'ELEPHANT' LETS TEENS DO TALKING.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

MAVERICK FILMMAKER Gus Van Sant - whose work has ranged from the commercially cuddly ``Good Will Hunting'' to such lyrical lower-depths tone poems as ``Mala Noche,'' ``Drugstore Cowboy'' and ``My Own Private Idaho'' - has named his new film about a Columbine-style school shooting spree ``Elephant.''

In various interviews, Van Sant has remarked that the title was borrowed from a British film about the Northern Ireland conflict, the proverbial point of which was that that ugly, intractable problem was the big elephant in the room that nobody wanted to acknowledge. But he has also invoked the ancient Indian parable about the five blind men giving five varying descriptions of what an elephant is like, each based on the part of the huge animal they had touched.

So Van Sant's ``Elephant'' combines elements of both adages: It looks both unrelentingly and obliquely at something we all wish never occurred and dispassionately touches on every reason we've dreamed up as to why, while stubbornly refusing to isolate any of them as a clear, blamable cause.

The movie won this year's top picture and directing prizes at the Cannes Film Festival. Some, mostly American critics there were outraged by its flat refusal to take any kind of stand on the issue of school violence. You may think that that makes for an utterly amoral effort. Or you could just as easily come out feeling that Van Sant honors the dead by not reducing them to victims of facile cultural calculus, along with the purest distillation yet of his remarkable empathy for the everyday sensitivity of modern teens (yes, even the shooters).

The very fact that the film could be read either way (and, of course, at all gradations in between) marks it as some kind of great. Where else are you going to be confronted with such harrowing choices in a theater this year?

Filmed at a decommissioned high school near the filmmaker's Portland, Ore., home, ``Elephant'' is mainly composed of long, handheld shots that follow a dozen or so students around the campus during, more or less, a partly cloudy school day.

Van Sant barely scripted the piece and cast nonprofessional students from the Northwest to improvise the main roles. The resulting, floating survey of youthful resentments, desires and half-articulated attitudes is as completely recognizable as it is utterly alien and suggests an underlying anxiety that could be devastatingly triggered by anything or nothing.

The mostly fashion-model-quality ensemble includes a friendly boy (John Robinson) who's coping with an alcoholic father; a devoted young photographer (Elias McConnell); a pack of gossipy, bulimic mall rats (Nicole George, Brittany Mountain and Jordan Taylor); an unfashionable loner girl (Kristen Hicks); an apparently benign BMOC (Nathan Tyson); and buddies Alex (Alex Frost) and Eric (Eric Deulen).

The only back story of any extent is on these last two. They apparently spent the last few days playing violent video games, getting high, watching bad stuff on TV, mail-ordering firearms off the Internet and, before setting out on their fateful mission.

In ``Elephant,'' people want to feel good, but bad things happen, sometimes because they think that doing those things will make them feel better. If there's anything truly more definitive to be said about that, of course, we would all very much like to hear it.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

ELEPHANT - Four stars

(R: violence, language, nudity, drug use)

Starring: John Robinson, Alex Frost, Eric Deulen, Elias McConnell, Carrie Finklea, Kristen Hicks.

Director: Gus Van Sant.

Running time: 1 hr. 21 min.

Playing: Laemmle Playhouse 7, Pasadena; Laemmle Sunset 5, West Hollywood; Landmark NuWilshire, Santa Monica; Edwards University 6, Irvine.

In a nutshell: Everyday life at a suburban high school is nonjudgmentally observed, even after two students go on a shooting rampage.