Columbine, Per se Notum

I was in college when the tragedy of Columbine happened, and I suppose I thought the distance between myself and HS safely cocooned me against living/dying in that kind of horror. I thought to myself as I watched the kids scramble out of windows (and I know this is selfish), "Thank God I'm not there." It didn't occur to me that one day I'd be working in a school, or that I would have children going to school, or indeed that school-my haven-could be my undoing. Filmmaker and auteur Gus van Sant was brave enough to make a film about Columbine. Watching Elephant is like watching the Titanic sink from the safety of the lifeboats.

Elephant won the Palme d' Or in 2003, and is typical of many van Sant films. They have to do with Americanisms, youth, and expectations; couple this with a broad spectrum of misfits and you get the idea that his style is a wee outre. In this film we're in a nameless, gargantuan HS filled with faceless students going to class, talking in the halls, eating in the cafeteria, etc. Now and again we meet and get to know a handful of kids; there is the Jock and His Girlfriend, the Nerd, the Furies, the Artists, and the Get-Along Kid who knows them all. The camera floats behind them in long, long takes as we listen in and watch them as though we are babysitters, or predators. Inconsequential sequences stall in slow motion, only to speed back up to normal. We watch them in a deja vu loop, their stories break continuity again and again as we follow another character only to see the kid we were just watching from the other point of view. Slowly all of the random lines stop appearing as chaos and become rote pattern. The outsiders to this calculation are our murderers; two gangly boys largely ignored save bullying. Of course, the Titanic sinks and what had become comfortingly familiar twists into terror with the first shot.

Gus van Sant is a brilliant but not infallible filmmaker. There is a cold detachment maintained at all times from true engagement with the characters; I didn't cry for them as they died. But I was shocked and appalled. I marveled at the boy's lack of mercy, and how quickly the mundane became monstrous. Thank God I wasn't there, I thought again.