One of these days I hope to write a more in-depth appreciation of this film, as well as Jack Black's exemplary performance in it. For now, the piece I wrote for Movie Mezzanine is more of a general recommendation, a reminder of this small but poignant delight to go with the limited release of Before Midnight, which I am waiting for with bated breath. In retrospect, Linklater nails the budding youth of Generation Y with the same observant and honest eye with which he charts Generation X, and I hope he does more movies about millennials in the future.
My full piece is up now at Movie Mezzanine.
Showing posts with label 2003. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2003. Show all posts
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Monday, May 27, 2013
Elephant (Gus Van Sant, 2003)
The following is my May entry for Blindspots.
Elephant’s Steadicam tracks last so long and move so languidly that they frequently curve backward in time, each shift of character focus drifting back a few minutes or a few hours to show the parallel movement of different students as they cross each other’s paths. This structure, modeled on Béla Tarr’s Satantango, repeats shots from changing perspectives, adding new information to established scenes to reconfigure their context.
Each of these connective curves adds a third dimension to configurations, not merely illuminating the interlocking nature of seemingly disparate clusters of students within a confined space but the emotional states of those previously seen in glimpses or even longer takes that nevertheless failed to reveal something as simple as the tears in the eyes of a boy who just endured a tongue-lashing because he could not bring himself to put the deserved blame for his tardiness on his alcoholic father. Incessant close-ups and frantic editing are regularly singled out for their obscuring qualities, but distance and shot length cannot by itself bring clarity.
Elephant’s Steadicam tracks last so long and move so languidly that they frequently curve backward in time, each shift of character focus drifting back a few minutes or a few hours to show the parallel movement of different students as they cross each other’s paths. This structure, modeled on Béla Tarr’s Satantango, repeats shots from changing perspectives, adding new information to established scenes to reconfigure their context.
Each of these connective curves adds a third dimension to configurations, not merely illuminating the interlocking nature of seemingly disparate clusters of students within a confined space but the emotional states of those previously seen in glimpses or even longer takes that nevertheless failed to reveal something as simple as the tears in the eyes of a boy who just endured a tongue-lashing because he could not bring himself to put the deserved blame for his tardiness on his alcoholic father. Incessant close-ups and frantic editing are regularly singled out for their obscuring qualities, but distance and shot length cannot by itself bring clarity.
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