YES, WE CANNES!

I’ve noticed a trend at the Cannes film festival in the years since 9/11. Directors (usually American) score major points among judges for films depicting America’s failures and shortcomings – often in a grim, violent, or brutally satirical way.

Witness the recent triumph of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911 (a word-play on Ray Bradbury’s sci-fi novel, Fahrenheit 451, a film version of which, ironically, was directed by Frenchman Francois Truffaut). The film, which questions George W. Bush’s motives for invading Iraq, grabbed the Palme d’Or, the festival’s top prize, at a time when Bush is running for reelection and America’s military adventures continue to stir worldwide criticism, if not loathing.

Another official "Festival Selection" this year was The Fog of War, Errol Morris’ probing documentary about Robert McNamara, controversial US Defense Secretary during the Vietnam War buildup. And last year’s festival featured another Michael Moore film, Bowling for Columbine, which explored America’s love of gunplay and gun culture. It played well there, even managing to grab an Oscar for "Best Documentary," riding a wave of America-bashing that was suddenly back in style. Bash, it seems, was the new black.

But the jury prize for best film in 2003 went to Gus Van Sant’s Elephant, an oblique, Dogma-style rumination on what’s wrong with America. Actually, to call it a rumination is to imply that the director gives you a lot of material to think about. The 80-minute Elephant, shot in documentary style with a roving camera inside a real American high school, is an effective depiction of a "day in the life" of US kids that just happens to end with a Columbine-type massacre. Van Sant, who shifts periodically between Hollywood projects and more arty fare, held a casting call for real kids in the Portland, Oregon area, even using their real names in the movie. They include kids like Elias, a high school photographer; Michelle, the shy class nerd who works in the library; Eric, the laid-back kid with dyed-blonde hair whose dad is an alcoholic; and Alex, the piano-playing misfit who regularly gets spattered with spitballs in chemistry class. They’re all high school clichés in Van Sant’s grim, moody film, but this ain’t Fast Times At Ridgemont High.

Actually, it’s a kind of blank canvas upon which the viewer must supply his or her own reasons for the eruption of violence that echoes the Columbine high school incident in which two students went on a murderous, orchestrated rampage, killing 24 of their own classmates, along with teachers and administrators. No one can really say why such horror took place (the two teen perpetrators killed themselves before authorities took them in), yet it led to other "copy-cat" rampages, in Arkansas for example, and even in Germany last year.

For whatever reason, Columbine came to stand for what was wrong with America – at least until 9/11 occurred in 2001 and led to other, much broader speculation about what was wrong with America. One incident – Columbine – was an internal alarm bell, turning Americans’ attention to their own homes, schools and backyards. The second – 9/11 – turned their attention outward, to hatred and animosity abroad, and called for introspection about "why the world hates America."

It was an unfortunate state of affairs for George W. Bush to inherit as president, but there has to be something of a karmic connection behind all the events over the past four years, and it doesn’t take a Delphic Oracle to see it. Sometimes (to paraphrase Malcolm X) chickens do come home to roost.

However, in Elephant, explanation and soul-searching is not what’s on offer. Van Sant’s is a blank gaze, almost as blank as Andy Warhol’s (the ultimate "Dogma" director, at least in his early work). He doesn’t want to "explain" these kids, so he has them recreate their day, in repetitive, overlapping chit-chat and jaunts in the lunchroom that make you wonder when these kids ever attend classes. His directing style indeed owes a lot to Slacker, Richard Linklater’s 1990 film about wayward, wandering teens in Austin, Texas, which opens with a lone gunman committing a random, senseless act of violence.

The school itself in Elephant is vast, with endless hallways and dark corridors that Van Sant’s camera traverses numbingly, painstakingly, as if to suggest: What a well-equipped American high school, and yet how institutional and oppressive at the same time. (With so few intentional signifiers, one has to freely speculate on what Van Sant’s images are trying to convey.)

There are some poignant, beautiful moments in the film’s 80 minutes. One is the sound of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata playing in the background as students hold gym class out on a broad, open field. The music’s sublime melody seems to drift above them, implying there is something more to life than sports and daily rituals (it also recalls a story about Beatnik writer Jack Kerouac, who supposedly dropped his college football scholarship to pursue art and writing after hearing Beethoven playing in a nearby dorm window). But the general tone of Elephant is of a consuming numbness, a bland routine unfolding over and over again, from various angles, forcing the viewer to strain (and stay awake) to spot differences and clues to behavior.

When the clues start to solidify – such as the two kids who sit at home, watching old Nazi footage on TV until a delivery van arrives with a semi-automatic rifle for delivery – they rise above the numb, banal narrative of life in an American high school and turn the film rudely into a shocker.

But even there, you’re left with very little information, let alone emotion. Your shock is no different from reading Time or Newsweek moment-by-moment accounts of the same true-life incident. (There are subtle glimpses of humanity: Eric, warned by the two khaki-clad killers not to go back inside the school because "some shit is about to go down," runs around stopping kids who are about to return to classes. He then tracks down his drunken dad, who’s wandering around the school grounds, and they briefly embrace. It’s the warmest moment in the movie.)

But other actions defy meaning or interpretation. One black student roams the hallways as the explosions and bodies pile up, helping a student or two flee, but showing no alarm or concern himself. He approaches one of the killers who is preparing to shoot the school principal, and is himself shot point-blank for his troubles. So much for heroes.

What may strike viewers now, perhaps, is how unprepared American schools were for such violence. The kids apparently ordered their guns over the Internet. They walked right into school, because metal detectors were not a part of everyday life at the time. The shock of Elephant comes from the realization that nobody ever saw such a lethal attack coming. And that’s exactly how Americans felt in the aftermath of 9/11.

Does Van Sant mean to connect these two events, to somehow suggest that America’s complacency is at fault for both Columbine and 9/11? Again, it’s impossible to say. His Sphinx-like film touched a nerve among Cannes’ judges, though, who were not entirely French, but seemed to enjoy dissecting the Goliath of America ad nauseam, even if the body on display was largely featureless and lacking in data.