A human bond to Elephant

Gus Van Sant’s Elephant is, understandably, a polarizing film not specifically for its content, but largely due to its production. The production, for me, is what garnered my sense of interactivity – this film inserts you, unapologetically, into the monotonous grind that is a suburban high school day.  Immediately, I noticed the production quality of the film; its tracking shots and long takes of the student you are paired with for that segment mirrors a home video quality in which you interact without the glossy editing or the powerful score playing out in the background.  Elephant barely offers the expected production quality of modern day films which struck me instantly and gave me the ‘fly on the wall’ feeling while viewing the movie – there is no safe guard between me and the film, a wall has not been built to separate me from the beautiful movie stars and high production value – I am a student at this Oregon high school with these nonprofessional actors (most of whom didn’t even change their name for the film).  Bassett argues in “’Just because’ stories: on Elephant” that the interactivity of the film is presented in cultural format, a medium of everyday life which is similar to the trend of reality television – one that offers identification and involvement (168-9).

The identification and involvement do not come simply or directly though a strong character development in the film which attaches the viewer to a character(s), but rather (especially in my case) from the connectedness of humanity and the ability a person has to realize the greater picture at hand.  Yes, Van Sant does not offer much more than a character’s name and that particular, surface perspective for segments of the film; however, it is the known impending horror that will befall these students that binds you with them regardless of having a connection to them based on an expected, complex character development.  The shifting perspectives, repetition and loops which Van Sant utilizes, fuel the interactivity we have with the students whose fate we are privy to.  We play the waiting game with them, yet we have the gift of foretelling the future.  As Bassett states, “It is clear from the start that these lives are at risk, that these intertwined lives are about to be ripped apart, and some of them ripped to pieces.  Since the audience knows that some of these characters will not come through, the repeated trajectories, and insistent returns to the same points of intersection begin to take on a certain cruelty” (181).

My voyeuristic experience with Elephant left me certain that this film was interactive but not in the standard fashion.  We know the outcome and are given different pathways to view the event, yet the answer is not clear cut and instead of offering a few different conclusions (like Memento), only bigger questions emerge from the smoke.  Van Sant inserts his viewers in the corridors and cafeteria and promotes a human connectedness we all seem to find in large-scale tragedies.  Everyone wants to feel connected somehow in the wake of close to home terror, and as Bassett explains, “Elephant at least engages with that desire for ‘real’ connection that is seen in…disasters…where each of us reaches for our link to the tale, to make it our tale” (185).  This interconnectedness people seem to project during tragedy is a driving force in the interactivity of Van Sant’s Elephant.

3 comments October 2, 2011