Choices, choices

The ever-present ques­tion “so what do I do next?” just got even more com­plic­ated with this job advert­ise­ment.

Last night, I went to see the Gus Van Sant movie Ele­phant with my gor­geous Thea. It was very inter­est­ing, one of those med­it­a­tions on a slice of life, almost fly-on-the-wall, but appar­ently not quite Dogme 95. It fol­lows these kids around a high­school and then there’s a Columbine-style shoot-out. The shots are all really tight on the kids and the rest of the world is a blur. The ele­phant, I figure, relates to the old joke about the blind men trying to figure out what an ele­phant is when they each have only one part of it. We can’t under­stand Columbine, because we only have one bit of it. I’m not sure if Van Sant thinks he’s show­ing us the whole ele­phant here or just one bit again and remind­ing us that it’s just one bit. I think many people would find the film dull beyond belief. I loved the long, mean­der­ing, point­less track­ing shots and the repet­it­ive moments thanks to the over­laid timeline. I loved the moment with the two shoot­ers in private before they go out and do it. Some of it is random and brutal. 

Anyhow, we went for a hot chocol­ate and a latte after and had an intriguing con­ver­sa­tion. Thea always has inter­est­ing per­spect­ives, and this time we were talk­ing about logic and inher­ent order in the world as opposed to chaos, and she made the per­cept­ive and dif­fi­cult (in the sense of uncom­fort­able) obser­va­tion that one of the reas­ons we talk about Abu Ghraib in terms of ‘bar­bar­ism’ and ‘mon­stros­ity’ is an attempt to place it out­side of ourselves as some­thing we would never be cap­able of.