Elephant (1989)

Alan Clarke's short film about the Northern Irish troubles, compiles a series of brutal executions, which all focus on the assassin.


The film opens with an extreme long shot, where the assassin is barely visible, this becomes a tracking long shot as the camera follows the man walking into a swimming-baths. The mise-en-scene has a dull colour scheme and the assassin's clothes are bland, reflecting the fact that the film takes place in the real world and the setting is quite ordinary. This suggests that murders were commonplace at the time in Northern Ireland. It also creates an almost documentary style feel to the film, which is fitting given that the events were recreated from real police reports. The sequence continues with more tracking shots of him walking through the swimming baths, searching for his target, before shooting a caretaker with a shotgun. After he has left the scene with another walking tracking long shot, we get a whole body shot of the victim, this lasts for quite some time, forcing the audience to confront the reality of the death. This template for the filming of the murders is then repeated throughout the film, emphasising how often these brutal murders took place.
The lack of dialogue allows the audience to focus exclusively on the action and mise-en-scene, I feel that adding exposition and dialogue would have taken away from the clear antiviolence message that the film displays. 

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