2003: Elephant

Do US high schools really look that good? I've never been to one, but if movies are anything to go by - and I do realize there is a selection bias - they make a helluva setting for a film. Gus Van Sant, writer-director of Elephant would probably agree, given the tenderness with which his fictionalization of the Columbine massacres looks at its setting, really taking us inside the school in a manner which is not unlike that in which The Killing of a Chinese Bookie takes us inside a night club. Put more technically, lighting, use of focus, movement of camera and use of music are all excellent.

Regrettably, Van Sant does not care much for his characters - or rather, he didn't even bother to write any characters, giving us undistilled stereotypes instead: the athlete with his pretty-in-a-boring-way girlfriend, the artsy type, the ugly female outsider, yadda yadda. (Van Sant calls them "archetypes", but that doesn't make them any more interesting.) The killers, you'll be intrigued to learn, are outsiders; they like first-person shooters and watch documentaries about the Nazis.

Yeah, the "real artists" among the filmmakers all want to be auteurs, writing their own material. But Elephant makes a strong case that Van Sant should direct other people's scripts. David Ricardo had a point, after all. (6.5)