ELEPHANT
(Gus Van Sant / 2003 / 81 mins / cert. 15)
(Fri 19th/Sun 21st - Thurs 25th / various times / £4/3/2)

Winner of the Golden Palm at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, ELEPHANT is named after the story of the blind men who, each touching one part of an elephant, believe it to be a rope, a tree trunk, a fan and so forth. Not one of them can see the whole creature so they have only a little part of the truth to go on, and it is this premise that informs Van Sant's exploration of the phenomenon on high school massacres exemplified by Columbine. He however takes it a step further, implying there may in fact be no elephant at all.

The film follows various students around their school, creating with the ethereal and painfully beautiful cinematography and eerie and dreamlike atmosphere which builds up in tension to the shattering climax. There is no conventional narrative, rather we gather fragments of understanding from snatches of conversation and behaviour. Van Sant is trying through his elusiveness to give the viewer the opportunity to create the meaning of the film herself; he is not attempting to present even an ambiguous interpretation of events but to open a space for others to do so. The non-professional actors capture perfectly the contradictory, joyous yet horrific, nature of adolescence, and the film as a whole provides an intelligent and original addition to the oft-derided high school genre.