Allan Clarkes 1989 Version of Elephant and Gus Van Sants 2003 Version - Essay Example

The successive scenes showing seemingly random acts of shooting with the grainy film used also helped to give an effect that the viewers are watching footage of actual killings. The drawback of Clarke’s film is that it was deemed unusual for such a killing spree to get unnoticed by the police, thus some commented that Clarke’s Elephant was unrealistic.
Van Sant’s tribute to the 1989 film by Clarke was much acclaimed by film critics winning at the Cannes Film Festival in 2003 because of its timely storyline of school shootings (Mitchell). Patterned after the incident at Columbine High School, the film was similar to Clarke’s film because of its minimalism and use of tracking shots (Mitchell). Contributing to its effective portrayal of an actual shooting incident were the inexperienced actors in the cast and the same tracking shots used by Clarke in the 1989 version of the film.

The conclusion for both films is that they had extensively made an impact on the viewers with Clarke’s and Van Sant’s minimalist style effectively conveying their message through the screen. Clarke’s 1989 Elephant conveyed the ambiance of cold, brutal and unremorseful killings during his time while Van Sant’s version conveyed in a subtler and more dramatic approach the senseless shootings in our time. Both films, as the title connotes, are elephants in the living room or in simpler terms, problems that society simply chooses to take for granted (Mitchell). Read More