On Tuesday April 20th 1999 in Columbine High School, Colarado, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on a firearms 'rampage'. 13 kids died. Between 1997 and 1999 there were 8 other such events at American high schools. Gus Van Sant's film explores these events...

The film is rendered using long takes... it is famous for endless shots of lone kids wandering through corridors. This is usually described by commentators as rendering the lonesome experience of high school.

This view of the film is partial and neurotic. Rather, the Van Sant's film celebrates life, celebrates life in all its colours... John is a capabale young man, more capable than his father... Elias is a photographer, a young man who is unafraid of life, willing to make connections... the jock is a jock, the girls vomit after minimal meals (personally I love the smell of vomit on the breath of a size 00 girl)... but this film is not neurotic. Neither does it portray the killers as psychopaths... Alex and Eric rather are just like everyone else. It is the long take that allows us to get to know these kids, the way they are and feel...

However this film is more than simply just a collection of long takes, it has a structure similar to Pulp Fiction - pathways cross, stories interlock. This results in the logic of cause and effect being seriously undermined. It is the undermining of this logic that the film follows throughout. Rather than look at the cause of these high school 'rampages' the film provides a multitude of possible reasons, reasons are over determined: the weather, homsexuality, bullying, video games, the internet, the availbility of firearms, parental ambivalence, nazi videos... you name it, every possible reason is there, and every reason undermined... Rather the film seems to land the responsibility for the action right back in the laps of the boys who commited the killings. These are intelligent young men from good homes, talented, well adjusted. Not that economics and education need to have anything to do with it. The point is they make the choice to kill. They make the choice to end the lives of kids just like them. They choose choice...

Van Sant's film, then, is more a celebration of life and the problem of those that seek causes for their unhappiness outside of themselves, and solutions outside of themselves. It attempts to explore a simple truth... take control and be responsible for your own actions...