'Elephant': New film from Gus Van Sant explores school violence

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. — There is a chance that you might walk out of director Gus Van Sant's controversial new movie "Elephant" and demand your money back.

You probably won't get it, but the Portland-based filmmaker will get his money's worth if you spend a little time thinking about his movie after you leave the theater.

It will be difficult not to think about "Elephant," a disturbing drama inspired by the April 20, 1999, shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., when two armed students walked into the school and murdered a dozen fellow students and a teacher before turning their weapons on themselves.

The movie — which opens in Seattle this Friday — won the Palme d'Or and the top director's prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival. It was financed by HBO (it will be shown on the pay-TV channel at a future date) and executive-produced by Diane Keaton and her producing partner Bill Robinson. The title was inspired by the fable about blind men trying to examine an elephant and, Van Sant has said, evolved to mean the proverbial elephant sitting in the middle of the room — a problem so huge it's easier to ignore than confront.

Van Sant originally wanted to re-enact the incident at Columbine, but couldn't get the project funded.

"If you'll remember," Robinson explained, "in all that talk after Columbine about school violence, part of the blame was put on the media. ... People in Hollywood were backing off of anything that showed a kid and a gun in movies."

So Van Sant tiptoed around the Columbine connection to secure funding. "This is a movie about high-school violence," the director has said. "It is not a movie about Columbine."

But it really is a movie about Columbine.

Van Sant sets his drama in a faceless American high school (in Oregon) where unsuspecting students are going about their day unaware that their lives are about to be altered forever by two of their own, carrying weapons and explosives in duffel bags.

The director used mostly amateur actors (Portland high-school students) to play the roles of the students, and there was no formal script. Most of the dialogue was improvised by the teen actors. Although it runs only 81 minutes, the film takes its time in setting the stage for the tragedy, moving back and forth in time to show the same moments from different perspectives.

What the movie does not include are pat answers to the problem of school violence, and that is the reason some people in the audience might want their money back.

Van Sant acknowledged, "Yes, there will be some people who will walk out and feel they didn't get their 10 bucks' worth. These are the people who will feel that I disappointed them because I didn't make a movie like all the other movies they're accustomed to seeing.

"Well, I didn't want to make a movie like every other movie, with identifiable scapegoats and a shopping list of easy solutions. Instead, this movie is a thinking machine. There are a lot of answers to be taken from the movie, but they will be forced to come out of your own imagination."

Producer Robinson said early screenings have shown that younger audiences see the film differently than their parents' generation.

"We have shown the film at various festivals and younger audiences really respond favorably," the producer said. "They see the falseness of presenting easy answers. The film disturbs older audiences because they can't even imagine their kids in that situation."

Joanne Cantor, author of a book about children and media violence ("Mommy, I'm Scared," 1998), said the problem with any movie or television show with an ambiguous message is that audiences tend to come away from it with what they want to see.

"It is possible that some teens could actually see these boys with guns as heroes or martyrs if the movie doesn't show the suffering and consequences of what they've done," she said.

"But I agree that there are no easy answers. There is never just one cause to a tragedy like Columbine. A lot of unhealthy things, such as alienation, bullying, parents not communicating with their children, access to guns, video games and heavy exposure to media violence all come together to contribute to a tragedy."

Like everyone else in this country, Van Sant was horrified as the events at Columbine unfolded on television screens in 1999. He watched TV, he read the newspaper and magazine accounts and then he watched some more TV.

The more he watched and read, the stronger the urge to get involved.

"Frankly, I felt the media was doing a poor job," he explained. "The coverage was hard-hitting, but it left no area for thought. They were saying, 'This is what happened and that's it.'

"Journalism has gotten so hyper-dramatic in its style that I thought someone should tone down that hyper-drama in an effort to get at the truth."

For Van Sant, the elephant that sits in the middle of his movie are the parents of today's high school children.

"It is the society itself, the baby boomers, who control and treat their children like an underclass. ... But I never wanted to monopolize this movie with my own interpretation of the problem," he said. "That would be boring to the audience and to me.

"I would much prefer that people pay their 10 bucks and come up with their own answers."