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Elephant [DVD] [2004]
 
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Elephant [DVD] [2004]

DVD ~ Elias McConnell
3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
RRP: £19.99
Price: £4.98 & eligible for Free UK delivery on orders over £5 with Super Saver Delivery. See details and conditions
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Customers buy this item with Last Days [DVD] [2005] DVD ~ Michael Pitt

Elephant [DVD] [2004] + Last Days [DVD] [2005]
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  • This item: Elephant [DVD] [2004] DVD ~ Elias McConnell

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  • Last Days [DVD] [2005] DVD ~ Michael Pitt

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What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Elephant [DVD] [2004]
86% buy the item featured on this page:
Elephant [DVD] [2004] 3.5 out of 5 stars (37)
£4.98
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Product details

  • Actors: Elias McConnell, John Robinson, Alex Frost, Eric Deulen, Jordan Taylor
  • Directors: Gus Van Sant
  • Writers: Gus Van Sant
  • Producers: Bill Robinson, Dany Wolf, Diane Keaton, J.T. LeRoy, Jay Hernandez
  • Format: PAL
  • Language English, German
  • Region: Region 2 (This DVD may not be viewable outside Europe. Read more about DVD formats.)
  • Number of discs: 1
  • Classification: 15
  • Studio: Optimum Home Entertainment
  • DVD Release Date: 26 Jul 2004
  • Run Time: 80 minutes
  • Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
  • ASIN: B0002ADWIU
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 11,630 in DVD (See Bestsellers in DVD)

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Reviews

Amazon.co.uk Review
Elephant, the elegant and unsettling movie from Gus Van Sant (My Own Private Idaho, Good Will Hunting), depicts students at a high school before and during a harrowing, Columbine-style shooting. The movie follows one young boy who takes over the wheel from his drunken dad while returning from lunch, then loops back in time and follows another student who crosses paths with the first, then loops back and follows another--all captured in long, unedited tracking shots that are serene and unhurried, even when two boys in camouflage gear, carrying heavy bags, arrive at the school and begin shooting. Elephant doesn't attempt to explain their behaviour; it simply places the audience back in the brief yet interminable window of adolescence, when life is trivial and painfully important at the same time. Your reaction to Elephant will depend as much on your life experiences as anything in the movie itself. --Bret Fetzer

Special Features
  • Rare interview with Gus van Sant
  • From Elephant to Elephant - comparison of the two films
  • In School With Elephant
  • Trailers


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Customer Reviews

37 Reviews
5 star:
 (15)
4 star:
 (8)
3 star:
 (4)
2 star:
 (2)
1 star:
 (8)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.5 out of 5 stars (37 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
27 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Van Sant's Elephants, 26 Dec 2007
By T. S. Waddington "Chimp" (Northampton) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Elephant is an interesting film that mixes the trivialities of high school life with the terror of an unexplainable, unsypathetic evil. Van Sant uses Beethovens Moonlight sonata to great effect creating a serene and haunting atmosphere as the camera floats around the school following the unknowing students. It is a film that intends to shock and often does as Van Sant uses a technique of luring his audience into a false sense of security only to cruely snap it away.
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13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Realist cinema at its best, 29 Mar 2005
By Mr. A. E. O'loughlin "oloughlinae1" (London, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Understated, elegant and serene, yet at the same time bold, powerful and haunting, Gus Van Sant's 'Elephant' is a superb piece of ultra-realist filmmaking. Taking the documentary-style legacy of 'Kids' to new levels, 'Elephant' is more of a work of art than entertaiment.

The quality of the film lies in the fact that it appreciates the power of subtlety to create a truly disturbing atmosphere which lodges itself in your mind and refuses to leave. At once realistic and yet strangely dreamlike, the camera follows a number of American students around a school, documenting the way their paths interject and recapturing the same events through different viewpoints. It is the ordinary, mundane existences of these characters which the film is trying to capture; Gus Van Sant is trying to show us what it is that is lost when people are indiscriminantly murdered. The fact that the audience is well aware of how the film is going to end only adds to this strangely real yet dreamlike quality, as does the haunting 'Moonlight Sonata' which accompanies much of the movement, and the violence, when it does come, is filmed in such a silent, almost logical way that it only serves as an extension of this mood. 'Elephant' is a snapshot of a moment in its character's lives in which time stands still and the ordinary becomes the unbelievable.

If you want an entertaining, escapist experience then this isn't for you; if, on the other hand, you want an artistic, subtle and haunting cinematic experience, 'Elephant' will fulfill.

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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Exremely Good - not for everyone, 11 April 2006
By A Customer
Reading the reviewers of Van Sant's Elephant, you get the feeling that there is a very definite split between the audience. People either love it or hate it - there doesn't seem to be any grey area. Unfortunately (or furtunately, depending on how you choose to look at it), this is probably the best way to describe challenging and ambitious art cinema - doesn't this rule generally apply to most avant guarde films that are considered the best of their time?

It's true Elephant is long, and nothing happens for about an hour, you do merely follow students around the corridors of a school, and yes the killers are surprisingly cliche. And these are the elements that people will base the fact of loving or hating the film.

One of the major problems of a film like this and the subject that it is tackling is that it will gain a large recognition. And because of this it will be given more of a mainstream audience than it probably would have done otherwise. This is not a bad thing, but it does mean that a large number of people going to see a film like this that is tackling a hot topic of the day will be unprepared for the unconventional, voyeuristic piece of art filmmaking that will unravel. Film students, and people well conversed in filmic conventions and styles will, more often than not, love it as it subverts and offers new conventions. But to an audience that is more accustomed to watching 'normal' films, it will strike a barron and boring chord.

So does this mean that the film is boring and pointless? No of course not, and it is also not a film that is merely preaching to the converted, as even that has much to teach and bring to filmmaking and so is definetly not futile. In the end the film is what it is, the audience will get out of it what they bring, and probably the ones that find it boring are the ones that are more used to having narrative set up in the standard way.

Obviously, I found the film to be extremeley rewarding and I got a lot out of it, but then I've done a film studies course and am going into filmmaking. I thought the first hour was very clever and needed the slow uneventful burn, you needed to know that these were real, normal people, you neeeded to become accustomed to them. The killing needed to be numbing senseless and real.

The prblem with films like this and others like Monsters Ball is that they reach the wrong audience, one that cannot deal with real emotion and reality as they have been raised on hollywood films that subvert reality - which is fine, but makes it very hard for them to deal with anything but, it also has a very narrowing effect on film culture.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

1.0 out of 5 stars Superficial and exploitative with extra cod-psychology feature.
Gratuitous violence but done in a Cool way so that's all right then and it wins a Palm D'Or.
Published 3 months ago by Professor Necessiter

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant movie - not for the masses.
I never read any of the reviews before watching this movie, so I didn't know what to expect. But I must admit: I was impressed. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Sue G

1.0 out of 5 stars Heartless
For such serious subject matter, the film falls down on many aspects - when the shooting takes place the reactions are totally false and unbelievable as is the dialogue. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Mr. R. J. Wilson

1.0 out of 5 stars elephant
this is absolute rubbish dont believe all the garbage written on the back of the box how brilliant this is etc etc etc , this is utter tosh!! talk about fall asleep!! a big yawn
Published 7 months ago by Andrew David Tillett

1.0 out of 5 stars Boring.
1 star is even too good for this movie.

Probably, in all honesty, the worst movie i have ever seen. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Marcel Schutzman

3.0 out of 5 stars worth watching? perhaps..
I'll hand it to this film for covering a daring subject as this. I think it is a clever concept in theory, but but in practise it simply falls short of success. Read more
Published 12 months ago by Mr. S. J. Altman

5.0 out of 5 stars The elephant in the room
Sometimes its worth looking at a film like this and examining whether it was showered with acclaim because its actually any good or because it's a fashionable subject. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Phil Hattie

5.0 out of 5 stars It stays with you
I saw this movie in an Arts Cinema in Chelsea a few years ago and still think about it. I loved the fact that it doesn't rush but follows each person for a period of time using... Read more
Published 15 months ago by J. Phillips

4.0 out of 5 stars Elephant by Gus Van Sant
The film is a true artistic masterpiece, with brilliant camera use, plot and the way the story is presented as a whole. Read more
Published 16 months ago by M

5.0 out of 5 stars Modern Day Neo-realism
This film is a piece of art. As far as I can remember (I saw this film a couple of years ago) there is very little dialogue and pretty much no action until the end (save piano... Read more
Published 16 months ago by G. Flynn

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