Elephant

This film is still so important even throughout its mess of a nonlinear story. There’s nothing beautiful about this film unless you spend your time scrolling through nostalgiacore, and love liminal space cinematography. Thats basically this film in visual terms. Its so 2000s. Truthfully thats the only thing that a normal person can appreciate out of it. The rest comes from understanding the environment, understanding that theres nothing you can change about the film and its events and the way it’s perceived. Understanding that its as grounded as it has to be for the everyone else to get it. Which is what makes the film so damn great because it immerses us so early on into it by how unspectacular it is. By the time we’re looking at the story through the perspective of the heinous perpetrators, theres no exit. Van Sant wasn't afraid of accepting this, of engaging those two as their own characters just as equally as every other person we follow. Which makes me appreciate him even more as a director, even though so many of his films, including this one, are so iffy, very clearly not for everyone. I had to rewatch this and Last Days because after watching some of his other movies i sort of started to appreciate the quieter versions of both of those movies.