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First let me say this, if you only take one thing away from this film it's that the cinematographer was brilliant. Harris Savidis has an amazing talent of bringing beauty to a mundane action or setting. His talent is used to a very large extent here. This film shows a shooting in a high school from many different perspectives.
This is a very slow moving film and it really is just one long wait. We sit and wait as the…
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My God, what can I say? To tell the truth, I don't know. I usually wait a few hours after watching a movie to start even the briefest of reviews, but it's been five minutes, and I have to talk about it. I can't get that final 20 minutes out of my mind. I'm not quite sure I ever will.
Let me start by saying this movie has the most sudden and shocking genre change-up since Hitchcock's Psycho. The film…
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I never much cared for Gus Van Sant as a director as his style is frankly uninteresting. However, Elephant seems to be that one time he got it right and the one time the story of the film is in harmony with his slow, cold approach. Long, drawn out shots, natural dialogue and everyday scenarios give the movie an eerily realistic atmosphere as we follow a group of High School kids on their daily routine on what looked to be…
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Probably the worst movie ever made. No conflict. It was boring. Worse than boring. It was like torture. I felt like I deserved a medal for bravery when it was finally over. What was the running time...253 minutes? Felt like it. Can I rate it lower than half a star? How about negative stars?
I'd rather watch continental drift in real-time.
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I followed my viewing of Last Days immediately with this film, in an attempt to give Gus van Sant one last try. I hadn't liked the previous two films of his I had seen (Last Days was ok) so after this next film I was ready to write him off.
The first long tracking shot he employed to follow a young teen through the halls of his high school I felt that the film was going in a very flashy…
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Elephant is a true minimalistic film. The day starts out just as any other school day would. No one expects the shooting to happen. Every moment, Van Sant makes you feel like you're in school. Even though it's relatively short, it does take a while to pick up speed (just like school does).
Van Sant has a great color palette here and really uses the camera to his advantage. All of the great tracking shots adds a sense of unity…
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"So foul and fair a day I have not seen. " - Alex
Elephant is a damn near impossible film to review. I can't quite collect my thoughts on it. So, I'll keep it brief...
Never before has such a movie been so intimate, horrifying, disturbing, dream-like, powerful, shocking, violent, interesting, attention-grabbing and human. This is near perfect. Every shot is designed with extreme precision and purpose, and every shot hits home. The scene where a shooter plays Für Elise…
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A film that uses its recursive movement as cheap suspense, constantly putting off its carnage at the moment of truth so that the first shot is a release as much as anything. It does not present any one explanation for the massacre, but its open-handed "you choose" inconclusiveness still only presents the usual suspects—bullying, video games, fascism, even sexual confusion and self-discovery—as motives. It is not Van Sant's fault for springboarding off of a media portrait accepted as thoroughly researched despite its reductive fabrication, but when he merely rearranges those elements into something less polemic, has he done any more to communicate what went wrong?
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Plot: ''Several ordinary high school students go through their daily routine as two others prepare for something more malevolent. The film chronicles the events surrounding a school shooting.''
A very subtle, yet powerful masterpiece from writer/director Gus Van Sant. His execution is incredible. Winner of the Golden Palm at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, and also Best Director for Van Sant.
I highly recommend reading Roger Ebert's review for this one, so here:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20031107/REVIEWS/311070301
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There are shots in this film that go on for literally five or so minutes, where nothing happens. Sometimes people talk - about nothing. It's often their only scene. Plotlines begin at end at points unrelated to their dramatic arc, events are treated with the same complete lack of force, be they tragic or menial, and I don't want to go to public places ever again.
But like, in a good way.
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Una mañana en la vida de una escuela de EEUU donde habrá masacre, jajajajajaja. Bastante rescatables las tomas larguísimas sin cortes, pero pues así como must, must, pues no. De Van Sant hay cosas mucho mejores pa mí.