Elephant

Wednesday, Dec. 23 at 9:45 PM EDT
Thursday, Dec. 24 at 4:15 AM EDT

2003 | 81 min. | Director: Gus Van Sant | TV-MA-LV
Director Gus Van Sant returned to the low-key style of his early independent efforts with this semi-improvised exploration of how violence makes its way into a typical American high school. Eric (Eric Deulen) and Alex (Alex Frost) are two close friends who are students in a well-to-do suburb of Portland, OR. Eric and Alex are at once ordinary and misfits; while they seem to be confined to the edges of the clique-oriented social strata of high school, little about their behavior draws attention to itself. Or at least not during a typical school day; on their own time, the two boys are fascinated by Nazi iconography, enjoy violent video games, tentatively explore homoerotic desires, and coolly begin to make plans for an armed ambush of the school, drawing up working diagrams of the lunch room during study hall and buying rifles over the Internet. Drawing an expected degree of controversy, Elephant had its world premiere when it was screened in competition at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, where it won both Best Director for Van Sant and the Golden Palm award.

bagachica11

Dear, to who ever made this supid maovie

I watch all 81 mins of this movies and did not understand what was point .... please do not make any more plot less movies .... what was the point of benny 's character he got shot and didn't say nothing......and why no one called the police .... and how did that boy dad know the school was been shoot and cops didn't......and why did he shot his lover in the end that didn't make any since ..... THERE SO MUCH MORE I CAN SAY ABOUT THIS MOVIE ....IT WOULD JUST BE A WASTE .....JUST NEVER SHOW THIS MOVIE AGAIN..PLEASE !!!

kings and birds

Dear, bagachica11

You're precisely right. This film is based off of the theme of having no point. The director purposely did this to show how senseless and pointless acts of violence of this nature (Columbine, etc.) truly are. And I guess that's the "point."

You're totally correct but I think you missed what Gus Van Sant was trying to do.

Emi

Stop hating. This movie is good, That's why it was awarded. There is no way, That this would have won an award if it were bad. It did have a point. Its about how you never know what might happen.