, with the jocks playing football and the nerds getting fucked with. EVERYDAY. I see their motivation cause it reminded me of fucking with kids/getting fucked with and what it feels like.
there's my 2cents. Ima go see Farnheit 911 so ill have more shit to talk in about 3 hours.
thanks.