December 13, 2003

You and the alien shall be alike before the Lord. You and the alien who resides with you shall have the same law and the same ordinance.
(Num. 15:15b-16, NRSV)

Like many young Pakistanis, Khalid Faiz-Mohammad believed he could make a better life for himself in America. On his first attempt to get into the country, in 1988, he was caught, deported and barred from returning for one year.

Jessica Lynch resists America’s desire to call her a war hero. “They used me as a way to symbolize all this stuff,” Lynch told Diane Sawyer during a television interview on Veteran’s Day. “It’s wrong.”

Relentlessly somber, with the eruptions of teen violence rendered in a hushed style, Gus Van Sant's Elephant—his response to the Columbine shootings—is an art-house version of an exploitation picture. It's very skillfully made, with warm cinematography by Harris Savides that provides a visual and tonal counterpoint to the affectless interactions of the adolescent characters, and with a restless camera that roams the halls of a monstrous glass-and-concrete high school.