A day in the life of a group of average high schoolers. However today will be no ordinary day as something horrific occurs at the school, affecting all their lives.

Great drama by Gus Van Sant. Chillingly and harrowingly shows the terror and stark reality of high school shootings from victims' perspectives. Very gritty and plausible.

Very topical too. The Columbine shooting was only 3-4 years earlier and since then there have been numerous school shootings in the USA. Quite chilling in that it could easily depict one of those shootings.

Gus VanSant's ELEPHANT isn't an unquestionable masterpiece, but it's close. I found it to be hypnotic and gripping, and in spite of knowing how things would end, I still found the ending to be devastating.

The lone flaw I can identify is originality - this film owes a tremendous debt to certain international directors (Bela Tarr and an earlier Irish ELEPHANT, along with current maverick directors like Abbas Kiarostami, Hirokazu Kore'eda and Tsai Ming-liang) in both look and perspective, and it's not the only recent American film to make effective use of poetic imagery: FAR FROM HEAVEN, LOST IN TRANSLATION, CHARLOTTE SOMETIMES, RAISING VICTOR VARGAS all took a similar approach to their subject matter, and were all just as effective.

But VanSant's style has matured - the sky scenes in ELEPHANT seem to quote DRUGSTORE COWBOY, and in both films they symbolize the passage of time, the general drift of life, and in opening with such a scene, VanSant is offering a subtle warning that ELEPHANT is poetic and interpretive, not a docudrama or realistic take on high school shootings, and shouldn't be taken as such. Characters drift through the day, knowing each other at mostly superficial levels (not moving beyond the level of stereotypes),which feels like what I remember high school to often be, and VanSant has no interest or need to move beyond that - to 'read into' these characters, or have them make grand speeches and gestures would've only made this film preposterous.

ELEPHANT isn't about the media (which is ubiquitous),homosexuality (a random genetic occurrence found in any setting),bullies (which exist everywhere as well, though for psychological or sociological reasons) or any variety of high school caste system - it's about the randomness of violence, and the first two thirds of this film - in both the gliding long shots following characters (and the audio, with conversations drifting in and out),and the fragmented timeline (shifting back and forth in time as it moves from one character to another) - is a startling portrayal of the random, anonymous nature of an average day at school. It could be noted that the school is just a location of convenience in VanSant's hands; this film (or the incidents depicted in it) could be set anywhere, which is partly the point. In much of the world, random, senseless violence is always a possibility, which is really what this film observes and (in the horror of the depiction) protests, and it's just as much of a tragedy when it occurs in a generic, random, average setting (like this school and the people in it),as when it occurs in a dramatic, unusual setting that creates martyrs and heroes.

A very challenging film, in the best of ways. For quite a while, we've seen a number of films attempt to explore similar themes (most interestingly, many of Stanley Kubrick's films),often going for the opposite approach - startling an audience with intensity and violence: the heavy-handed brutality of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (the most brilliant example of shock tactics used effectively, though lacking the subtlety that makes other Kubrick films stronger),or Larry Clark's far more exploitative and dull KIDS (a genuinely sloppy and anticlimactic film which seems to exist mainly to give a sheltered audience a few 'shocking' cheap thrills to get off on, offering few insights that hadn't already been offered elsewhere). ELEPHANT stuns primarily by taking the opposite route - languid and poetic - which ultimately makes it all the more powerful.

It's a regular high school in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon. Elias is an artistic photographer. John seems happy except for his drunk dad. Nathan and Carrie are the hot couple. Acadia is a gay activist. Michelle is an awkward nerd. Brittany, Jordan and Nicole are chatty girls. It's a normal day until Eric and Alex show up armed for mayhem. They're outsiders struggling with bullying. They play first person shooter games, watch Hitler on TV, buy guns off the internet and are possibly gay.

Gus Van Sant has obviously taken inspiration from the Columbine massacre. He has a cast of young amateur newbies to play the kids. The only recognizable face is Matt Malloy who plays the principal Mr. Luce. I like the regular kids approach. I even like the the hypnotic minimalist style. I always love approaching the same event from different points of view. It's a bit slow but it's kind of interesting. My biggest problem is the portrait of the killers. This is fictional but the killers have to feel real. This is such an important part of the movie. I rather Eric & Alex be an enigma than ending up feeling false in any way. Gus Van Sant should have left their backstory out of the movie. The movie needs to shed an insightful light on the killers or else it should leave them as mysteries. There are some docudramas based on true events that are more compelling.