Elephant

Released 2003
Stars Woody Allen, Helen Hunt, Dan Aykroyd, Brian Markinson, Wallace Shawn, David Ogden Stiers, Charlize Theron
Directed by Gus Van Sant

Gus Van Sant's "Elephant" is a record of a day at a high school like Columbine, on the day of a massacre much like the one that left 13 dead. It offers no explanation for the tragedy, no insights into the psyches of the killers, no theories about teenagers or society or guns or psychopathic behavior. It simply looks at the day as it unfolds, and that is a brave and radical act; it refuses to supply reasons and assign cures, so that we can close the case and move on.

Let me tell you a story. The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program. The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking sound bites to support it. "Wouldn't you say," she asked, "that killings like this are influenced by violent movies?" No, I said, I wouldn't say that. "But what about 'Basketball Diaries'?" she asked. "Doesn't that have a scene of a boy walking into a school with a machine gun?" The obscure 1995 Leonardo Di Caprio movie did indeed have a brief fantasy scene of that nature, I said, but the movie failed at the box office (it grossed only $2.5 million), and it's unlikely the Columbine killers saw it.

The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. "Events like this," I said, "if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn't have messed with me. I'll go out in a blaze of glory."

In short, I said, events like Columbine are influenced far less by violent movies than by CNN, the NBC Nightly News and all the other news media, who glorify the killers in the guise of "explaining" them. I commended the policy at the Sun-Times, where our editor said the paper would no longer feature school killings on Page 1. The reporter thanked me and turned off the camera. Of course the interview was never used. They found plenty of talking heads to condemn violent movies, and everybody was happy.

Read the rest of the review by Roger Ebert

I was very happy to see Roger Ebert discuss this topic and take this stance. When these tragedies happen, it's very convenient (and politically beneficial) to point fingers at easy targets like movies, video games, and music, but it's silly to believe those things actually cause such awful events. An individual has to be truly disturbed to start killing indiscriminately, and that doesn't happen from playing video games. There is one way the world of entertainment influences these punks, however, and that's the way they choose to carry out their crimes. Like all kids they look to entertainment for what's cool, and that may influence how they dress or what they may say. The important point, though, is no form of entertainment turns a teenager into a homicidal maniac. This movie understands that, and I was happy to see Roger point the finger where it belongs. After all, why do these tragedies occur in bunches? It's because a couple of other dangerously disturbed teens see all of the attention lavished on the other punks, and they see a way to do just what Roger said--get back at everyone who made them miserable, become uber-famous, and go out in a blaze of glory. It's the news media that gives them everything they want, and no one talks about it.

So what about the movie? It accomplished exactly what Van Sant wanted to do, which was show what it might be like to be in a high school on a day like this. It doesn't glorify or excuse the violence. It just watches it. It touches on each of the things the media blamed for Columbine (video games, homosexuality, Nazism, being picked on by their peers, etc), but it doesn't use them as excuses. For the most part, they seem like normal teens who have an agenda, and when the last gun arrives, they go to it. As a film experiment, I think it's very successful. Where it fails is as entertainment. Generally, you watch a movie for its entertainment value, but there's no entertainment here. I know that wasn't the film's objective, but so much of it was boring, I found myself wanting the violence to start even though I didn't want to see it. Although the majority of this movie was so boring, I think it was actually a good choice because it removed all emotion from the film. Van Sant didn't want us to become involved with the characters. He wanted us to watch the pointlessness of the whole thing, and to watch the grim reality of people being gunned down. The film works completely on that level, but who would want to see this? I'm thinking it would be good for high school kids and their parents to watch and discuss. For everyone else, I'd look for something else. --Bill Alward, December 22, 2004