weekend movie-viewing

Well, I spent the weekend watching Columbine type indie movies.

Saw Elephant by Gus Van Sant. Loved it. Also tried to watch The delicate art of the rifle. Also on independent film channel. Every once in a while you see the difference between a great artist and a wannabe -pretentious arty type. Okay, I don't know if the guy who wrote The Delicate Art of the Rifle was trying to be pretentious. But dang, he seemed to be! And the weird thing is that in Elephant there is soo little talking and what talking there is is just plain cryptic. You don't know the Dylan-Klebold type main characters very well. You didn't know why they wanted to shoot everyone in their school. But you also didn't know their victims very well. The victims were kinda in all the categories one sees in school: jock, lonely, loser, rejected, lone black kid, queen bee types. Although they were not really known, you kinda knew them. But you're still kinda confused. Yet, there is this total wonderful eerieness to the flick. You don't know what the heck is going on. There is no clear plot except for these guys planning to kill everyone. And yet you can't turn your eyes away. And when it comes on TV you want to see it again. Maybe because you're trying to figure out what happened...like maybe you think you missed something. Or maybe you just weirdly like the thing.

But the Delicate Art of the Rifle is all talk. We know way too much. We see mostly the shooter and his roommate. And for all that talk, there is no sense of connection.

Now, maybe I'm being hard on this flick because I didn't see all of it. But it was just very hard to sit through it. I have little patience for pretentiousness.

-C