Elephant

Starring: Alex Frost, Eric Deulen Director: Gus Van Sant Original UK Premiere: 2004 Dvd Release: 26th July, 2004 Number Of Discs: 1 Format: PAL, Region 2 Encoding

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Elephant is a film by director Gus Van Sant, an account of a school shooting in fictional Watt High School, in Portland, Oregon. Van Sant was awarded Best Director & also the Palme dOr prize at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival for this film. The title is a tribute to the Alan Clarke, 1989 film for BBC, also called Elephant, which reflected on sectarian violence in Northern Ireland. Van Sant similarly portrays school violence as something unfathomable, not unlike many other disturbing things in the lives of teenagers, which invite convenient explanations but ultimately frustrate analysis. Van Sant has explained the elephant idea in several ways, besides the direct reference to Clarkes earlier work. It is an allusion to the proverbial elephant in the living room, a large problem that no one talks about but everyone must find their way around as they go about their daily lives.

Elephant, the elegant & unsettling movie from Gus Van Sant , depicts students at a high school before & during a harrowing, Columbine-style shooting. The movie follows one young boy who takes over the wheel from his drunken dad while returning from lunch, then loops back in time & follows another student who crosses paths with the first, then loops back & follows another, all captured in long, unedited tracking shots that are serene & unhurried, even when two boys in camouflage gear, carrying heavy bags, arrive at the school & begin shooting. Elephant doesnt attempt to explain their behaviour; it simply places the audience back in the brief yet interminable window of adolescence, when life is trivial & painfully important at the same time. Your reaction to Elephant will depend as much on your life experiences as anything in the movie itself.

Gus Van Sant Jr. is an American film director, photographer, musician & author. He has appeared in a cameo on screen in Kevin Smiths Jay & Silent Bob Strike Back & began as a commercial director in the Pacific Northwest. Van Sant was nominated for a Best Director Academy Award in 1998 for Good Will Hunting & won Best Director & Palme dOr at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival for his film Elephant. He has written the screenplays for most of his early movies as well as a novel Pink ISBN 0385493533. A book of his photography has also been published called 108 Portraits ISBN 0944092225. Some of the movies he has written & / or directed include an adaptation of Tom Robbins novel Even Cowgirls get the Blues, which featured a truly one-of-a-kind cast & My Own Private Idaho, also starring Keanu Reeves as well as the late River Phoenix. He has released two CDs entitled Gus van Sant & 18 Songs About Golf. He currently lives in Portland, Oregon. Posters Of Gerry

Editors Choice: Elephant, Gerry, Good Will Hunting, Finding Forrester, Psycho, To Die For, Drugstore Cowboy, View DVDology

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