Gus Van Sant: Elephant (2003)

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Though dealing with the same kind of tragedy (two maniacs killing at random in a school) Columbine and Elephant have totally different approaches. The film of Michael Moore is politic, partisan, polemic: the point there is violence as dimension in the American way, America as a NRA institution. Here in the film of Gus Van Sant it is about nothingness. A guy is going to play football, another guy is talking to a girl, a girl is going to the school library, another guy just wants to make impression; and each one is followed by the camera again and again: the same movements, the same words, repeated from different angles. You can get revolted against a movie where nothing of sense happens, where the same actions without meaning are repeated continuously. But if you accept the terms, there is a hypnotic effect, and you enter some kind of another universe. Actually the hypnosis is searched by the the film director for himself: it is his approach in all his movies. He is immersing in the universe of the movie, till he becomes part of it, just to understand its rules. And Gus Van Sant enters this way totally in the world of that some school in some place of America, to find there nothingness, life without meaning, without sense, life that is no life.

And here is the point: the random killing at the end of the movie has no sense while the whole world there has no sense. The random killing is just absurd, which is perfect in an absurd world.

There is a homoerotic suggestion at a certain moment in the movie, when the two killers are taking the shower: it is as to suggest that the assassins come from another planet with another logic. Actually it's the same planet, and the same ilogic. The two aliens are in their alienated planet, we all are aliens. This movie is a morality.

The elephant is in the room and nobody can see it, as the old Indian tale goes. The title is not about the GOP symbol (a morality is universal, beyond any political denomination), nor is it that elephants never forget (as far as I know, elephants forget many things, sometimes even to close the refrigerator). The elephant here is the fact that our life is senseless, so anything senseless can happen.

Elephant: Part 1/8
(video by coyote7272)

Elephant: Part 2/8
(video by coyote7272)

Elephant: Part 3/8
(video by coyote7272)

Elephant: Part 4/8
(video by coyote7272)

Elephant: Part 5/8
(video by coyote7272)

Elephant: Part 6/8
(video by coyote7272)

Elephant: Part 7/8
(video by coyote7272)

Elephant: Part 8/8
(video by coyote7272)

(Gus Van Sant)

Gus Van Sant

(Photo Getty Images)

Film director, screenwriter, photographer, musician, author, but firstly one of the most important film directors nowadays: this is Gus Van Sant. Which is his best movie? Some would say it's Milk, some would say Elephant, some would say maybe Good Will Hunting, or Paranoid Park, or any other, as any of them has something special and forceful. For me, it's Gerry.

• Elephant
  
• Milk
  

(Filmofilia)

Milk - Gus Van Sant, Sean Penn

The movie made by Gus Van Sant tells the story of Harvey Milk (played by Sean Penn), the first openly gay who was elected to an official position (San Francisco Board of Supervisors), assassinated soon after that, victim of a hate crime.

I think two other movies of Van Sant (Gerry and Elephant) are masterpieces. Also I think Paranoid Park is at least as good as Milk. And also I think that what makes this new film distinct from all the others is its openness, its arrogance and its pathos.

Openness: most (if not all) movies of Van Sant carry a heavy homoerotic tension; but, while in his other movies the gay relation is only suggested, here everything is as explicit as hell. Here in Milk the story is permanently switching between the public and the intimate life of his personage. This going back and forth between the two parallel flows is done with a phenomenal sense of the cinematic rhythm: Van Sant is giving here his best.

I'm trying an explanation: in any of his movies, Gus Van Sant is trying to be inside the universe he's picturing. He's not an outside observer. He is there, together with his personages, trying to understand them, to believe what they believe, to be more than a witness: to be one of them, to be each of them, to be in the middle. You feel this in all his movies. He is not in front of the camera, but you get the feeling that he is telling each time his story, not just a story. His empathy is total.

So here in Milk there was no other way for him than to be extremely candid in showing the intimate aspects. It was about the fight for gay civil rights: in order to claim their acceptance by the society they had to emphasize their specificity. And so the movie could not be other way than extremely open about the universe of gay people, in all respects.

Arrogance: it is just the openness of the movie that leads inevitably to arrogance. Van Sant is very challenging in many of his movies; only it has been for us a cinematic challenge so far; here it is a challenge for all our deep convictions, and values, and habits, and senses. Each scene comes with the same brutal question, are you ready to accept them, or just to tolerate them?

Pathos: as I said, Gus Van Sant is immersing in each of his movies, to tell us the story from there, from inside. However, he knows how to simulate objectivity. He is there, in each of his movies, he is one of the guys there while he shows everything with a kind of detachment. No more the case here, in Milk. Here his passion is obvious, here he is openly taking sides. The life of Harvey Milk becomes his own life. And, of course, Van Sant succeeds here also because of the extraordinary performance of Sean Penn.

(Gus Van Sant)