August 04, 2004

I just finished watching

Elephant that I downloaded because the video store only had one copy of it and it was 9 days late being returned.
50 frigging copies of Agent Cody Banks but only 1 of this film. I don't get it.

For those of you unfamiliar with the film, here is the description from Amazon;
Description
Winner of the Palme d'Or and Best Director prizes at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, Gus Van Sant's (Good Will Hunting, Finding Forrester) Elephant takes us inside an American high school on one, single ordinary day that very rapidly turns tragic. Elephant demonstrates that high school life is a complex landscape where the vitality and beauty of young lives can shift from light to darkness with surreal speed. It's an ordinary high school day. Except that it's not.

I knew the movie was about a school shooting before I watched it. The previews for it give that much of it away, what I wasn't expecting was to be nervous.
I was nervous watching it. Heart racing, panicking because I knew what was coming but wasn't sure when because the movie does a back and forth thing to introduce you to just a bunch of kids from all walks of life, the popular, the unpopular, the geeks, the jocks, the barfoholics etc.
I felt for them and part of me was like, see that's what you get you dink and another part of me was wanting to beg for mercy for some of the others.
I felt for the shooters for being so desperate and confused and alone.
I felt bad and scared and nervous.
It didn't explain school shootings at all it just put you there in the halls mingling with the kids, seeing as they see and remembering your own school whether good or bad or bullied or not, you recognized every kid from your own school years.
I don't know if I'd watch this with teens, I don't know if I'd even tell anyone to see it yet I am telling you to see it in a round about way.
It moved me and made me think and feel and most of the time, the stuff I watch is all fluff or blood and gore. This wasn't bloody, it wasn't graphic, it just was.