Sometimes, we forget it, but a teenmovie is not ever a comedy... The most important is a certain sensibility, a feeling, a touch of truth. In the case of "Elephant" by Gus Van Sant, we've got the three, and it's beautiful !
"Elephant" won the "Palme d'Or" in 2003, it talks about the true story of a gunfire in highschool in Columbine, where two teenagers shot on the others students, and killed theirselve after. A national tragedy where 13 peoples were killed.
The Gus Van sant's film is'nt a police investigation, or a drama soap, no, it's almost a documentary point of view, what would be the last journey of the two murderers ? Their is no suspens, no story, just characters evolving in their environment before this funest day. Van Sant doesn't give us a concret explanation to this act, he put himself like a whitness and try to understand, not the murderers reasons, but all teenagers feelings.
The gunfire scenes are very sober, there is no show or demonstration, it's a form of high violence. In cinema, we use to see spectacular dead, but in this film when a body take a bullet, it simply falls on the ground and that's the most terrible.
It shows us that adolescence stay a big mystery too. Some guys go to reveal their personality, and others go down in a kind of melancholia.... But because life is hard, and anyone is not very ever armed to affront it. It could be a sort of explanation to the murderers act, a supreme refusal to leave their children life... maybe.
Anyway, Gus Van Sant made a very sensitive and poetic movie who immortalize this teenager spleen in american cinema.
Inscription à :
Publier les commentaires (Atom)
A clear analysis of this important, disturbing feature. An obvious choice to include.
RépondreSupprimerCorrections: a shooting in a high school, shot the other students, themselves, 13 people, GVS’s film isn’t, suspense, most fun day?, concrete, puts himself in the role of a witness, murderers’, teenagers’, slow-motion, we are used to seeing spectacular deaths, falls to the ground, the most terrible thing, adolescence remains, no one is ever really armed to confront it, murderers’, to leave their childhood, movie which immortalizes, American.