Elephant (film)

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Movie
German title Elephant
Original title Elephant
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2003
length 81 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Gus Van Sant
script Gus Van Sant
production JT LeRoy ,
Jay Hernández ,
Dany Wolf
camera Harris Savides
cut Gus Van Sant
occupation

Elephant is an American film drama by Gus Van Sant from the year 2003 . The plot relates very loosely to the rampage at Columbine High School in Colorado , USA, in 1999.

action

On an autumn day at an American high school, the paths of a group of students intersect . John is driven to school by his alcoholic father, takes the car keys from him and leaves them in the secretary's office. Elias, who takes photos for his portfolio, roams the school grounds in search of motifs. Shy Michelle, before starting her temporary job in the school library, is admonished by her teacher about refusing to wear shorts to exercise. During the course of the day, each of them meets Alex and Eric, two classmates who, covered with weapons and explosive devices, went to school to kill as many people as possible. In flashbacks you can see how they handle their weapons, play first-person shooter games, indifferently watch documentaries about the "Third Reich" or how Alex is teased by a classmate without any of these moments giving any information about a possible motive of the two . The principal and many students fall victim to their rampage, then Alex kills his friend Eric. The film ends abruptly when Alex discovers a couple hiding in the cold store and points his gun at the couple.

background

production

After the commercial success of his film Good Will Hunting , Van Sant, in his own words, was free to choose only fabrics that interested him personally, without having to worry about their economic potential. He decided on the subject of violence in American schools: “There have been more shootings in American schools than ever before. I wanted to make a film that tried to capture the mood among the students who were in school at the time. ”Executive producers were Bill Robinson and actress Diane Keaton , HBO cable company, and film production company Fine Line Features .

In the wake of the events in Columbine, JT LeRoy wrote a script called " Tommy gun ", which was not used. Instead, Van Sant designed the story based on the private biographies of his amateur actors . Most of the contributors adopted their real first names for their roles in addition to biographical details. During the shooting, Van Sant and his cameraman Harris Savides based themselves on the staging style of Cinéma vérité and the films by Frederick Wiseman . The film was shot in November 2002 in a disused school building in Portland, Oregon , USA.

Movie title

The title of the film refers to the short film of the same name by Alan Clarke from 1989, which without comment depicts a series of murders during the Northern Ireland conflict. Bernard MacLavertys description of the Northern Ireland conflict as "elephant in our living room" ( Elephant in the room ) - an English phrase for the displacement of one can not be overlooked problem - gave the film its title.

Van Sant interpreted the title of Clarkes and his film as a reference to the Buddhist parable about the five blind people who each examine a different part of an elephant and come to five different conclusions: “As soon as you provide an explanation, five other possibilities are negated that you chose the one. In addition, the question arose of what the point of looking for an explanation for something for which there is not necessarily an explanation. ”In the film itself, however, this possibility of interpretation is not discussed, the only reference to the title is an illustration of an elephant hanging in the room of the assassin Alex.

music

Elephant does not have a specially composed soundtrack, but uses classical and experimental compositions by Ludwig van Beethoven , Hildegard Westerkamp , Frances White and Acid Mothers Temple as well as an excerpt from a lecture by William S. Burroughs . A recurring piece is Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata , which can be heard on the school's sports field at the beginning of the film. Alex later plays Beethoven's Für Elise , which also creates a musical connection between perpetrators and victims.

Van Sant also used White's music in his subsequent films Paranoid Park and Milk .

Film start

The film premiered on May 18, 2003 at the Cannes International Film Festival , where it was awarded the Palme d'Or for best film .

The film was particularly successful in France , where Elephant opened in cinemas on October 22, 2003, and attracted over 600,000 visitors. It started in the United States on October 24th of the same year and, with around 200,000 visitors, generated gross revenues of around US $ 1.2 million. According to Box Office Mojo, Elephant grossed around $ 10 million worldwide .

Publication in Germany

Elephant started in German cinemas on April 8, 2004, two years after the rampage in Erfurt , where it only attracted around 36,000 viewers. The film was released on DVD in Germany in two different versions: The “Special Edition” also includes the short film Elephant by Alan Clarke, which is why it was rated “No youth approval / from 18” by the FSK . The regular version without the short film was released from the age of 12.

reception

The critics' opinion on Van Sant's film was divided, which is attributed to the "economical and unconventional style" in the American critic portal Rotten Tomatoes (where Elephant has a positive rating of 73%). Many film critics highly praised the film, while others rejected it completely. Todd McCarthy wrote in Variety that the film was "pointless at best and irresponsible at worst" because it approaches a subject like the Columbine massacre, but does not provide any insight.

Roger Ebert , however, was impressed by the film in the Chicago Sun-Times , as the absence of explanations, psychological insights and theories represented “a bold and radical step”. The film's responsibility lies precisely in the fact that it refuses to give a simple explanation. Even David Denby wrote in The New Yorker that a film that simple explanations would come, many viewers prefer would have been - in his "cool indifference", the film offers a "disconcerting whiff of mortality" by laughing high school students in the Cafeteria face the gunmen with their deadly weapons. Elephant shuts itself off from a clear and dramatized narrative like in a standard Hollywood drama, instead the film is a "fascinating, mysterious meditation" on the Columbine school massacre.

Even Tobias Kniebe by the Sueddeutsche Zeitung commented impressed: "Elephant 'is a truly radical work: It shows the death and refuses to give it a meaning. But not only that: It even rules out the possibility that knowledge could be distilled from it. And in the end, nevertheless, celebrate life: as a stream of stories and moments that derive their value entirely from within themselves. "

The unconventionality, however, so Robin Detje in Die Zeit , strangles the "tired of life" work. “What you get is not better art in the service of a more real life, but an undramatic depiction. [...] The greatest impertinence in this film without psychology and justification is Van Sant's sudden idea to justify the murderers' actions after all and to use the basest clichés: Nobody likes these guys, so they play video ball games and watch Nazi videos, then they pick up the gun. "

Lars-Olav Beier from Spiegel also viewed the film critically, not only because of the “explanatory nibbles” interspersed against Van Sant's declared intention: “As with the perpetrators, 'Elephant' does not want to develop any closeness to the victims, although the film keeps them close on the body. [He] shows the banality of everyday school life and hardly gives the viewer a sense of the value of these teenage lives that are later erased. "

The lexicon of international film, on the other hand, saw the film's strength in the last point of criticism: “The cool, detached attitude of the film, which is staged with laypeople, is also disturbing for the long term because it takes great pains to recognize the later victims of the massacre in their everyday lives To represent normality and to make it tangible as a human being. "

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Approval certificate for Elephant . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , March 2004 (PDF; test number: 97 165 K).
  2. ↑ a b Production notes and interviews ( memento of March 7, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) on the official website.
  3. ↑ a b Interview with Gus Van Sant on the Kinowelt DVD, 2004.
  4. ^ Elephant in the Internet Movie Database .
  5. ↑ "Phrases - the elephant in the room - a major problem or controversial issue which is obviously present but is avoided as a subject for discussion." Entry in the online edition of the Oxford English Dictionary , accessed on November 2, 2012.
  6. ↑ a b c Elephant in the Lumiere visitor number database, accessed on November 1, 2012.
  7. ↑ a b Elephant on Box Office Mojo, accessed November 1, 2012.
  8. ↑ a b Elephant in the Lexicon of International FilmsTemplate: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used .
  9. ↑ Elephant (2003). Retrieved September 23, 2019 .
  10. ↑ Review in Variety of May 18, 2003, accessed November 1, 2012.
  11. ↑ Review in the Chicago Sun-Times of November 7, 2003, accessed November 1, 2012.
  12. ↑ David Denby: Creep Shows . October 20, 2003, ISSN  0028-792X ( newyorker.com [accessed September 23, 2019]).
  13. ^ Review in Süddeutsche Zeitung No. 83 of April 8, 2004, accessed on November 1, 2012.
  14. ↑ Review in Die Zeit No. 15 from April 1, 2004, accessed on November 1, 2012.
  15. ↑ Review in Der Spiegel No. 15/2004 of April 5, 2004, accessed on November 1, 2012.