I’ve been an erratic fan of Gus Van Sant’s work for years, mostly because the work itself has been somewhat erratic — witness “Psycho” and “Good Will Hunting,” two movies I’d just as soon never watch again. But I was really, really floored by “Elephant,” which I skipped in theaters due to the somewhat uneven critical response it garnered. After two jaw-dropping hours, it baffles me that this film, which is meticulously directed and gorgeously shot, failed to become a sensation in its original run. Then again I think of the deliberate, almost Kubrick-like coldness with which it forgoes any kind of judgment over the characters caught in its Columbine High School-like construction, and it makes a certain kind of sense to me that the public would shun it. We like tragedies written bold in history and reductively in drama, and this movie fits neither of those criteria. It’s subtle and familiar and also deeply frightening.
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