FILM.
ELEPHANT
1989 | DIRECTED BY ALAN CLARKE
My favorite scene was the one where the guy shot the other guy. Elephant is like Slacker except there’s no main character because each keeps getting killed.
The color palettes and framing of the transition shots made me repeatedly zone out in aesthetic stupor almost forgetting it’s mere scene-setting for the next murder.
It’s a bit Lucy-and-the-football-ish: “Maybe this time we’ll just wind through an old building or field and no one will die…” This never happens.
I’m self-conscious of what it means to have enough emotional remove from The Troubles to joke about it and notice beauty within the ugliness. My mom told me at its worst people were dying every day.
But Clarke here as elsewhere resists leadening the movie with moral judgement, instead focusing on the acts themselves, which become mundane through repetition.
I’ve been at least a little bored in every film of his I’ve watched so far, which I count as an odd achievement by Clarke given how lurid the subject matter is.
Whether statutory rape or heroin dealing or neo-Nazi hate crimes or domestic terrorism, like in the real world before long it all becomes dull, most people stop caring if they ever did, life goes on. Which is maybe more chilling than the events themselves.