Elephant - Gus Van Sant
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- benfal99
I know iam late. I just watched Elephant for the first time.
what a great movie!
Someone can tell me why the movie is called ELEPHANT ?
I know we can see a drawing showing an elephant in the room of one of the killer... but is it all ?
- prodigalslacker0
it's an old saying that says if there's an elephant standing in the middle of a room long enough, people will begin to adapt to it before they do anything about it.
basically he's saying that gun control / school violence is a huge issue that we're ignoring as a country because of the deep claws the nra has on the government, and the social difference between the second ammendment when it was drafted and today.
- benfal990
oh! i see.
thanks a lot for the explanations
- peteski0
its a problem everyone knows exists and is never acknowledged.
"its like theres an elephant in the middle of the room and nobody's saying anything"
- craic_whore0
The title is a tribute to the Alan Clarke, 1989 film for BBC, also called Elephant, which reflected on sectarian violence in Northern Ireland. Van Sant similarly portrays school violence as something unfathomable, not unlike many other disturbing things in the lives of teenagers, which invite convenient explanations but ultimately frustrate analysis.
- bk_shankz0
Everyone was so polite!
- ********0
That's a very nice explanation prodigalslacker.
My thoughts when I watched that movie was that somehow it was connected with "Gerry".
There is a scene where one of the dudes is playing a shoot-em' up game that looks exactly like those Gerry landscapes.
In Gerry those two dudes are in search of "nothing" and all they talk about is some Sims in slang. Throughout the entire movie there's no emotion but just strategy and obstacles. Such situations as we found in adventure games.
Now, if there's no real emotional relationship but only virtual conversation and gaming situations, there's no established Wrong besides the "scoring" thing. Getting somewhere with no real point to it.
So blasting someone away is easy. It's just another challenge. High-school is not very different from an alienated game for a lot of teenagers today.
An Elephant could smash lives with no real point too.
- woodyBatts0
Really brilliant film, I was very apprehensive about seeing it, but when I did I definitely got my $10 worth. Recently I listened to his commentary w/ Matt Dillon on Drugstore Cowboy, it was very refreshing to hear a filmmaker talk about acting, story and concept rather than "so this is how we blew this up "
anyone see Last Days yet?
- prodigalslacker0
last days is equally as good if you're in to van sants work.