POST 14: Elephant, a Gus Van Sant movie (2003)

1) What struck you most in the film?
  In this film what strucked me the most is the posture of the students who seem a little bit caricatured and seem to be in other world when the killers began to shoot.
For example in the scene when the shooting begin there are people who think it´s a joke when people is screaming. Another example it´s just the killers are going to the library with their guns and the girl is not scared at all.

2) What also impressed you?
  In my point of view what impressed me the most was in the way to record the movie. Actually Gus Van Sant finds the way to show us a normal day in a school. We follow all the characters in the corridors, we see their personalities, the director wants to involve us in the movie. Thanks to the cameras which follow the characters all around the school we take part in the story from the very beginning.

3) Did you find anything more particularly upsetting?
  Logically the story is very upsetting. The fact to have two classmates who arrive one day equipped with a submachine gun with the purpose to kill me and the rest of the school is terrible. The most upsetting is that the school students ask them before dying the reason to do that.

4) What did you find very disturbing?
To be honnest, all along the film there is a part in the movie that I didn´t understand. This part is the scene where the black student called Benny who is walking towards the shooters as if nothing was happening around  him. When he sees one of the killers about to fire a teacher and he doesn´t do anything, he just walks until the shooter looks at him and kills him. That was very disturbing because the viewer doesn´t understand why he did that instead of having run away or having stopped the shooter.

5) What was most shocking?
For me the most shocking in the film is the final scene. After the death of his friend, Alex, one of the killers seems to be normal and when it seems the story is arriving at its end he finds Jordan and his girlfriend. When Jordan asks him why he does that Alex starts to sing a song while he points the two teenagers.
 Other thing that shocked me is the fact that the actors have the same name that their charaters. That is very shocking, as if the actors and the characters were the same person. In my opinion Gus Van Sant chooses this resource because he doesn´t want to recreate seamlessly what happened this day. He prefers to create this shooting with his imagination and we live a real shooting thanks to the realism of the characters and the way to record it. 
 

 6) What does the film  suggest about the two school shooters?
   The film suggests the two school shooters are bullied by their classmates. We can appreciate they are alone, for example Alex has just Eric as a friend and he visits him sometimes in his house when his parents are away.
Furthermore we can see the two characters are psycopaths who think this shooting is a funny game, they do that just to have a good time. More the film advances more we can see they are crazy, for example, just before the shooting they are watching videos on Nazi propaganda or they are kissing in the shower.
  

7) What's more, what does the film director make clear about the two killers?
  The director wants to show this people is rejected by the society, there are bullied and alone. The director wants also to show that everybody have access to the guns. The two characters are two lonely teenagers with a growing hatred against the society.

8) What kind of approach to the school shooting itself did Gus Van Sant opt for?
  Gus Van Sant opted to use flashbacks all along the film with the finality to understand why it happened before and after the shooting. As we have seen before we can see that Gus Van Sant chooses to follow the characters all around the school to make us to come into the story, Gus Van Sant doesn´t want to have viewers, he wants to have witnesses.

9) Moreover, what's the main consequence of the realistic treatment he uses? What about the 'poetic' touches he instills throughout the film?
 The whole film is very realistic in all its elements, the time, the sound and the lights envolved the viewer. We can also appreciate that the director uses poetic touches like the character of John. Actually this character is blond and has long hair. He reminds us the image of an angel. Since the beginning of the story we can interpret other symbols that make us think about what can happen later in the film.

  10) As a conclusion, what must we admit about the way in which the killing and the killers are perceived by the film viewers?
  As a conclusion we can admit that this film goes far beyond a simple movie which tells us a story.
 The viewer gets a place into the film, around the film. The director chooses to put a lot of types of characters who are very different among them. The viewer can think 'who is better' to die.
 For example Gus shows us a group of girls who seem a little bit stupid and in another hand he puts  a nice guy who takes photos to the people.
 The viewer can be happier or more sad depending on who is touched. Gus achieves that because the viewer is on the side of shooters unconsciously.
 Even if he shows us two monsters he tells us we can be monsters too.
 The film ends with the message that we may be any of the characters, the shooters or the angel.