Has anyone else seen this film? I watched it yesterday and I have to say, it's kinda fucked me up a bit.

Thoughts?

i thought elephant was good. this is the van sant one, right? if there is another elephant and i am talking about the wrong one, no one is allowed to laugh at me.

it was good. literally creepy. pseudo documentary like. i liked its silence and the extreme inexplicable-ness of the situation and the lack of sensibility and it was clinical really.

i had been expecting something completley different, i felt a little disappointed at first.

van sant is so funny the way he does that 'shithead does good' genre and then makes something like elephant. i like the latter style even though you can only really watch those things once. oh but wait the kc one was bad. but maybe i know too much (generally) about the kc story for that style of film to work on me.

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except i hate you.

I liked it because I was interested in seeing a representation of what happened at Columbine. It wasn't too bad a film. Didn't touch my soul or anything. And in many ways bad, because it gave me the confidence to shell out 10 bucks for the DVD of Last Days, sight unseen. And I thought that was a really shit film.

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Time is the distance that you can't return by miles.

I escaped somehow. Let's go

actualy [sic] I have quite a blessed life if I'm honest. I have many people to love, hate few and have few money problem's [sic].... What more does a person need? Oh yeah and I have some kind of humbleness unlike you of course ^_^ ~ CarefulCarpenter

i think that was the whole point?

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except i hate you.

To be honest whether it's the point of a film or not, that sort of thing is just a throwaway line I use to say "yeah, it was alright, y'know?".

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Time is the distance that you can't return by miles.

I escaped somehow. Let's go

actualy [sic] I have quite a blessed life if I'm honest. I have many people to love, hate few and have few money problem's [sic].... What more does a person need? Oh yeah and I have some kind of humbleness unlike you of course ^_^ ~ CarefulCarpenter

yes yes yes.
I saw it a few years back I believe. I've met very few people who have seen it.
I liked it a lot.

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Diving for pearls.

I want a lolly.

I felt like it was too sensationalist for my tastes at first (what with the Hitler biopic, the first time gay sex in the shower, the buying guns off of the Internet, etc.) but I separated myself from it for a second and felt myself caught in the middle of two extreme viewpoint stuck in themselves and I felt torn by the movie. And then I felt like I was really into the movie because i put that aside and it was plain weird.

When the loner girl got shot in the library I almost screamed "Oh what the fuck!?" and I bawled. I felt so strange because I was thinking about how oddly close to these people I felt. I guess you don't need wild, exciting, or humorous things to happen to someone to form some sort of connection with.

Bizarre movie, sticks with me still.


I never felt fully connected to those people who felt REALLY sorry for the boys who did it in almost every way. I mean, they chose to do it in and of themselves. They chose it, not the video games or TV or Hitler or the guns, it was them who opened fire.
Regardless of that, there's no way to prove that they would've done it regardless of the media now. It's like that guy who did his own little part two of Taxi Driver, the seed was already planted in that guy (so to speak), it wasn't as if by avoiding watching the movie Taxi Driver he wouldn't have attempted to kill someone. If you're influenced by TV, movies, games, etc. to the point that you would kill because of its influence then i think you're weak-minded and shouldn't be allow to get a slap on the wrist.

It's the same with Columbine or VT, it's your particular interests in entertainment and information media that expand onto other horizons in the same sort of vein as that beginning interest. If you didn't like what you saw in a horror movie then you wouldn't watch it. If someone forced you to watch it enough times to be brainwashed to kill someone gruesomely then I probably wouldn't mind letting them go (under treatment). But when you actively seek out media like this then don't complain that it made you do it. You're the one who never flipped the channel when you saw that there was a show on Hitler on TV, and you're the one who bought the violent video games, etc. I mean, it's lame for people to have to come up with reasons for why these people are complete douchebags. There shouldn't be any tip-toeing around it. They did it to themselves. You can always change your subconscious mind, and just because it's harder than going with it doesn't excuse you from mass murder.

BTW, I'm not saying that everyone who likes horror movies are murderers or people who consider committing murder seriously, but there are different ways to enjoy a horror movie and there are people who don't enjoy them at all. There are those few who enjoy them in a way that it gives them something to look forward to re-creating or drawing on inspiration to act upon.

It's too bad we don't have the Elephant thread from 2 years ago. Great discussion.

[/longassinsomniacrant]

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Breathe in, come out

i just dont know how i feel about it.

like the shower scene? can anyone explain that?

i did like how quiet everything was. like the sense of this being surreal was very tangible. and the real time movement is very effective, i mean, the movie literally takes place over what, 15 minutes?

i talk about it the other day with some girl.

I always wondered the point of the shower scene.
It was strange.

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Diving for pearls.

I want a lolly.

I hated hated hated it. The characters were bland and completely void of personality, so I wasn't upset when they were all slaughtered. Not to mention the pretentious music, and slow-motion shots. And to top it all off, what sort of retarded sadist would want to make a movie about the Columbine incident? Van Sant really just has gone to shit. The days of Drugstore Cowboy are so over.

As for the shower scene, I too don't know what he was trying to depict with that......I guess fags are dangerous psychopaths who should not be trusted? Was there even an idication that the Columbine boys were involved in an intimate relationship?

lame

agreed. waste of money, boring as hell.

maybe i should watch it again, but meh

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no no never say maybe to smack bunny baby again.

Yeah that's the thing, it was just a UM, WAIT ... WHAT? moment. I like the slow motion shots, but you're spot on with the characters being void of depth. I mean the kid with the dark hair... Shawn, was it (??) he was on the verge of becoming interesting because you could see he was pretty cuntish, but it doesnt go anywhere. I remember this movie coming out but I dont remember the reaction it got -- i cant imagine it was received with open arms.

I just think it's kind of twisted when people make movies with the specific intent of seeing how intensely they can harm their viewer.

I like certain films of that "genre," like Dancer In The Dark, Battle Royale or Requiem For A Dream. But it seems that usually the movies about specific topics (say, the Holocaust) obsess over specific manifest incidents, and glorify the tragedy of them, instead of focusing on the internal world of someone (Dancer in the Dark) or the society's psychology (Battle Royale, Requiem).

I mean, what are the salient psychological or social details in Elephant? Are there any?

exactally.

i watched it on a date, and thought i'd be super hip and bring this movie (as i'd heard it was really good)... and it was long.. and SUCKED. and it ruined the night.

overrated. crap.
i thought to myself "i'm in high school.. i see/hear about this exact same shit everyday.. and nobody ever needed me to make a 2 hour movie about it"

Wow. The same thing happened to me. I was on a date as well, and he'd rented it, and neither of us knew what it was about. All I can say for it was that we both bonded over how much we hated it. And subsequently had really good sex...

i thought that technically it was really good,the way he linked the scenes, and how he shot the whole thing, to give it a really sort of desensitised (sp?) feel, but at the same time the movie kind of annoyed me.he seemed to be sort of hinting at reasons why the guys did it, like the hitler stuff, but not getting deep enough into it, that was indicative of the movie for me. a lot of style, technical ability and brave subject matter, but ultimately not too much substance

I very much liked Elephant but I'm just a big admirer of Gus Van Sant.

I've felt that with him you either hate his style or you love it. Loads of people don't seem to have the patience to sit through his movies...I feel like they're missing out BIG TIME.

His use of music is also quite extraordinary