Elephant



Elephant is a Gus Van Sant film made in 2003 which tells the story of a high school shooting similar to the Columbine High School massacre. It constructs the story of a single day from the viewpoint of different high school students, including the two shooters themselves. While many possible explanations are offered for the actions of the shooters (violent video games, neo-Nazism, bullying etc.) the film deliberately does not make their motives clear.

Gus Van Sant based Elephant on a short film made by Alan Clarke of the same name that was broadcast on the BBC in 1989. Clarke's film dealt with The Troubles in Northern Ireland and was largely composed of tracking shots following gunmen as they assassinate targets. The title refers both to the old Jain parable of a group of blind men who each touch a different part of an elephant and then disagree on what they are feeling, and the idea of the Elephant in the Living Room (in this case the elephant being Columbine and the true reasons for it).

The film is noted for use of long tracking shots, and extended sequences with little or no dialogue, giving it a disconnected and ethereal quality.

This is the second film in Van Sant's Death Trilogy. The first was Gerry.


 * Alcoholic Parent: John's father.
 * Book Ends: The film begins and ends with a shot of clouds in the sky.
 * Bloodless Carnage: Averted.
 * Developing Doomed Characters: Justified and deliberate; the entire premise of the film is relating to the characters before their abrupt demise.
 * Downer Ending: As the film is based on the Columbine Massacre, this is a Foregone Conclusion.
 * First-Person Shooter: The shooters are seen playing one of these.
 * Girl Posse: Brittany, Jordan and Nicole.
 * Idiot Ball: The delivery man had to have been aware he was delivering an automatic rifle, and he left it in the hands of two teenage boys.
 * Leitmotif: Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.
 * Kill'Em All:
 * No Ending:
 * Pac-Man Fever: The video games portrayed in the film seem to fit this trope.
 * Ripped from the Headlines
 * Teens Are Monsters: Played straight with the bullying of Alex, and the actual shootings, but also shown to be inaccurate regarding the majority of students, the purpose of Elephant being to try to go deeper than cliches.
 * The Oner
 * The Stoic: The camera follows calm, muscular Benny as he helps Acadia and goes looking for the shooters, setting up viewer expectations that he can thwart them