Waste of Money.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

This short film serves two purposes. It provides a chilling perspective on the anonymity of civil conflict and it offers a meditation on violence in the media. The premise is equally primitive and thought- provoking. It simply follows around random, casually dressed men (who look like members of The Smiths and Big Country) as they slay other men in dilapidated Belfast settings. The minimal soundtrack of footsteps and gunfire creates a hypnotic and creepy atmosphere. All of the sound and lack thereof is necessary. The closeups of the handguns are necessary, as are the lingering shots of post-mortem bodies. Seconds can feel like minutes. Clarke's attempt to confront the audience forces us to ponder the dehumanization of The Troubles in Northern Ireland. The irony behind the appeal of this film is that for those who wish to watch violent action movies just for the sake of the spectacle of violence will be the most disappointed. That is exactly why this film is so important. It numbs us to violence. The lack of a narrative provides us the question of why we want to see what we are seeing. To turn gratuitous, prolonged violence into something boring becomes a statement on how desensitized a society can become to death and war.

I already gave my comments as Bart-53. Gus vanSant made my day by putting this movie as a feature on his DVD by the same name (Elephant). It was quite a few years ago that I saw this movie on TV and I have regretted ever since that I did not tape it to VHS as I had done with all the other films by Alan Clarke (the BBC showed most of his movies over a period of some weeks). Other beauties by Alan Clark are Scum (introducing Tim Roth) and The Firm (introducing Gary Oldman). I thought I would never see this movie ever again until I recently rented Gus vanSant's Elephant. According to the interview with him, which is also a feature on his DVD, he was made aware of Alan Clarke's movie by a friend. Gus vanSant's Elephant is an entirely different movie (based on the Columbine killings), but he was definitely influenced by Alan Clarkes style of filming (long steadycam shots in which we follow characters). Although the topic is no longer an issue (Northern Ireland killings) this is still a must-see movie.

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.

Despite the fact that I enjoyed the movie, the slow pace really tookaway from the movie's entertainment value. I thought that Elephanthad great potential as far as a hit goes but what it lacked was apunching moment. Sure there was the school shooting part but wefigured out that was going to happen ages before it actually did sowe came to expect it. One thing that I can rave about in this film was the camera angles.I loved how the camera seemed to be following the actor. Andeach shot was a piece of art on it's own. It made the movierespectable really. I can't say that I would have even finishedwatching Elephant if it wasn't for it captivating camera work.Overall, Elephant was an enjoyable flick that I would definitelyrecommend to someone in search of an "artsy" film.