Gus Van Sants exercise in non-manipulative story telling. I see no capitalization or explanation to be had from this tragedy, simply an unfolding of events which result in some of the most ethereal filmmaking I’ve ever seen.
I don’t think an event like columbine should not be dissected for societal improvement, but I can see how our attempts to make sense of tragedy can also be damaging and grossly miss the point.
The nuance of the story telling is unmatched.
Erice really likes stories of young women mythologizing the society and male figures in their life, allowing the adult audience to draw their own conclusions about the contrast between these two realities. This is his most original and iconic premise from his short career.
In the beginning of the existentialist work Thus Spoke Zarathustra, by Friedrich Nietzsche a young man retreats into the mountains “6000 feet beyond man and time” in order to achieve enlightenment and once achieved, return to civilization. In Stanley Kubrick's 2001: a Space Odyssey, Dave Bowman journeys to “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite” on a mission to investigate a mysterious black monolith that has been paramount in the advancement of the human species. The connection between the two works are…
