***½/****
starring Alex Frost, Eric Deulen, John Robinson, Elias McConnell
written and directed by Gus Van Sant
by Bill Chambers Though it ultimately garnered Gus Van Sant the Best Director prize (in addition to the Palme d'or), Elephant's lukewarm reception among ink-slingers at last May's Cannes Film Festival confirms the dulled senses of the critical establishment–that a contemporary masterwork can practically blind with its colour scheme and still go unrecognized as such by cinema's ambassadors is more terrifying than anything in Van Sant's searing interpretation of the Columbine atrocity. The first film intended for theatrical exhibition to be screened in Academy ratio since possibly the Sixties, Elephant observes youth in the constrictive TV dimensions in which it perceives itself while at the same time giving the lie to the medium that most panders to them. Camera moves that stalk students from behind, meanwhile, call attention to the con of Donnie Darko and its bravura tracking shot through the hallways of an overpopulated high school–bustle is hardly the epitome of adolescence. Van Sant's Watt High is a veritable ghost world, and it's easy to see how this building could become the nexus of hate for Alex (Alex Frost), who's being pelted with spitballs when we meet him because, despite a quiet temperament, he seems yet to have found his camouflage. That Elephant doesn't overexplain Alex and Eric's (Eric Deulen) motives for opening fire on classmates and faculty, or even much exert itself to circumstantiate characters (Van Sant's tactic of introducing each student with a title card is a remarkably efficient way of ensuring there are no nameless victims), has perhaps frustrated viewers, but how much more poignant can you get than scoring–in a sequence that for once shows first-person shooters for what they are: a capitalization on the youthful disregard for human life, not a progenitor of violence–a thrill-kill videogame to Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata"? Van Sant caricatures three superficial girls who turn out to be bulimics in an uncharacteristically insensitive and costly aside (it has the temporary effect of making us root for the killers), but the rest of Elephant is the best picture of his career, a more shocking recovery from his extended detour through the Hollywood wasteland than even Gerry. The picture also has an ending that packs the unnerving wallop of John Frankenheimer's cruel Seconds. Programme: Masters
