Elephant (1989)

elephant 1989Elephant is made-for-television film about the Troubles in Northern Ireland. It was funded by the BBC, directed by Alan Clarke and released in 1989. It stars Gary Walker, Michael Foyle, Bill Hamilton, Danny Small and a number of other actors, portraying unnamed characters. Elephant was the creation of Danny Boyle, better known to movie-goers as the director of Trainspotting, 28 Days Later and Slumdog Millionaire. Boyle is of English birth, though his parents are Irish Catholics. He developed the idea for Elephant while working with BBC Northern Ireland in Belfast. The film’s title is credited to Irish writer Bernard MacLaverty, author of Cal, who once described sectarian violence in Ireland as “the elephant in our living room”.

Elephant is unusual in its composition and narrative (or, more precisely, its lack of narrative). The film begins with an unidentified man entering a public swimming pool and gunning down a cleaner in cold blood. The murder is swift and businesslike, without hesitation, uncertainty or panic. Several more killings follow. They take place in service stations, bathrooms, cafes, warehouses, sporting fields and private homes. All follow the same pattern: they are cold-blooded executions with no dialogue, no explanation, no emotion and no remorse. We know nothing of the killers, the victims or their political allegiances, though it is clear the gunmen are following orders and targeting specific victims. The camera remains fixed on bodies of the dead, perhaps longer than the viewer expects. The film ends abruptly, without revealing anything about what has happened.

Elephant is a depiction of Northern Ireland’s cycle of violence, rather than its political or religious ideas. It shows individuals prepared to carry out cold blooded executions without pause or emotion. Northern Ireland’s paramilitary groups, Elephant seems to imply, have lost sight of their original causes; these groups are now engaged in senseless, retaliatory violence. The film conveys the brutality of the Troubles in a minimalist but confronting fashion. Boyle and Clarke’s Elephant inspired Gus Van Sant’s 2003 movie of the same name, depicting a high school shooting similar to the 1999 Columbine massacre.


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