The Green Elephant (1999)

The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

Very nice movie. Have watched many times. Going to watch many more.

A hearth-warming story about friendship and the hardships of making new friends in unfriendly places. An improvised and minimalistic narrative and scenario will tell us about stuff such as hard work, regrets, life experiences, different points of view, duty, honor and consequences of your actions.The great finale only is worth your time to watch this modern masterpiece, made for you by a savant prodigy of cinematographic arts, Svetlana Baskova. This movie is more than just a motion picture on your screen...Green Elephant is love. Green Elephant is life.

The Green Elephant is a film about human freedom, a cornerstone of its value and invaluable to the individual. Also, dedicated to the highest human qualities: courage, honor, selflessness and male friendship. Movies about possible metamorphoses of human nature in a closed space, total humiliation and hopelessness and just awesome allegory on the Russian army by Svetlana Baskova.Definitely one of the best Russian movie ever. Want to get unforgettable impression from entertaining dialogs and preposterous picture? Just do it! Anyway, this film doesn't leave anyone indifferent.

The Green Elephant is shot in a hand held way on a poor quality VHS camera that gives it a look of a war crime. It looks as if it's been downloaded from Ogrish and as if we are about to witness a real atrocity. The content certainly echoes that feeling with two guys locked in a basement, one of them is seemingly not all there and his mad ramblings are sending the other insane. The man that has already lost it is berated over and over again then he finally snaps. Whilst our somewhat sane friend finally gets some sleep, the other decides to do his friend a favour by defecating on a plate and rubbing it all over himself and then wakes his friend to offer him some to eat. All seemingly for real too. The two are eventually taken from the basement prison by the guard and his assistant. Here they are berated some more and the more mentally unstable of the two is forced to give the officer oral sex. This is where the other finally snaps and kills the officer, rapes him then rips out is throat and makes his friend use it as a trunk.The whole film has a horrible feel to it. The hand-held VHS camera-work really puts you in the basement with the two and the feeling of claustrophobia is felt in a strong way. So much so that you long to leave the cell and yet when you do when one of the soldiers is let out to do some work, the only rest bite you get is to watch him being made to clean a filthy toilet with a fork. You also get some black and white segments that show the guard and his assistant on the outside of the cell. I'm not sure what these sections are attempting to portray. The problem with the film is that it is attempting to go for something deep. I've read that the director has some feminist intentions with it but these were lost on me. It all comes across as a bit pretentious with the overly vile dialog being screamed at the characters getting boring and loosing all impact fast. While the film certainly does pack a punch, it is a little lost on the fact that over the 90 minute runtime, little really happens and it becomes a chore to get through not for the horrific content but for the sheer dullness of it all.4/10