Elephant

Aroview: A smoothly crafted, but troubling depiction of the Columbine High School massacre in which two disaffected teenagers planned and staged the multiple shootings of their fellow school pupils in 1999.

Tracking the movements of various individuals around the bland corridors of an 'Anyschool', this unfolds slowly into the banality, rituals and tensions of the school day in a manner that aims to mesmerise through its neutral repetitions and small observations.

Though its poetry and experimental quality have been admired, the glossy formality of this approach is not always effective, and the climax is curiously muted. Certainly a return to form for the director, one senses the final word on the Columbine tragedy has yet to be written (or filmed). Note: the title is taken from the stylistically similiar, but otherwise unrelated Alan Clarke telemovie from 1989.

Cannes - Palm D’Or 2003

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