If you didn't know that Gus van Sandt was an experienced and talented director ("Mala Noche," "Drugstore Cowboy," "To Die For"), the first 40 minutes of this film wouldn't convince you.
It's as if the kid of some immensely wealthy tycoon decided he wanted to make a movie and Dad bought him everything he needed. Lord knows what his directions would have looked like. Okay. Let's have it spontaneous. You walk down the hallway, see, and turn right, and then turn left. Well, no -- turn right again. The camera will stay behind you for five minutes but you ignore it. And the three of you guys, you sit there and make up a conversation. I don't know about what. Okay, the two of you be jealous of Brittany there. Then you go into the toilet stalls and do something. Yes, you can vomit if you want. Make it up.
It just goes on like that. Endless tracking shots. Not endless, really, but lasting far far longer than any viewer would expect, and at the end of the shots nothing much happens. Most of the conversations aren't audible anyway. They're part of the white noise of a typical high school milieu. We can get enough snatches to understand what's up, but those snatches are nothing more than the highly ritualized, phatic exchanges that aren't meant to signal anything except that the two people are on friendly terms. ("Can I take your picture?" "Okay.") Some of these interactions are shown several times, from the points of view of independent witnesses, for reasons a little beyond me. Once was enough. Even the school shootings are done without bells ringing.
I'm making this sound like an amateur enterprise, so let me take everything back. There is nothing here that resembles a catastrophe-of-the-week TV movie. It may not be everyone's cup of tea but it's an original production in every respect. There is no musical score to speak of -- just one of the kids imperfectly playing a piece by Beethoven. A lot of the kids have equal screen time so we're deprived of the easy narrative hook in which we identify with a particular character. The photography is splendid. There is no grand plan spelled out for the Gotterdamerung, only one kid explaining to another where they'll go once they get into the school. (We can't follow the directions ourselves.) No lingering over the beautifully ugly guns and explosives for the testosterone deranged. We don't even know how the kids got the guns. And we learn that one of them is a Tech-9, which must mean something to Charlton Heston. But no automatic weapons are used. No heads explode on screen. Only one or two shootings, I think, includes both the shooter and the victim in the same shot. We find out virtually nothing about the family life of any of the kids. We don't even find that the mass murderers came from dysfunctional families or anything, thanks for small favors. The kids kill whimsically, seemingly without passion. "Remember, above all, have fun tomorrow," one says to the other. It seems all the more tragic for the absence of anything out of the ordinary. Kids flee through the hallways in silence except for the scuffling of their shoes. The cops don't arrive at the end. Nobody is outside with a bullhorn trying to talk the murderers into giving themselves up. The school building is not turned into a crocheted shambles by a shower of bullets.
If many movies about a subject like school shootings would have been done sensationalistically, by the numbers, both the sensationalism and the numbers are remarkably absent in this film.
A good job by everyone concerned and, as I say, original above everything else.
It's as if the kid of some immensely wealthy tycoon decided he wanted to make a movie and Dad bought him everything he needed. Lord knows what his directions would have looked like. Okay. Let's have it spontaneous. You walk down the hallway, see, and turn right, and then turn left. Well, no -- turn right again. The camera will stay behind you for five minutes but you ignore it. And the three of you guys, you sit there and make up a conversation. I don't know about what. Okay, the two of you be jealous of Brittany there. Then you go into the toilet stalls and do something. Yes, you can vomit if you want. Make it up.
It just goes on like that. Endless tracking shots. Not endless, really, but lasting far far longer than any viewer would expect, and at the end of the shots nothing much happens. Most of the conversations aren't audible anyway. They're part of the white noise of a typical high school milieu. We can get enough snatches to understand what's up, but those snatches are nothing more than the highly ritualized, phatic exchanges that aren't meant to signal anything except that the two people are on friendly terms. ("Can I take your picture?" "Okay.") Some of these interactions are shown several times, from the points of view of independent witnesses, for reasons a little beyond me. Once was enough. Even the school shootings are done without bells ringing.
I'm making this sound like an amateur enterprise, so let me take everything back. There is nothing here that resembles a catastrophe-of-the-week TV movie. It may not be everyone's cup of tea but it's an original production in every respect. There is no musical score to speak of -- just one of the kids imperfectly playing a piece by Beethoven. A lot of the kids have equal screen time so we're deprived of the easy narrative hook in which we identify with a particular character. The photography is splendid. There is no grand plan spelled out for the Gotterdamerung, only one kid explaining to another where they'll go once they get into the school. (We can't follow the directions ourselves.) No lingering over the beautifully ugly guns and explosives for the testosterone deranged. We don't even know how the kids got the guns. And we learn that one of them is a Tech-9, which must mean something to Charlton Heston. But no automatic weapons are used. No heads explode on screen. Only one or two shootings, I think, includes both the shooter and the victim in the same shot. We find out virtually nothing about the family life of any of the kids. We don't even find that the mass murderers came from dysfunctional families or anything, thanks for small favors. The kids kill whimsically, seemingly without passion. "Remember, above all, have fun tomorrow," one says to the other. It seems all the more tragic for the absence of anything out of the ordinary. Kids flee through the hallways in silence except for the scuffling of their shoes. The cops don't arrive at the end. Nobody is outside with a bullhorn trying to talk the murderers into giving themselves up. The school building is not turned into a crocheted shambles by a shower of bullets.
If many movies about a subject like school shootings would have been done sensationalistically, by the numbers, both the sensationalism and the numbers are remarkably absent in this film.
A good job by everyone concerned and, as I say, original above everything else.