Elephant 2003

Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press: Bold and impressionistic. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: Elephant makes the Columbine shootings seem both abstract yet more painful and vivid. Read more

Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper: ... a brilliant film. Read more

Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune: An exercise in voyeurism and a trancelike plunge into the dark side of American teen life that can both fascinate and repel you. Read more

Elvis Mitchell, New York Times: By making the camera an observer, we get a perspective that often comes out of horror movies, a choice that whips the ordinary with the terrifying, an unforgettable mix. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: What I'll remember most vividly about Gus Van Sant's extraordinary "Elephant" is not the violent climax but the state of grace that precedes it. Read more

John Hartl, Seattle Times: While most of the characters are little more than sketches, Van Sant and his collection of young, mostly inexperienced actors make them recognizable and genuine. Read more

Scott Tobias, AV Club: Elephant creates gorgeous, wide-open spaces that allow viewers the freedom to reflect without having a point-of-view imposed on them. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: An 86-minute cosmic provocation to rethink how we talk about the unspeakable, the scapegoats we look for, the effigies we burn. Read more

Manohla Dargis, Los Angeles Times: An unblinking look at our mania for murder, the film is a stunning response to an American tragedy that in its senselessness and human cost embodies the larger tragedy of this country's blood lust. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: Startling and brilliant. Read more

Eric Harrison, Houston Chronicle: We ask: Who are these people? Which ones are troubled enough to bring guns to school? What are their lives like? What made them this way? Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: It is hard to make absolute sense of. Yet it invites us to feel quite strongly about our conclusions. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: From the first images of drilling footballers and swirling clouds in an autumnal sky, Van Sant conjures the feeling of suburban school-year everydayness with Proustian power. Read more

Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News: Elephant demands a commitment to sticking with a nontraditional story. There's no three-act structure here, no consolation at the end of the line. Read more

Scott Foundas, L.A. Weekly: Welcome to Abercrombie & Fitch -- The Movie. Read more

Gene Seymour, Newsday: Gus Van Sant's Columbine-inspired tone poem shatters your nerves while stranding your heart somewhere in deep space. Read more

David Denby, New Yorker: Gus Van Sant's fascinating, mysterious, semidocumentary meditation on the Columbine massacre is not very satisfying, but it's still something to see. Read more

Peter Rainer, New York Magazine/Vulture: Elephant is a lurid tease posing as an art film. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: The movie itself has no feeling. Read more

Jami Bernard, New York Daily News: The film is infuriating. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: Elephant is so contrived and minimalistic that it has the dramatic effect of a line drawing. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: Van Sant, whose films often connect, sensitively, with the thinking of young people, has made a film that says things are wrong with kids today. We're missing the obvious. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: It simply looks at the day as it unfolds, and that is a brave and radical act; it refuses to supply reasons and assign cures, so that we can close the case and move on. Read more

Charles Taylor, Salon.com: It would be crediting Elephant with too much depth to call it Van Sant's examination of Columbine. It's more like his Columbine art project. Read more

Ruthe Stein, San Francisco Chronicle: A spellbinding piece of filmmaking. Read more

David Edelstein, Slate: Elephant hurts you in ways you don't see coming; its combination of the orchestrated and the raw gets past your defenses. Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: The most fluid of films, it glides through its 81 minutes with a mesmerizing ease, skating on smooth tracking shots down the corridors of an American high school and into the heart of an American malaise. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: The film is understatement at its most powerful. Read more

Time Out: The film doesn't try to explain, but to put us in a subjective time and space, a place where it's impossible not to feel the abject horror of random violence. Read more

Christy Lemire, Associated Press: The approach is oddly riveting, though, because the tension builds slowly, and you know what's going to happen at the end of the day. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Variety: To make a film about something like the Columbine student shootings incident and provide no insight or enlightenment would seem to be pointless at best and irresponsible at worst, and that is what Gus Van Sant has done in Elephant. Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: Uneven though he may be, Van Sant rivals Steven Soderbergh as the mad scientist of commercial filmmakers -- and the wildly polarizing Elephant is his most successful experiment to date. Read more