Elephant
Starring: Nobody except the GW impersonator and star of “That’s My Bush” (come on, don’t you remember that show?), Timothy Bottoms — well not “nobody” but its pointless to list people’s names you wouldn’t know.
Directed: Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting, Psycho [remake], Finding Forrester)
Rating : ★ 1/2
SYNOPSIS
Van Sant attempts an art-house linear minimalist film that follows the brief few moments in several high school students’ lives before they are hunted down (video game style) by disgruntled, gun slinging teens.
The film follows several students along the same timeframe of a generic “everyman” high school — watching how their lives and paths interact. There is no real dialogue or character development just constrictive and ominous snapshots, long pauses, wide sweeps, and random outdoor cloud footage, that build in anticipation of a moment we know is coming.
In his effort to say more by doing less van Sant achieves only the ability to give us an hour and a half of waiting for something we knew was coming anyway. Bloodshed, horrific violence, senseless murder. I’m not one for wishing death on someone, but at the very least the audience should have been given the chance to watch the f***’d up teen get his comeuppance. There is no redemption. No message – which is perhaps the idea — but it does not make for compelling storytelling nor entertainment nor insight nor challenge to the audience.