Elephant: A Social Commentary Transcending Typical Moral Norms and Clichs

Gus Van Sants 2003 film Elephant takes a seemingly morally

unambiguous situation and instead offers a quite profound psychological
commentary on social environments and interactions. He creates a film that
can elicit many different unique responses from the audience. However, the
general narrative of the story seems quite straightforward. A pair of troubled,
bullied kids decides that they have had enough, take up arms and go on a
shooting rampage throughout their high school. But Van Sant does not seek
to portray such a simple plotlineone with clear antagonists and
protagonists, jocks and nerds. That is not to say that Van Sant does not
include these types of characters, but he does not portray them in a
conventional sense. It can be said that Elephant is a critique of the social
environment that dominates our lives; one in which human beings are weak,
and society is strong. One in which we are forced to conform to arbitrary
social norms without regard to our own inner thoughts, desires and conflicts.
One in which persona dominates personality. By presenting the story from the
perspectives of many different characters, in and out of school, Van Sant
creatively presents a quite deep commentary on the human psyche. Through
his use of straightforward, yet uniquely presented narrative, slow pace and
long tracking shots as well as sound, editing and skillful cinematography, Van
Sant takes the audience on an emotional and moral journey that leaves them
with many questions and few answers.
Despite having a distinct narrative buildup that culminates in the school
shooting, Elephant maintains a constant shot pace essentially throughout the
entire film. Van Sant takes the audience through a journey that almost makes
us feel as if we are experiencing the world from the viewpoint of the killers.
Throughout the film Van Sant uses plenty of long tracking shots from behind
to create a very detached atmosphere amongst the audience. And it is this
sense of social detachment that Van Sant is making a commentary on.
One scene where Van Sant cinematically portrays this issue is in the
first scene of Nathan, the jock football player, walking off the field and into
the school hall. Van Sant uses a long tracking shot from behind as he is
walking into the school, and once he enters, he passes by a group of three
gossiping girls commenting on his attractiveness right before he meets and
romantically embraces his girlfriend in the same hallway. However, as
opposed to Nathan being shot from the front, he is shot from the back in
one long constant tracking shot. Because of this type of shot the audience
never relates with Nathan. They are exposed to his perspective of his
surrounding environment during the moments right before the shooting, but
the length and type of shot lends itself to a quite detached feel. With this
scene, Van Sant portrays one side of the social spectrum that he is critiquing.
The cool, calm collectedness of Nathan demonstrates how effortlessly he fits
in. Although the film does not delve into the actual thoughts and feelings of
Nathan, it is evident that he has found a comfortable niche within the
demanding, stringent social framework within the school.
In contrast to Nathans seemingly effortless acclimatization to his high
schools social atmosphere, other characters acclimatization into the
demanding high school social scene is more grueling. This is most apparent
through Van Sants depiction of the three popular girlsthe ones who initially
commented on Nathans attractiveness. While Van Sants depiction of these
girls comes near the middle of the movie, it still recounts the same 20-25
minutes before the shooting, except from yet another perspective.
However, while Nathan is shot and portrayed as effortlessly cool, the
group of girls is shot showing signs of emotional and physical insecurity.
Similar to the initial shot of Nathan, the girls are shot using long tracking
shots and still shots as they eat lunch at the cafeteria before throwing their
food up in the bathroom. However, in the part of the scene where the girls
are shown talking about their lives, their insecurity and emotional fragility is
exposed. Most notably when one of the girls adamantly complains that one of
the other friends spends too much time with her boyfriend and not enough
time with the other too. In contrast to other parts of the film, Van Sant
isolates only the conversation from the rest of the cafeteria chatter. Because
of this, the audience is able to delve deeper into the psyche of these
individuals as opposed to other more detached characters, such as Nathan.
And this cafeteria scene coupled with the bathroom-vomiting scene poses
some even more difficult questions from the audience. At what cost do you
have to compromise your ideals, inner thoughts and health to fit within what
society deems as cool? And it is through these types of raised questions that
Van Sant pushes the boundaries of morality and the collective social psyche.
The complex issues and ideas that Van Sant delves into perfectly
complement the cyclical nature of the narrative. It is through his depiction of
Alex and Eric, both within and outside of their relationship with John, that he
is able to rid the movie of simplistic approaches to moral commentary. When
watching the film, one would think that in basic narrative form, the killers
would be heavily bullied and as a result of their frustration and humiliation,
decide to take it out on their aggressorsmost likely jocks. However, this is
not the case as the first person to be killed was the seemingly nerdy girl,
Michelle, ashamed of her appearance. One would also assume that the killers
would spare Eli, the affable, well-liked, good-looking photography student.
However, Van Sant is not trying to offer a rational explanation for the killers
motives; rather he is trying to explore as to how the social environment of the
school led them to do this.
Van Sants use of still shots and long front and back tracking shots
when depicting Alex and Eric greatly adds to the experiential nature of the
film. The audience is taken into some of the more personal spaces of the
individuals. One notable shot is the still shot that transitions from a long
tracking shot as Alex traverses from his kitchen, through the dining room and
then down into the basement. As Alex enters into the dining room, the
camera stops at the entrance of the kitchen and transitions into a still shot of
the kitchen, lasting 4-5 seconds. By taking the audience through some of the
more mundane, yet intimate details of the killers home, Van Sant is able to
give a very humanizing portrayal of the them, further adding to the questions
Van Sant poses through this film.
Another key scene, which through the use of sound gives the audience
more insight as to the psyche of the killers, is the breakfast scene between
Alex and Eric. Though the scene takes place at Alexs house, Eric has
presumably spent the night. In this scene there is especially a sense of
detachment as Alexs parents can be seen (not their faces) and heard, but are
not dynamically involved in the dialogue. From this minimization of sound
from the parents voices, Van Sant once again places the audience within the
unique perspective of the killers.
The next scene after the breakfast scene, when watched at first may be
misinterpreted at first. For instance, directly after the breakfast scene, the film
cuts to a shot of Alex panning toward the TVplaying a Nazi documentary
then remains at a still shot of the television for about 35 seconds. And during
the last 7 seconds of the shot, the postal car delivering the weapons appears
within a through shot in the mirror. While many people would initially see this
scene as an indication that the killers are crypto-fascists, that would
undermine the whole purpose of the movie, seeing as how it is not simply
about cause and effect. Rather the inclusion of this scene could perhaps serve
to help the audience understand the psyche of two individuals living in a
rather asocial, conforming, harsh world.
As aforementioned, the psyche of the characters, especially the killers,
has to be examined within the contexts of their social relationshipsmost
notably the brief encounter between John and the killers. The initial scenes
portraying John are the most dissimilar with regards to the majority of other
scenes. The initial shot features a long birds-eye view tracking shot of his
fathers car driving him to school. It is apparent that his father is inebriated, as
he is seen driving into the sidewalk curbs. This scene also locates the film in a
suburban setting. From the 25-second still front shot of John and his Dad in
the car, the camera focuses only on Johns father, while the lush, suburban
trees can be spotted in bounty through the rear window. This scene especially
initiates the feeling of detachment that permeates the film. For instance, there
are several different ways he director could have portrayed this scene. One
ways is to have an internal back and forth series of perspective shots that
transition from speaker to listener, or the director could have kept the same
shot except to include both John and his father. However, Van Sant chose not
to do this for a specific reason; that is to depict the isolation between
individuals and from society. For instance, if you pause the film at around
3:37, you can see the father staring off into the distance with some sort of
daze. While when participating in an engaging conversation, albeit in a car,
one might not make direct eye contact but at least appear a bit more
engaged. However, Van Sant is commenting on a problem that is so
widespread and exists all throughout society that initially the scene does not
appear at all unnatural.
From Van Sants unique portrayals of the various characters involved in
the shooting, he is able to develop an overarching mood that dominates the
filmone that is somber and cold. However, his use of slow motion editing
enhances the film by shots paced to depict the collective psyche of the
characters. From the soccer field scene at the beginning, Van Sant introduces
a very calm, yet somewhat eerie depiction of various students playing catch,
soccer, etc. In addition to this, the field scene is also edited to almost slow
motion. This is a technique that is used throughout the film at key moments
throughout the film, such as when John first encounters the killers. Shot from
a lock, back tracking shots, the speed of the film is reduced to slower than
real time as a dog jumps into Johns raised hand as he is walking toward his
fathers car. Right after the dog lands, the film speeds up into real time as he
approaches Alex and Eric walking in. As he passes by the shooters, Alex
informs him to stay away as some heavy shit is about to go down. This
scene is quite important because it reveals one of the only other people Alex
shows any sort of affection or sympathy to. Van Sant makes sure to only
reveal this once, as it remains in sharp contrast to the overall feeling of
detachment. And interestingly enough, this shot is shown from the
perspective of John, who from the start of the film can be seen as possessing
the greatest psychological and emotional balance between personality and
persona. John is one of the only characters who is able to safely express his
emotions without compromising the essence of his identity.
Van Sant later contrasts this balance with the reverse scene from the
killers perspective. As the killers are walking into the school grounds, the
pace of the film is in real time, giving the scene an air of methodicalness. If
one looks closely, the same shot of the dog jumping to Johns hand is not in
slow motion, but also in real-time. Through this technique of narrative
perspective, the director illustrates the communicative dissonance between
the characters. What John garnered from his sighting and interaction with the
killers is different than the shooters perspective of the interaction. And in a
sense, this represents the issue Van Sant addresses of how social breakdown
and isolation leads us to make certain decisions.
Van Sants ability to create such a profound, yet experiential film
partially derives from his use of soundmore precisely the use of non-
diegetic music and diegetic dialogue. Near the beginning of the field scene at
8:02, Van Sant opens the film score with a calm, yet somewhat eerie classical
piano arrangement. During this scene the film pace alters between slow
motion and real time in order to feature key shots. It slows down when
Michelle appears within the still shot and looks up and around at the sky
rather aimlessly before she exits the shot. As Michelle emerges, the classical
piano arrangement gradually crescendos while increasing in volume, thus
portraying her as lost amidst an unfamiliar world. Even the way she is wearing
her gym clothesin a rather awkward, uncomfortable mannersignals to the
audience that she is a social outcast. Yet, Van Sant does not try to develop
any sort of sympathy for the girl, but rather provides an insight into her world
and unapparent thought processes.
The spooky yet alluring classical piano score ends as Nathan enters the
school office, and the soundscape throughout the rest of the film is mainly
dominated by dialogue and external sounds, such as the sound of a janitor
sweeping, the noise of footsteps or other extraneous conversations. However,
at 24:14 Van Sant uses a wispy, windy, almost paranoiac non-diegetic track to
try to provide the viewer with what Alex is feeling at that moment, when he is
about to find a place to sit in the cafeteria. As the track starts playing, the pan
to still shot of him captures him at a moment of intense anxiousness and
disquietude. From this scene, the viewer is presented with a rather ambiguous
depiction. Does he have a conscience? Is he crazy? Though those are certainly
plausible questions, one can also see this scene as representing an individual
who has succumbed to the pressures of such a rigid, asocial environment.
Perhaps he is coping with such an unvaried, molded environment with which
he is forced to live in. Though one can never know for sure the inner
thoughts of Eric, Van Sant provides the viewer with plentiful amount of social
information to help us to make reasoned insights about the nature and
conscience of him.
One character though that is presented as rather unreadable,
however, is Eli .For instance, right after the cafeteria scene at 24:37, the film
cuts to a close-up side tracking shot of Eli as he traverses the hallways during
a busy period. The track played during this shot is a fusion between jazzy
saxophone and psychedelic low tempo music. Throughout this scene, the
viewer is able to see how Eli so calmly and coolly interacts with his fellow
peers. Eli is clearly a good-looking, well-liked and relatively popular kid, as
evidenced by his social interactions. If there were no music playing during this
shot, then it would lose a lot of significance. However, by adding the non-
diegetic music to the shot, Van Sant adds a whole new aspect to this
perspective. The music serves to exemplify the negative social paradigms that
exist within the schooland throughout most places, for that matter. The
added dimension of music almost serves to detract from the social
environment in the sense that it shields Eli from meaningful interactions.
Throughout this whole shot, the only interactions he has with the students are
friendly, yet brisk. While ostensibly it looks, as if Eli is perfectly fine and
socially engaged, the added track directly counters this assumption, which is
what Van Sant tries to achieve through this film. Because Van Sant uses music
sparingly throughout the film, when it is used, it enables the viewer to more
readily examine the social interactions without the need to hear any dialogue.
Van Sant is very precise in controlling the soundscape and by rarely, if ever,
overlapping dialogue with non-diegetic music, he is very able to depict a
quite detailed, yet impersonal perspective that lends itself greatly to the
overall somber tone of the movie.
By viewing this film from a psychoanalytic perspective rather than from
a moral perspective, the viewer is able to delve deeper into and question the
complex social interactions that determine behavior. Are our actions dictated
primarily by self or by the environment? How does the discrepancy between
intended meaning and perceived meaning affect social interactions and
barriers? Through his Van Sants unique use of editing, sound and
cinematography, he is able to artfully portray a truly, terrible and gruesome
event, without adhering to any moral or narrative norms. This film transcends
traditional Hollywood expectations, and provides keen insights into the
misperceived interpretations of social mechanisms, developments and
communications.