Time. It’s a concept that we don’t truly understand. Time is fickle. It always seems to drag out when you want it to move faster and speed up when you want to stop and savor moments. Time is always against us. We never have enough time to do everything we want to yet we always have all the time to waste. Elephant directed by Gus Van Sant uses time and the actions taken in a specific period of time, to outline characters in one of the most important, and possibly detrimental times, in our lives, adolescence and high school. Elephant looks at this “time” (quotations for the multiple definitions previous) from many angles, through differet characters lives revolving around a school shooting tragedy; the victims, bystanders, and shooters. This film though is not about mourning or asking why the tragedy took place. Instead it examines the psyche of the high school student, the challenges they are put through, the effect of high school, and how that affects the adolescent mind. Throughout the film we are forced to see glimpses of ourselves during that time in our lives. It’s easy to say, “Oh, well that never happened to me!” and brush it aside. Sure, the tragedy most likely didn’t happen to you, but Elephant is much more than that. It addresses who we all are, who we all were, and who, we all hope, we can be in the future.
"Lose not yourself in a far off time, seize the moment that is thine." -Friedrich Schiller
The high school seems perfectly stereotypical at first glance. You have the popular jock with a beautiful girlfriend, the artsy and awkward photographer, the kid with the awful parents, the girl with her head in the clouds, etc. With a closer look though you see each character with their certain traits, certain characteristics that we as viewers pick up on and relate to. As the film progresses, the different psyches of each character become dimensional and real emotion is conveyed. We all in high school put on masks, the personas that we believed would fit nicely into the jigsaw of the skewed microcosm of society known as high school. The ones who didn’t, or the ones who couldn’t, were outcast, subjected to the torments of those whose masks were strongest and sometimes whose inner turmoil was greatest, needing the ego boost they received from putting other people down seen through the popular girls and guys and how they treat others as well as one another inside their clique.
What is most interesting about this school shooting film is its relationship to the actual shooters. As the film begins and we are first introduced to the shooters, they are portrayed as any other student, nearly invisible in the film paralleling their invisibility in their high school. As the film progresses, however, we start to see more deeply into their lives and try to better understand the motives and operations that lead to the shooting. Van Sant touches on a few key themes of media and ease of accessibility of guns. Eric, one of the shooters, plays video games that sole purpose is to shoot and kill one virtual man after another while Alex looks at guns online. They also both watch a documentary on Hitler, mesmerized, almost studying, his rise to power. As they watch the documentary, a delivery truck pulls up and brings with it one of the guns used in the massacre. It was as easy as placing an order online with a fake name and a credit card for these boys to receive all that was necessary to bring revenge to their school. The shooters, even though developed as deeper characters (one loving piano, while the other always having witty retorts) are portrayed a vengeful and bloodthirsty. One of the most shocking lines that parallels the actual Columbine school shooting was when Eric goes over the massacre plan with Alex. “Most importantly, Have fun!” was his final line before they suited up for the massacre. These boys had been pushed so far by the other students it had drove their adolescent minds to unthinkable acts of violence directed at all peers, not singling out their previous attackers. Van Sant comments on the instability of adolescents and the effect the twisted society of high school can affect their minds.
The Columbine High School Memorial
Van Sant uses many non-professional actors in Elephant to the best effect. Each character, even though outwardly stereotypical becomes much more dimensional with each actor’s portrayal. Much of the film is based on character interactions and the high school mentality. Each character is pushed from outside forces, whether bullies (Eric and the spit wads tossed at him), family hardships (John and his drunken father), or societal restrictions (the GSA and their discussion), and each character is seen dealing with those problems in the context of the few minutes before the shooting. Van Sant shows that each has their own hardships, even the popular girl and her believed pregnancy, and each have their own way of dealing with it. The film suggests that at such a fragile time in a developing mind, the pressure that cooks students in high school seems to be counter productive in creation of well-adjusted successful adults.
Van Sant and Elephant outline many political and social factors on the institution of high school and the affect it has on adolescents. Much of the time spent for a majority of student’s deals not with academia but with the pressures of social and societal life. At that time we all try to find out who we are. Elephant though comments on the inaction we as a society have taken to look at the physiological torture some students are put through on a daily basis as a result of others in high school. I hope that any readers can take from this blog not only the analysis of this film but a larger lesson that we all need to learn and teach, as best as we can, to the next generation of the golden rule: treat others the way you want to be treated. Only through universal respect can we truly succeed as a society.
All images used are licenced free of charge from Creative Commons. Thank you to Flikr users David Friedel and Katerha for thier images. The users do not, however, endorse any opinions in the blog.
