Review by Gary Tooze

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Description: Gus Van Sant's drifty, eloquent, and effortlessly poignant ELEPHANT is loosely based on the massacre at Columbine High School. (On April 20, 1999 in Littleton, Colorado two 17-year-old boys fired semi-automatic weapons on their high school classmates, killing 13, injuring 25, and then taking their own lives.) Van Sant's film is set in Portland, Oregon and uses non-actors chosen from an open casting call of high school students. On a crisp, sunny Autumn day, with colourful leaves on the trees and puffy clouds drifting across blue skies, students arrive at school as usual. Eli takes photographs for his portfolio, John manages problems with his alcoholic father, Acadia attends a gay-lesbian meeting, Nate plays a game of tag football, and Michelle works in the library. Meanwhile, two outsiders, Eric and Alex, harbour hatred for their peers. Each of ELEPHANT's students have unique interests and personalities, and the film respectfully emphasises their individuality. It also demonstrates how school is an unpredictable blender where students' differences are constantly agitated. Harris Savides' excellent photography--shot in 1:33 aspect ratio, making the movie a cube in the centre of the screen--follows and floats, sometimes blurring and juxtaposing the light to achieve an ethereal mood; while Leslie Shatz's ambient sound design and a soundtrack of soft Beethoven piano music completes that feeling. The film is structured in brief overlapping chapters all taking place on the morning of the 11:35 A.M. attack.
ELEPHANT won the Palme D'Or and Best Director at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival.

 

 

The Film:

Excerpt from Roger Ebert at the Chicago Sun-Times located HERE

Image :    NOTE: The below Blu-ray captures were ripped directly from the Blu-ray disc.
 

This transfer is progressive and adheres to the original 1.37 ratio (unlike the Blu-ray of Van Sant's Paranoid Park which was moved to 1.78 - NOTE: The region 1 DVD, reviewed HERE, is indeed in 1.33).  Despite being single-layered with the feature taking up less than 18 Gig - this looks quite good. Colors are bright, detail is strong and the visuals export healthy contrast. Skin tones are not overly warm. Daylight scenes look the most impressive and there is some darker, or questionably lit, sequences that reflect the vérité signature of the film. This Blu-ray looks impressive and has some occasional depth. The MPEG-4 encode has done some viable justice to the film's appearance. Thumbs up on the visual front!

CLICK EACH BLU-RAY CAPTURE TO SEE ALL IMAGES IN FULL 1920X1080 RESOLUTION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There are two English audio tracks available for the film. A DTS-HD Master 5.1 at 2199 kbps and a competent and serviceable 2.0 channel linear PCM. Both tracks are clean and clear without notable flaws and both report equally adeptly with the 5.1 supporting the centre channel dialogue and frequent classical music to a marginally higher degree. It is really the film's silence that is most haunting and effecting though. The surround is used sparingly but has some decent, and subtle, moments. I had no complaints at all. There are no subtitles and my Momitsu has identified it as being a region 'B'-locked.

 

 

BOTTOM LINE:
This is easily one of the best films of 2003. This Blu-ray is infinitely superior to the past DVD editions in terms of AV transfer. While I am disappointed at the lack of supplements - we may never see it looking any better and I recommend! 

Gary Tooze

August 17th, 2009