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Alex Frost, Eric Deulen, John Robinson (IX), Elias McConnell, Jordan Taylor ... see more see more... , Carrie Finklea , Nicole George , Brittany Mountain , Alicia Miles , Kristen Hicks , Bennie Dixon , Nathan Tyson , Timothy Bottoms , Matt Malloy , Ellis Williams

Director Gus Van Sant returned to the low-key style of his early independent efforts with this semi-improvised exploration of how violence makes its way into a typical American high school. Eric (Eric... read more read more... Deulen) and Alex (Alex Frost) are two close friends who are students in a well-to-do suburb of Portland, OR. Eric and Alex are at once ordinary and misfits; while they seem to be confined to the edges of the clique-oriented social strata of high school, little about their behavior draws attention to itself. Or at least not during a typical school day; on their own time, the two boys are fascinated by Nazi iconography, enjoy violent video games, tentatively explore homoerotic desires, and coolly begin to make plans for an armed ambush of the school, drawing up working diagrams of the lunch room during study hall and buying rifles over the Internet. Drawing an expected degree of controversy, Elephant had its world premiere when it was screened in competition at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, where it won both Best Director for Van Sant and the Golden Palm award. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

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R, 1 hr. 21 min.

Directed by: Gus Van Sant

Release Date: November 7, 2003

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DVD Release Date: May 4, 2004

Stats: 4,556 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (4,556)

  • fb573414556
    April 29, 2012
    fb573414556
    At the time of writing this review it's been a little over twenty-four (24) hours since I watched 'Elephant', a Columbine inspired film which had me so mesmerised I feel as if it is still with me at this very moment.

    I don't really know how to describe it, nothing happens, yet e... read moreverything happens, nothing is stated but everything is there. The film itself moves at a slow pace, although only around 78 minutes Gus Can Sant (the director) really takes his time to establish a conventional high school day, showing it from a multitude of perspectives, each of which comes together as the story comes to it's shocking, bloody climax.

    For me the film was outstanding, it really encaptured highschool life and I was completely engaged by the whole thing. The foreshadowing within the film is one of the main narrative devices but is used in such a way that you never truely experience tension, you know exactly what's going to happen but by the point it happens you are just there as it happens, there is no hope, there is no good to be done, there is no saving anyone, there is only the moment, and as a viewer you are unable to escape, unable to look away, and that's an unbelievable feeling.
  • fb100000257973100
    March 10, 2012
    fb100000257973100
    This is one of those films I found not by looking at 'great art films', but by looking up two things that interest me: films that won the Golden Palm d'Or for best film, and the Columbine massacre. While the first one is understandable towards film buffs and geeks alike, the latt... read moreer interest will puzzle some. Sense my days of middle school when I was first exposed to the documentary 'Bowling For Columbine', something about the incident involving two mentally disturbed teens that had it with being tormented, tortured, and humiliated by their peers and teachers killing and wounding masses have intrigued me to the point that I studied the entire incident to an excessive amount. One thing I was looking up were films that deal with school shootings. What I came to was this film by Gus Van Sant that won the Palm d'or; the same award won by Pulp Fiction and, as of recent, Tree Of Life.
    The first time I saw this film, I was in awe with how Van Sant directed this film, how he uses the Steadicam (something Stanley Kubrick perfected with his films) to create the tension and isolation of each character. This film is one that has no real plot, mostly improvised dialogue, and all in the sake of making you feel like you are in high school. This works because it does make you feel like you are alone, walking down deserted hallways, and from the reactions of many who saw this film, I am not alone. Yeah, at times this does get irritating to the point you want to shoot something. But if you relax and let this film take place, what you get is one of the most surreal, tension-building films that is beyond low key.
    As I have stated above, most of this film is improvised and this is improvising at it's finest. This film was directed in a way that it mirrors Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon in the sense that this film is shown through the eyes of numerous, unrelated people as we see how or why this violence is even happening. The end result is simple: no one cared no had any idea of the two main killers. They were either hated on, despised, or completely ignored by society in a way that would drive anyone mad. And these young actors, many them having this be their first film they have worked on, do a wonderful job in terms of making this film seem real. With the way this film is shot and how all the dialogue was made on the spot, it does create a raw, authentic, documentary feel that makes this movie even more tragic to watch.
    To sum up this film in terms of it's tension this film nails it. From the start you know that a complete massacre will happen at any time, but with about seventy minutes of continuous dialogue, silence, and character building, this movie is one for the patient, intelligent, and clear minded watcher. To watch this film would require you to think openly and be ready to absorb an average day inwhich all hell breaks wide open.
  • paulkoh110
    December 29, 2011
    paulkoh110
    Its an art house film based on Columbine, plain and simple. The whole film is built on simplicity until the end but theres also a deeper meaning behind each person and their place in the social ladder. I personally loved it but others can find this slow and pointless. Its Van San... read moret going full Euro!
  • FrizzDrop
    October 28, 2011
    FrizzDrop
    The second in Gus Van Sant's death trilogy, Elephant is a strangely muted visage of the events at Columbine High School, the infamous school shooting that shook the foundations of the American educational system. In our nation the events of Columbine were especially traumatic, be... read morecause it hit you in the one place that was safe, the one place that meant servitude and rapt attention, but never the sacrifice of our children's safety. In the blink of an eye school shootings became common incidences in America, which is why Van Sant probably decided to take this subject matter on with the detail that he did. Van Sant builds us s a world out of this school, involving us in the lives of several subsets of socially awkward groups, and the people who usually live out glory in the similar halls. What really worked with this film, is that we feel for the people who are being shot, but only because they are real, they are the kids who passed me in the halls of my former high school, untouched by adulthood. All the teenage actors were either amateurs or unprofessionals; if you hadn't known that up front they would seem either amazingly thoughtful of their roles, or were simply inept. Each of them is a blithe persona, with little to no character development or conflict in their personal life. Sure, Michelle doesn't like her body, John's father is an alcoholic, and Acadia panics when danger presents itself, but other than these tacked on attributes, there's very little to care about in these characters. It's not until their fates are chosen for them by the school shooters do we really care about them as human being, and that's only because the shooters are so blase about the entire thing. Though their development makes me angry too, there is this haunting scene where one shooter plays a beautiful piece on the piano, then looks over orders to buy these grisly guns for their planned attack. It was such a comparison, that it was shockingly striking. The ending was anticlimactic, and the acting in it was badly directed, and came off as stale. It's an interesting and subversive film, not well put together, but flowed like a vignette in a poetry tableau.
  • blkbomb
    October 14, 2011
    blkbomb
    Alex: Eeney... Meeney... Meiny... Moe... Catch a... Tiger... By its... Toe... 

    "An ordinary high school day. Except that its not."

    First off, what makes a movie like this good is the complete opposite of most of the movies we watch. Most movies are good of they entertain us and... read more we are able to have fun and laugh during them. In order for Elephant to be a success, it had to be the complete opposite from that. It had to disturb the viewer and leave them feeling less than optimistic. Gus Van Sant definitely succeeded with that. He made a movie that couldn't have been easy or in anyway fun to make because it so damn risky. If anything is done wrong, the film could come off as just an exploitation of situations like Columbine. This doesn't come off like that at all.

    Elephant follows a lot of students through their normal everyday lives at their high school. By a lot, I mean a lot. The first hour jumps between students. We follow them through the hallways, to the cafeteria, into the bathroom, into classrooms, into the library and it all makes the viewer feel like they are in a maze. The film isn't linear either, in fact it shows the same tiny events from different people's perspective throughout the movie. As the student body makes their way through a normal day of classes and socializing, two students stay home getting ready to take the school by storm.

    Another thing that is important before going into Elephant is to know that it is very artsy. If you don't like movies like that, this will probably be no different. The first hour is an exploration in the tediousness of our everyday life. Van Sant is creating the sense of the average, boring lives we all live on a day to day basis. We walk, we talk, we eat, in the grand scheme of things, nothing much happens. We always hear from people who were near tragedies that it was like any other day. That's basically what Van Sant is saying with the first hour of the movie. He doesn't take any liberties with his approach in order to entertain an audience that can't appreciate his indie style. 

    Van Sant is great at creating these realistic, set in high school movies. They are so realistic, that a lot of people won't like them. The actors aren't really acting, but conversing as regular people do in the real world. It's the exact same approach he had with Paranoid Park, which was another great artsy independent film. People will be easily bored by the film as we spend minutes just following a character from a soccer field, all the way across some school land, through one door where he takes three or four turns in the hallways and finally arrives at his destination 5 minutes later. 

    The film has an unsettling tone right from the beginning, before anything happens. If you walked into the movie as it was starting with no knowledge of the plot; after 10 minutes you would know something crazy was going to happen. The quiet score throughout the whole movie really helps in achieving this tone. You kind of become hypnotized by everything that's going on, or at least I did, and you end up watching the movie without moving or blinking. At the end of this film, I sat through all the credits and still probably sat there five minutes afterwards. I never do that; I think that may be the first time I've sat through an entire thing of credits. 

    Another reason many people wouldn't like this is because it ends so abruptly. Van Sant offers no clear motivation by the shooters and no conclusion to how things turned out. This is frustrating for some, but I like it because we don't know why people do this sort of thing. We can come up with all the excuses we want and Van Sant puts some of them in the film, not so much to blame them, but to show why many people think these events occur. These excuses include video games and bullies. These are the same things that many people blame Columbine on, but many don't know that Eric(one of the shooters at Columbine) was a pretty popular kid, who was good with girls and was in no way an outcast. The other one was a little less social, but still in no way an outcast. If you haven't read Columbine by Dave Cullen, I highly recommend it. It will change your whole thought process about Columbine.

    Gus Van Sant really does deserve some respect for his accomplishments with Elephant. He made a powerful and sad movie about school shootings without adding any unrealistic melodrama or in anyway exploiting school shootings. He didn't make this movie to make a lot of money and that is quite obvious. 
  • fb100002359227440
    June 25, 2011
    fb100002359227440
    A interesting film, with good story. Van Sant's made a great work, showing the differents point of viewers by your characters. Elephant, brings a unconventional narration and chilling moments. But, the matter on this movie is have an monotonous screenplay. What made, a disappoint... read moreed for me. It's why i, have an great expectation about Van Sant's film. If, Elephant won the Palme d'or in Cannes Film Festival in 2003, this year was not a good year for the Festival. I understand the director: show the ordinary day of everybody, without shocking lines or scenes, and what change after a tragedy, just like presents Elephant, the problem is: one thing is see this life and another is lived. Gus Van Sant, need better yours screenplay. Looks like, that a good film made by him, just is good if a different scriptwriter made. Still, Elephant are an unforgettable motion picture with great performances. Fresh.
  • blacksheepboy
    January 29, 2011
    blacksheepboy
    With a flawless direction and long elegant sequence shots, this film moves in a perfect pace, slow and careful, following and observing the characters prior to an impending tragedy. I only wish I had felt more involved with them, and the amateur actors should have evoked a more a... read moreuthentic sense of terror.
  • LoughnerWasLucid
    May 23, 2010
    LoughnerWasLucid
    oh man this is the most interesting you can get without having a script Gus got lucky.
  • ythelastman89
    March 18, 2010
    ythelastman89
    Probably the most famous entry in the Death Trilogy, Elephant is probably on of the most relevant films of the decade. It is a perfect criticism of high school from multiple aspects. It shows the daily life of everyone you could possibly encounter in high school, thrown together ... read morewith an all too realistic culmination of events. There were some great performances from Alex Frost and John Robinson, perfect choices for leading characters. The video style filming is probably the most effective here because it feels like you're watching something like Columbine take place. On another note, I think it's kind've the American Graffiti of its time. Honestly it's the only true hangout movie that has really come out to represent this new generation. It makes since that this is more of a dark approach because it reflects the apathetic and jaded attitude we tend to have.
  • DrBenway
    December 23, 2009
    DrBenway
    Elephant is not a film for everyone. It is slow moving, occasionally awkward, and unsettling. The structure of Elephant is one of the things that make this effort intriguing to watch. In a Rashomon like style, you follow each of the "characters" during the course of the day that... read more will change their world. A gliding steadicam follows students in uninterrupted shots between class with a false sense of security as they carry on with day to day activities. The film is bare bones in its simplicity. There is no real plot, it is just an ordinary day at school, until it's not.

    Van Sant makes no attempts to lay the blame of the impending tragedy onto anyone, or anything, in particular. He does point to certain factors that could have led to the horrifying conclusion leaving the viewer with their own opinions and could offer plenty to talk about with others.

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Critic Reviews

Bill Muller
January 22, 2004
Bill Muller, Arizona Republic

A living, breathing work that's distinctively different from the regular hyper-reality of Hollywood films.

Roger Moore
December 19, 2003
Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel

Van Sant, whose films often connect, sensitively, with the thinking of young people, has made a film that says things are wrong with kids today. We're missing the obvious. Full Review

Joe Baltake
December 12, 2003
Joe Baltake, Sacramento Bee

Too specialized an item to be flat-out declared the best film of the year, but from where I sit, it is inarguably the finest cinematic achievement of 2003 so far. Full Review

Carrie Rickey
November 20, 2003
Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer

Elephant is the film equivalent of Maya Lin's Vietnam monument, that collective gravestone to the fallen, in the way it employs abstract means to quantify the loss of life and elicit a profound sense ...

Wesley Morris
November 14, 2003
Wesley Morris, Boston Globe

An 86-minute cosmic provocation to rethink how we talk about the unspeakable, the scapegoats we look for, the effigies we burn. Full Review

Eric Harrison
November 13, 2003
Eric Harrison, Houston Chronicle

We ask: Who are these people? Which ones are troubled enough to bring guns to school? What are their lives like? What made them this way? Full Review

Peter Howell
November 7, 2003
Peter Howell, Toronto Star

The film is understatement at its most powerful. Full Review

Ruthe Stein
November 7, 2003
Ruthe Stein, San Francisco Chronicle

A spellbinding piece of filmmaking. Full Review

Rick Groen
November 7, 2003
Rick Groen, Globe and Mail

The most fluid of films, it glides through its 81 minutes with a mesmerizing ease, skating on smooth tracking shots down the corridors of an American high school and into the heart of an American mala... Full Review

Tom Long
November 7, 2003
Tom Long, Detroit News

As movies go, it's wholly predictable, occasionally and intentionally dull, and apparently quite lazy.

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