Elephant.
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Gus van Sant knows how to make unique and wonderful films and it appears that, at long last, he's gotten back to doing so. His most recent film, Elephant, won the prestigious Palm d'Or at last year's Cannes Film Festival and opened in the US a couple of months back to mostly glowing reviews. Elephant deserves all the praise it's been getting and perhaps then some; it tackles tough and topical issues (kids and violence, school shootings) without even once seeming forced, trite, or cumbersome. By not preaching, the film succeeds. By showing rather than telling, it becomes an absolutely necessary thing to view.
Shot on location in Portland Oregon, Elephant relies almost entirely on non-actors to tell its haunting, hypnotic tale. We follow the camera as it moves us in, out, and around a day in the life of several high school students, making extensive (and incredible) use of long takes as we wander around the school and its campus. The term "fly on the wall" has rarely felt so cinematically appropriate. We follow John as he moves through the halls, trying not to care that his dad is an alcoholic who can't even be counted on to drive him to school; Elias, a shy kid obsessed with taking pictures; we follow Michelle, a quite nerd who works in the library, and the almost annoyingly attractive couple, Nathan and Carrie. We are dropped into this world, one that - at least to some extent - most of us are familiar with from some point in our lives. I haven't been in high school in eight years now, but Elephant brought it all back quite quickly.
Some critics of this work of art have attacked its lack of structure or character development, which strikes me as rather beside the point here. There is no real "story" being told in Elephant, at least not in any kind of conventional sense, so how can it be faulted for not meeting conventional plot expectations like character development? Is it surprising to realize that just hours before the killings begin, one of the two shooters is playing "Fur Elise" in its entirety while his friend plays video games? Can a killer not also be a man who is a skilled pianist? Is Beethoven, then, to blame for the murders? The intent of Elephant is not to tell you exactly why all of this is happening, but rather just to notice that it is, and by doing so, hopefully shedding some much needed light on the issue. Not the kind of light that comes from the media and its culture of fear, but instead a much more honest, reflective, and realistic light that illuminates while it also questions.
There is really no one way to explain school shootings, no once "cause" or "reason" why Columbine happened or why it will likely happen again. As you've probably noticed, though, that hasn't kept people from pointing fingers and placing blame. This is a natural response to great tragedy: people want (need) to place blame, it offers a vague feeling of comfort and control over chaos, allows the accuser to feel that this could have been stopped (and thus can be stopped the next time) "if only". Elephant is particularly brilliant because it eschews finger pointing and false politics in favor of meditating on the problem itself, considering it not as a result of any one thing (Marilyn Manson, violent movies, video games, modern American culture) but rather as a conflux of many things. There are no simple answers to this problem and the film offers none - it merely suggests we take a good long look at what really is happening in American high schools, in the lives of our teenagers. Elephant hints, notices, observes. It is a film that demands you engage with it, simultaneously refusing to let you take the easy, finger-pointing way out.