Analyze the film "Elephant" from the perspective of audio-visual language

Perhaps Therese becoming Alice was just an accidental mistranslation. But Alex and Eric's behavior seems inevitable.

Beethoven composed a piece of music on April 27, 1810. In the same year, he gave the piece to his student Therese Malfati. In 1876, after being forwarded by Malfati and written by another German musician, the piece was released to the public. It's called "For Alice." According to research, the title of the song is a mistranslation.

Today, people no longer know the original name of this song. Just like people can't know what Alex and Eric were like.

The movie begins with the sky. In the fixed frame, time moves at a speed several times faster than usual, but it remains calm. Large clouds flowed past like water. Leave no trace. But the sun went down.

The tracking shots of handheld machines in the movie make people not feel the existence of the camera at all. The center of the film is the people. Except people are still people.

This day. John drove his drunken father to school to wait for his brother. Elias found a pair of models to prepare for his photography portfolio. Michelle is helping the teacher organize the books in the reading room. This day. Drunk father waits for his son in the car. Young lovers wait together for coverage. This day. The three girls complained endlessly together. The black-and-white puppy jumped high in front of the blond boy. This day. There are more students living a peaceful life in school.

Van Sant displays an astonishing number of long sports shots in the film. He doesn't seem afraid of the audience falling asleep during the first half of the film.

The first part of the film feels as calm as the empty shot at the beginning of the film. The narrative structure of the film is complex, sophisticated and full of tension. The perspectives of different characters repeatedly narrate the period before the shooting started, showing an ordinary high school and an ordinary day without being lengthy at all. First John, then Elias. The characters change one by one, but time remains the same. The proportion of long shots with hand-held machines and close-ups of people's heads following movements during this period has reached an extremely high level. The audience can only see the actor's face or even the back of his head. The surrounding space is all empty. Van Sant uses this extreme shooting method to tell everyone. The subject is human. It's people. It's human! people! people! Everyone's name is typed on the screen. If this was how the film's protagonists were treated, the audience would have remembered no less than five of them before the shooting began. Van Sant also uses this method to tell people the importance of everyone. They have relatives and friends. Everyone has his own life. And Van Sant also deliberately exaggerates the moments when "every individual" and "every individual" meet or even just rub shoulders in life. When John was playing with the dog in front of Alex and Eric, and when Jordan passed by the three girls, the camera's elevated shooting deliberately emphasized the encounter between people. As for the scene where Elias was taking photos of John and Michlle was running past the two of them, the director shot it three times from the perspectives of three people. This is also the most amazing thing about the entire movie. During this process, the complex and ingenious combination of the film's narrative structure makes people excited. John, Elias, and Michel are three intersecting lines. It is also the most important component of the narrative structure. One is a blond boy who is terrible at studying. One is a handsome young man who loves photography. One is an ordinary girl who is not unknown and attracts attention. If I were to make a far-fetched metaphor. I think we can say that John, who has bad grades and cares about his family and is crying in his room, represents a little rebellion, inner vulnerability and a desire for family affection. Elias, who gave up concerts for a photo album, represents the pursuit of ideals. Michel, who finally accepted it with a little complaint and was eager to help the teacher, represents the most ordinary and unknown people. These three people have met before. Rebellion and idealism are good friends. The ideal illuminates the rebellious boy's appearance, while ordinary people silently run past them with their heads lowered. When the unknown person was the first to die under the gun, the person who pursued his ideals also lost his life but took the photo he wanted before he died. The boy who saw himself clearly walked out of school. Toward a safer and broader world. We can say that all the characters in the entire movie actually point to these three people. The three girls who keep complaining and the couple who fall in love are essentially the same as the disgraced Michel. Under the self-righteous rebelliousness or sweetness, in fact, he is still an unknown person. And the principal is an adult version of them. The black man was the same as Elias. He wanted to save everyone, but he died heroically by a gun because of this. The kissed John who was rescued by the black man was actually the same as John. They gave love to others, but they themselves were equally helpless and fragile. They didn't even know that they escaped from the window right next to them. While clarifying these people, Van Sant tells us the meaning of love. It is these people who meet again and again that support the complex and huge skeleton of the first half of the film. Three shots were taken of the three people meeting each other while taking pictures. Two shots of the two meeting each other in the reading room.

Two shots of the encounter between the three girls and the boy in the hallway. The repeated miscarriage of these people makes the structure of the entire film extremely exciting.

During this process, Van Sant has been emphasizing that every inconspicuous person in your life has his own life.

The theme of the film is a school shooting, but the shooting does not become apparent until the last half of the film. After Alex was hit with cream by his classmates, most people would only think that he was a poor soft persimmon. Not to mention that what he recorded in a small book in the cafeteria was actually a detailed murder plan.

The first half of the film is so well concealed that it really doesn’t look like anything will happen in this peaceful day. People may have started to wonder when John walked out of campus and met two people in "strange attire." And when Michel looked up, he heard the sound of a gun being loaded. It was successfully concealed by Van Sant's flashback with the sound of a door being locked. Alex was playing the piano in the room, and the music of "Für Elise" played. The camera pans three times over the bright red graffiti on the wall. The sound of the piano has been uninterrupted. It can be heard that the player is not skillful in playing, but he has no intention of stopping. Especially when the camera focuses on Eric who is playing computer games on the bed and zooms in, the piano is playing extremely resolutely. And when the camera cuts to the screen, the music returns to soothing and beautiful. And the computer games they play seem to be different from the first-person shooter games we usually come into contact with. Your enemies are a group of people who have no ability to resist at all. Eric was just like this, killing one unarmed person after another under the music, who didn't even know how to run away.

Then the themes of the film begin to emerge. Hitler's face, people holding Nazi flags, the package delivered was not a handful of toys. Plenty of ammunition, careful planning. It finally dawned on everyone that the shooting was about to begin. Everyone also knows that the two people are GAY. If we look back at the previous discussions at school, everyone did not understand the issue of homosexuality. I don’t know if this is a far-fetched reason for the two people’s behavior.

When Alex said goodbye to his father, a subtle disappointment flashed across his face, but this didn't stop anything.

"We are not happy at all in school" "The most important thing is to be happy," Alex said. "Yes" Eric said.

The turban on Eric’s head is so similar to the one in the lower left corner of the computer game. And the peaked cap Alex wears backwards reminds me of Holden Caulfield in "The Catcher in the Rye." The rebellious Holden turned into the extreme Alex. The hat also changed from red to black.

As I guessed at the beginning, Michel was the first to be killed. Then continue one by one. The camera is still a close-up of the head with a hand-held machine, and everything around it, including those who were shot, is completely blurred. Those who were the "protagonists" before became blurry figures falling down one by one in the distance.

The black man is a strange character, and I even had the idea that his name was "Elephant".

Eric was finally killed by Alex, and his face collapsed in the close-up. Alex walks into the empty shot.

The final blank space of the movie is full of tension. I started thinking it was just an empty shot to adjust the pace. Have been waiting for a final explanation. And when I saw the subtitles printed. I felt lost.

The whole film explains the characters. Van Sant finally didn't kill them all, he allowed two of them to survive. It was John with the blond hair and the girl who kissed John when he cried. The two men also appear on the movie's poster. Maybe this is Van Sant's attitude, the power that love brings. I wonder if someone gave Alex a kiss too. So can everyone survive?

The story is based on the Columbine school shooting that shocked the United States in 1994. Two students stormed into the school armed with automatic weapons and killed 12 students and a teacher before the two students committed suicide. Many details in the movie restore the news at that time. For example, the image of one of the students drinking the leftover drink of his dead classmate was captured on school surveillance cameras. On this basis, the director added many elements. Homosexuality, school violence, proliferation of guns, drugs. This peaceful film contains too many elements that are not calming.

The title of this film comes from this. The word "elephant" comes from a metaphor by Irish writer Bernard MacLaverty about "problems arise but are not solved". He said, "It is as if There is an elephant in your room. It is so huge that you cannot ignore its existence. However, everyone has a tacit agreement to never talk about it, ignore it together, and quickly get used to its existence. "And such indifference or even discrimination will eventually intensify the problem. Even if it is as docile as an elephant, it will produce unimaginable power when it becomes angry.

Homosexuality, school violence, proliferation of guns, drugs. This peaceful film contains too many elements that are not calming. And Van Sant, just like Beethoven back then, dedicated such a film to his students. Dedicated to all people.