Gus Van Sant takes on a big subject.

Tragedies on the scale of US high-school gun massacres spray blame like indiscriminate machine-gun fire and send media-fuelled hysteria into overdrive. So if you’re going to fictionalise such a story, it probably takes a filmmaker as cool and detached as Gus Van Sant to deal with such emotive, explosive material. No bawling for Columbine here.

“We didn’t want to explain anything,” Van Sant confirms, and his Cannes double prize-winner, Elephant, prides itself on dealing with the desperate WHY? precisely by denying easy answers. The title is a nod towards the ancient Buddhist parable where various blind men all identify the animal by the part they touch – snake (trunk), rope (tail), spear (tusk), etc – as well as acknowledging Alan Clarke’s 1989 televised polemic on Northern Ireland’s sectarian violence, “the elephant in the living room” being the obvious problem we all overlook.

Van Sant’s sinuous steadicam sits on the shoulder of a seemingly random clutch of students, looking and listening as they walk, chat, mooch around and walk again through endless school corridors. Employing a real group of US teenagers and allowing them to improvise their own dialogue, Van Sant sets himself firmly in opposition to any preconceived, pre-packaged “issue movie”. And when the violence comes, it’s random, sudden, final.

All admirably non-sensationalist but still disingenuous. Van Sant throws in references to subversive websites, violent videogames, even Nazi documentaries, but ultimately subsumes everything into his minimalist, documentary-style. He can’t find answers but he sure can make the whole mess look beautiful. The multiple, overlapping perspectives introduce characters then leave you agonising to see who will get gunned down, complete with cliffhanger ending. It’s the teen flick as arthouse disaster movie, and while that isn’t pat Hollywood medicine, it leaves a bitter taste all of its own. Leigh Singer 30 January 04

Elephant, on selected release 30 January 04.

useful link: www.elephantmovie.com