meloframa

Movies with issues

Recently, I watched Elephant, the 2003 Gus Van Sant movie about school shootings. It was incredibly boring. Beautifully shot, but so dull. Maybe this was Van Sant’s intent. In much the same way that all the lists and tedious amount of detail apparently makes the murders in Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho more vivid by comparison, did the relentless banality in Elephant made the shootings more shocking? Maybe, maybe.

In fact, what the movie left me with more than anything else, was a long string of questions about the filmmakers’ intent. I’m sure it was a movie designed to leave me questioning, but I think what I should be questioning is the characters’ motivations; not the motivations of the Director of Photography. However, the characters were so underdeveloped that I honestly didn’t care about their hopes, dreams or secret pain. Was this the filmmakers’ intent? When the teenage gunman opened up a door and shot three girls, I said aloud, “oh, about time, they were getting on my nerves”. Was this the reaction I was supposed to have? Was the movie designed to highlight our (universal “our”) callous apathy towards other people’s pain and suffering? Again, I can only say: maybe… maybe.

My advice would be, if you do decide to rent the movie, plan to do some knitting or maybe arm yourself with a crossword puzzle, because Elephant is not an action-packed movie.

I feel strongly that there is a story to tell about the school shootings that have become almost commonplace in the last twenty years.* I like escapism, but I also think it’s the job of art to tackle reality, too: interpret, skew, or even just retell real events. It may result in movies that are insensitive or tough to watch, but the alternative is simply ignoring the terrible things that happen in our society. So I applaud Gus Van Sant for making Elephant… I just think he should have tried a little harder to find a compelling story inside the movie’s shocking premise.

I regularly watch so-called “issues” films. Whether this is out of morbid curiosity or simply an desire to understand the darker side of human nature, I don’t know. If it’s about rape or murder or addiction or desperate poverty, and the words “searing” or “powerful” appear in reviews, chances are the movie will make it onto my rental queue. I watch these movies and I expect to be left with a queasy feeling of melancholy when the credits roll. Issues movies are always depressing.

However, there’s an issues movie that has become my new gold standard. Hard Candy, the 2005 movie about paedophilia, is the issues movie that I wasn’t sure could be successfully executed. It’s dark. It’s both searing and powerful. It’s also fantastically entertaining. It’s a real popcorn movie. It’s upsetting in places and the viewer is left with some tough questions about paedophilia, but it’s also a triumph of movie storytelling. No need for the knitting or crossword, because Hard Candy grips you at its outset and doesn’t let go until the credits roll. Most issues films are a challenge to watch; Hard Candy is effortless.

Please, filmmakers, learn from Hard Candy: it’s possible to tell an entertaining story whilst also tackling an issue.

*FYI: Michael S. Kimmel writes a fairly lucid sociological discourse about school shootings in Adolescent Masculinity, Homophobia and Violence (PDF file).