Elephant

The Troubles in Northern Ireland inspired a lot films and dramas. Some more controversial than others.

Alan Clarke's Elephant was totally left field. When the BBC broadcast it, they were inundated with complaints on television programs such as 'Points of View.'

Never before we had a television drama, almost wordless where one person shoots another person, a few minutes later someone else shoots another and so on and so on.

Be they working in a petrol station, in a swimming pool, playing football, eating in a restaurant, at home or walking in the park, someone blasts them.

These horrific random acts of violence in due course desensitizes us to the violence. Maybe even render us bored and confused.

Without dialogue we are unsure as to what is happening and just seeing people walking about until they take a gun out and shoot somebody.

Alan Clarke was an early adopter of the Steadicam for television work which means we follow the various people out and about as the camera operator is alongside them.

This was one of Clarke's last works. He died a year later. Seeing Elephant again when the film is almost 25 years old, I was struck that this is now a period piece.

Northern Ireland has moved on since the peace process of the 1990s.

Sort of like watching a crime movie with everything but the shooting scenes edited out, or a bit like watching the world's most depressing, low key action movie.

You get an opening title that references The Troubles, and that's about it for context. Means that the violent acts - which is all there is, really - are oddly shocking at first and then maybe even tedious. It's depressing to see so much of it play out and just keep going until the movie at one point decides to end.

By being so stripped down and short, it leaves you with a lot to think about. It definitely had more of an impact on me than Clarke's similarly repetitive and low-key film Christine, too.

The recurring action of "Elephant" consists of the camera closely following someone walking down a small path and then shooting other person, then the camera stays there with the victim for a little while. This goes on and on for about 40 minutes, and that's the whole movie. Pounding our minds with this cold-blooded, disturbing and unexplainable scenario, barely containing any dialog and not giving any reasons behind those acts, director Alan Clarke and his last film deals with 'the troubles' in Northern Ireland but it also seems more than just that. One can view it with a wider perception. Why such title? It comes from Bernard MacLaverty's description of the troubles as "the elephant in our living room", a reference to people's denial of the underlying social problems of Northern Ireland. But since no one's talking and the images are so powerful and universal, we can picture this as happening outside of Ireland, since the violence problem hits everywhere and almost everyone.

But what Clarke wanted to cause on us with those images? To desensitize us or to show that such can be done at each single scene? The reflection is there for everyone to see, yet most of us we'll only consider "Elephant" as being repulsive, shocking, tasteless or pointless. By presenting things very randomly, he hits harder and with more brutality than any violent film ever made in that same decade. It's the shock of never knowing who's going to be the new victim or where the new attack is going to happen and most of all, why they are happening. We're there just as watchers, mere passers by looking at something unusual and frightening happening in front of us. It could have been a reason behind all the murders but it's invisible, hidden from us. It is said that the director re-enacted those from similar real events that took place in his country, terrorist attacks related with the troubles.

The penetrating, repetitive, poignant, insisting image doesn't comes from the act of violence but the everlasting effect of such. The dead bodies, lying on the ground. It is as if Clarke was trying to capture the soul getting out of the body or just waiting for a sign that they could have survived the brutal attacks they were victim of. No. It's a way of reminding us that a few seconds earlier someone was breathing, living, doing something and all that moment was gone. Why? But why? Because of something unimportant, small and even maybe a case of being at the wrong place, at the wrong time, crossing someone who needed to kill someone. Clarke wanted to show the banality of life, testing on us the effect all the murders would have on us.

With this silent criticism where only a gun being fired was the only voice who said a thing echoing for a long time, this is a haunting and unforgettable picture, and inspired another great "Elephant", the one directed by Gus Van Sant, who heavily worked on the same principle (criticism, shot compositions) but treating in the form of the Columbine incident. Both remarkable works. 10/10.

The height of minimalism. I can imagine watching this at the time and place it was meant to be watched and having the feeling of being punched in the face but not sure by whom.

Hard to watch, partly because the movie really strains the patience. But knowing the background, I sort of want to admire it. It's uncompromising, deliberately unlovely and has no interest in winning a popularity contest.

If one goes in with the patience required, it's a hypnotic and nauseatingly real that sends a message clear as day without the obnoxiousness of actually saying it: this isn't cool, people are dying. It's not an action movie anymore. A sort of anti-action movie. A lot of it is conceptual, sort of like a Pollack painting only a lot less self-indulgent.

Impossible to forget.

I notice nobody actually from Northern Ireland seems to have commented on this... I grew up in Belfast through some of the worst of the troubles (and have been personally affected by the actions of both loyalist and republican terrorists) and I have to say that for me this film is pretty much it in a nutshell. The desensitising effect mentioned by some of the other comments is precisely what happens in real life; the fact that stuff blows up occasionally and every so often someone gets shot dead eventually starts to just become part of the scenery. I've lost count of the number of times I saw people walking through Belfast stop in their tracks for a second or two as a bomb was detonated nearby then just continue on their way. You learn to live with it, and that's the real horror, which I think is something Clarke portrays here with an extraordinary degree of empathy. Possibly some of it's because so many of the places in the film were so familiar to me but it really hit home in a way that no other film explicitly about Northern Ireland has ever done for me.