I'd say this film equally excels in two different aspects – its brilliance and its brutality. Clocking in at an hour and twenty-one minutes it might seem like a brief experience but it actually consists of a very slow and methodical progression, just one seemingly normal day in the lives of various high school students, a normal day that ends in shocking violence... And a rather interesting trait of said progression is that it doesn't reveal a slow descent into violence, it doesn't really delve deep into the minds of the shooters nor does it reveal the big event that made them decide to go through with that crime. The film instead aims to depict the whole system out of which such nihilistic minds emerge. As such, there are no shocking emotional moments, there are no big reveals or set pieces. In fact, the film aims for an almost cold realism, casting real students with no previous acting experience, and not even following a strict screenplay. For most movies that technique just doesn't work well, even with experienced actors, but oddly enough, I find it works brilliantly here. There are awkward moments, sure, but that is how real people are, and there are slow moments but that's how daily life is. And I almost wanna bet that finding this film boring and instead preferring a more over-the-top dramatization, given the subject, is almost part of the problem.
The movie opens with John, a troubled kid in his own right, being driven to school by his clearly intoxicated father who breaks the rearview mirror of a stationary car and almost runs over a cyclist. John then convinces his father to trade places and shows off some deft diplomacy in handling an intoxicated parent. When he arrives at the school he calls his brother, asking him to come pick up the father, but John is soon intercepted by the principal. John promptly apologizes for his tardiness but gets called into the principal's office anyway. Then the principal just sits there, completely uncaring as always. We'll get back to that later on.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the school a boy named Elias approaches a goth couple walking along a field of autumn leaves and asks if he may take their picture. They talk for a while, a little awkwardly but still kind and easy-going. Then we are shown a game of football which briefly reveals the first appearance of Michelle. We'll get to her later on as well. When the game ends, a jock named Nathan puts on a red hoodie with a cross and the word “lifeguard” ironically written on it. He walks across the school until he meets up with his girlfriend, Carrie. They talk about an upcoming party and she mentions an appointment she has to go through. In the meantime, John is released from the principal's meaningless silent chastisement and is allowed to go about the rest of his day. And in this scene, we are treated to perhaps my favorite detail in the whole film.
We are shown a view of the reception desk and the teacher's lounge where the various members of faculty do their jobs or gather for breaks, and we notice how that funny quote is rather boringly affixed to the wall. It seems to appeal to the great benefits of education, which forever expands the limits of the mind, but I think the movie smartly flips it on its head. It makes me think of Alex and how, after the idea possesses him, perhaps nothing can make him go back to normal. I mean, what would you even say to save someone from such a thing? I don't know but I do find it bitingly ironic that a quote like that is in the teacher's lounge, the same teachers who, in all of their wisdom, fail to see a boy slowly transform into a school shooter, right under their noses.
And speaking of blindness, the movie brings us back to Michelle. We are given the first of three versions of the same scene – the photographer Elias crosses paths with John, they exchange a few words and then Elias asks for a picture. At that moment, which coincides with the bell, Michelle starts running. Maybe she's late to class, or maybe, just maybe, she's desperately afraid to have her picture taken. In this first version, the camera then follows John as he walks out of the school and plays a little bit with a dog in a moment that would almost be beautiful if we weren't then introduced to the aforementioned Alex and his friend Eric, as they walk into the school.
At this point, if you thought the movie would suddenly turn into Die Hard, you get tripped. The narrative turns back time and shifts to that of the two boys, mostly following Alex though, as he sits in the back of a boring chemistry class, sketching in his notebook. One of the students asks the teacher a question but when the teacher begins to answer, the boy turns around and throws some wet, mushy paper at Alex. Then as we note Alex's strange reaction, implying such a thing happens all too often, he is hit with yet another ball, from the direction where Nathan, the jock, was sitting. Not such a good lifeguard after all... Afterwards Alex goes to the bathroom to clean up in front of a cracked mirror, a fairly common metaphor for a character's broken mental state. And in the very next scene, we see Alex in the cafeteria. At first he appears to be awkwardly standing in line but no, he's actually jotting down notes about something that, upon being asked by a random girl, he claims to be his “plan” and says that in time she will see just what kind of plan it is.
Alex then stands in the middle of the packed cafeteria, and as the white noise grows, he grabs his head, apparently overwhelmed by it all. And that's as much as the movie gives us regarding Alex's mental development. At that point he might as well be too far gone, maybe he's already broken. There's no sad backstory, no scenes of aggressive bullying one after the other, no attempts to tug at the viewers' heartstrings. It's almost like he decided to put his plan into practice simply after being thrown some mushy paper. I suppose either the movie flaked out on Alex's development or we need to look elsewhere for answers. I defend the latter option.
Next up we are formally introduced to Michelle, right at the end of her gym class, the one in which she previously interrupted the football game. By now it's made clear that the movie is obviously layered and doesn't follow a strict linear progression. And here we are presented with a more obvious example of teacher inattention – Michelle is chastised by the teacher for wearing long pants instead of shorts. It appears it's not the first time Michelle fails to meet the extremely important dress code for the extremely class, and the teacher, instead of wondering if there's a deeper reason why her student keeps ignoring those requirements, only extends her mercy in that she won't penalize Michelle for that one time, concluding that she has to wear shorts for the next class, something which Michelle dryly agrees to. And the most amazing aspect here is that, while the teacher does briefly appear, she is mostly off-camera during most of the scene. The film is telling us to hear the teacher's voice but to look at Michelle. And what does that tell us? I should probably leave that to the end of this article but, spoiler alert! Teachers are morons!
Michelle goes up the staircase, going along with the rest of the girls until she takes a strange turn. Everyone else goes one way, Michelle goes another, all alone. She opens a door and goes through an empty gymnasium, taking a whole lot of time and effort to avoid the other girls. But then she reaches the locker room, she can't avoid them anymore. She does her best to change clothes in silence, looking at the floor so often that her posture seems to suffer for it, and as she changes clothes, the girl-talk becomes increasingly louder, although it's difficult to make out the exact words. But Michelle seems to hear it all, it doesn't seem to be the first time she hears it neither and it doesn't seem to be getting any easier. Then as Michelle walks out, for whatever reason, she is called a loser. So maybe Michelle's refusal to wear shorts isn't such a simple thing, maybe it's symbolic of a way bigger issue, an issue that the teacher, especially being a woman herself, should have noticed. But hey, what do I know? I was never smart enough to be a P.E. teacher...
We are then brought back to Elias who by now has developed some photographs, and as he walks across the hallway, we see the second version of the picture scene, only this time from Elias' perspective. So we don't see Michelle in the distance, we just see her run past after the bell has rung. We are also reintroduced to Brittany, Jordan and Nicole, the three popular girls, and probably the best actresses in the film. They admire Nathan as he walks by, and then they hear the rumor that Carrie has slapped a girl for making a pass at him. They go into the cafeteria and sit down for lunch though they barely eat and what little they do eat doesn't stay in their bellies for long. They try to make plans for the afternoon, plans that one of the girls wants to flake out on because of her boyfriend, something which the queen bee takes great offense to.
Then we have an odd twist – we finally see Alex in his room, but he's playing Für Elise... Of all the things we'd expect from a school shooter, soulfully playing the piano would be the last one. The scene then gives us a whole view of his room as Eric walks in and makes himself at home by playing a weird video game which seems to visually mimic the later shooting scenes. But what can be said of Alex's room? It appears to be in the basement, seeing as the windows are all on a higher level and there is some junk and faulty equipment lying about. The walls have some artwork on them, presumably drawn by Alex himself since we know from the chemistry class scene that he fancies himself a bit of an artist. But the meaning of most of the drawings, should there be one, has to be deciphered by someone smarter than me.
But I could talk about one significant drawing. Right next to an old TV which doesn't seem to get much use, we see a drawing of an elephant, fairly similar to the one in the film's cover, albeit colorless. So why is the film named after this particular animal? The first interpretation would be an appeal to the old “elephant in the room” saying, that is, the idea that something so obvious and out of place is being willfully ignored by everyone around it. Maybe Alex is the elephant in the room. He's that bullied kid, that social outcast who walks around the school taking strange notes, he's the odd man out, he's the one someone should be kind to, he's the one kid teachers should take special notice of...
The other interpretation of the image would be an appeal to the parable of the blind men and the elephant, which goes something like this – an elephant walks into a village, and so, five blind men, wanting to examine the creature, surround it and touch it. Each man touches a different part of the animal and comes to a different conclusion, for example, the one who touches the tusk says an elephant is akin to a spear, the one who touches the trunk says it's akin to a snake, and so on. The parable therefore teaches that, while one's subjective experience may be true, it doesn't reveal the whole truth. It takes piecing together the various elements to come up with an answer.
In the meantime, Eric has gotten comfortable. When he walked in he complimented Alex's playing as “awesome” and then sat down. At some point during the piece, Alex makes a mistake, flips the bird to the music sheet and gives up, being then told by Eric that he sucks. For all I know, all musicians have made a similar act of frustration but I think it runs a bit deeper in this film. I think it reveals that while Alex is talented in music, as well as in drawing, while he still dedicates his time to it, he no longer finds any joy in it. Maybe he no longer finds any joy in absolutely anything.
Eric ends up spending the night, and during breakfast the next morning, Alex's parents are, like Michelle's teacher, almost entirely off-camera, once again signifying not merely the lack of adult supervision, but the lack of adult care. They just keep ignoring the elephant in the room... After Alex's parents leave, the boys apparently decide to skip class that morning and they while away the time watching a documentary about the Third Reich, even though neither of the boys seem particularly knowledgeable about the subject, and one of them is even unsure of who Hitler is... I for one think this is a clever way to remove politics from the equation. Loosely speaking, if you no longer care about absolutely anything, politics would be the last thing on your mind. The idea that this kind of massacre, this overwhelming destructive nihilism, is actually some kind of symbolic political move is just part of a media frenzy that continues to ignore the elephant.
Eventually the package the boys were waiting for arrives. It contains a rifle... The boys try it out in the garage and have a lot of fun with it. Afterwards, Alex showers and is approached by Eric who, admitting he never kissed anyone, joins in, and the two boys, for no reason other than it being their last day on earth, kiss. So maybe they do care about something, but the idea in their minds has brought them to such a faraway place that they think they can never return from. It's like they are dead already.
Lastly we have the third and last version of the photograph scene, this time following Michelle's perspective. And in my view, this version confirms that the reason she ran was because she was so afraid of having her picture taken. She goes into the library and the librarian there says he's glad she could make it. It appears Michelle is volunteering and therefore not particularly late, at least not for class. So the bell wasn't the reason she sprinted, it was the camera.
And at this point in the film, every character is where they need to be, including Alex and Eric who have it all planned out. Alex has acquired, or perhaps even drawn up, a blueprint of the school and lays the plan out step by step. And as Eric mostly nods, Alex almost seems to have some kind of military understanding behind his plan which, as it is explained, is interspersed with actual scenes, almost baiting us to think the plan will be foiled and those scenes are just imagination. And after all the careful planning and borderline military language, Alex gleefully ends with – Most importantly, have fun, man!
The boys get in the car and drive away. Now, the car has two interesting bits of information. One is the cracked windshield, once again calling into question the character's mental states, similarly to the bathroom mirror. The other is the face of the Devil which appears in the form of a silly air freshener... It's almost like, similarly to the Third Reich documentary, the film is telling us that satanic panic hysteria also isn't the way to go. Satanism would be a total cop-out to what these kids are doing, it would be just another scapegoat. Their issues run deeper and, in an effort to keep ignoring the elephant in the room, Satan apparently takes center stage.
Notice how a person, presumably a teacher, fails to notice two heavily armed students standing in the hallway
At this point we return to John, right after he sees Alex and Eric and runs around to find his father, trying to warn people along the way but being wholly ignored. And in what is the most striking scene of the movie, after walking through the school all geared up and ready to kill, after even walking into a full library, no one else reacts to the shooters. It's almost as if they aren't even there... In fact, Elias casually takes a photograph, perhaps the last one of his life. And then, surprisingly calm and collected, Alex opens fire.
And his first victim? Michelle.
That's the absolute pessimism of the film, the absolute sheer brutality... The first victim was a girl who herself was a victim of merciless bullying, a girl just as miserable as the two boys, a girl whose sad life was cut short, even though she had no hand in creating Alex, and yet became his first victim all the same. I wonder if she was as invisible to Alex as she was to the rest of the world, or if at that point Alex just didn't care. After all, he didn't seem to care about anything anymore, and if that isn't as brutal as it gets then I don't know what is.
The boys then split up. Eric runs into the principal whom he scares into falling to the ground and, funnily enough, then begs Eric to drop his gun so that they can talk... Oh, really? That's funny. He didn't seem too eager to listen to John when he was late to school because of his drunk father, he didn't seem too eager to help a kid in need, yet now, that this other kid's troubles have exploded into absolute violence, now that the elephant has gone berserk, only now he notices it... Funny... Eric seems to find it funny as well, saying there are other kids like him out there too. He gives the principal a chance to escape before he changes his mind but I guess the man just wasn't fast enough. Maybe he should have worn shorts.
In the meantime, Alex has been running around shooting whoever crosses his path. His hunt leads him into the cafeteria which now has a dead body in sight and, in a more subdued way but just as haunting, the tables are covered with trays of food. Everyone has scattered and so Alex sits to drink, as alone as ever. He regroups with Eric but then casually shoots him, seemingly for no reason. After the shot, Alex hears some shuffling about, goes to investigate and finds Nathan and Carrie hidden away in the freezer. Completely trapped, they plead for their lives as Alex, smiling, sings Eenie Meenie as a way to pick out which one will die. The movie ends before another shot is fired.
So why did the shooting happen? Who was to blame? The way I understand the film, the truth is that everyone was to blame, every single one. Every student, every parent of every student, every teacher, everyone. Everyone kept poking the dead elephant and calling it something else, but the simple truth is that everyone ignored the elephant in the room until he killed and then died.
The immediate reaction to such a tragedy was and still is to find one single cause, isolate it and eliminate it. In some sense it's an understandable reaction and maybe one not done out of malice but it is malicious in another sense too. The truth is that such a tragedy has no one cause, no one influence, and every attempt to find it is just a scapegoat. The point of the film is that the whole system is rotten... John's dad is an alcoholic, Nathan and his friends are bullies, his girlfriend is violent and will likely perform an abortion, the three girls are manipulative and bulimic, the other nameless girls verbally mock Michelle unfailingly, the principal doesn't give a damn about the students and almost abuses his power in petty ways, Michelle's P.E. teacher and Alex's chemistry teacher are either too blind to notice the bullying or just don't care enough to stop it, Eric's parents are nowhere to be seen and Alex's parents don't pay any attention to their own son... The way I see it, everyone was guilty and everyone was a victim. And this film, though quiet and subdued, doesn't shy away from it. That is why Elephant is brutal.
What might be the solution then? I think it would be the exact opposite. If such a tragedy occurs because people are subjected to a little bit of hatred and mockery every single day, then maybe the solution to the elephant in the room is that simple gesture the film chose for its cover – the solution is to be a good person just a little bit every day.
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