It simply looks at the day as it unfolds, and that is a brave and radical act; it refuses to supply reasons and assign cures, so that we can close the case and move on.Read Full Review »
100
Boston Globe: Wesley Morris
The atmosphere is hypo-stylized, vividly generic and worse than real, like a doomy Frederick Wiseman documentary.Read Full Review »
90
Washington Post: Ann Hornaday
A movie that throws out the rules with audacity, assurance and admirable moral seriousness.Read Full Review »
90
LOS ANGELES TIMES: Manohla Dargis
Working with cinematographer Harris Savides and serving as the film's editor, he (Van Sant) has fashioned a visual style and a narrative shape that has the quality of a waking dream, then a nightmare. Rarely do form and content add up with such harmonious grace and power.Read Full Review »
To those who see no purpose to this film, I say the purpose is learning not to turn a blind eye. The unique and unforgettable Elephant keeps its eyes wide open.Read Full Review »
80
The New York Times: Dana Stevens
By making the camera an observer, we get a perspective that often comes out of horror movies, a choice that whips the ordinary with the terrifying, an unforgettable mix.Read Full Review »
75
Philadelphia Inquirer: Carrie Rickey
The film equivalent of Maya Lin's Vietnam monument, that collective gravestone to the fallen, in the way it employs abstract means to quantify the loss of life and elicit a profound sense of grief.Read Full Review »
75
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Lisa Schwarzbaum
Beauty competes with vacuity in Elephant, and for a good stretch of writer-director Gus Van Sant's maddeningly passive ode to high school innocence and Columbine-age youthful evil, beauty wins.Read Full Review »
70
Village Voice: J. Hoberman
Flagrantly artistic and transfixed by its own enigma, Elephant is strongest on evoking a succession of specific, "empty" moments and weakest on motivation.Read Full Review »
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