MovieChat Forums > Zero Day (2004) Discussion > Dident quite capture the pathology?

Dident quite capture the pathology?

posted 18 years ago by Dorian-Kellaway
7 replies | jump to latest

I liked this film quite a bit, I have much respect for independent filmmakers who have success without a budget, especially with a controversial subject like school shootings.

Though nearly all school shootings do not interest me, I studied Columbine at college for a project and have been fascinated by the event ever since thinking it to be comparable with terrorist attacks like 7/7 (though that’s just a theory of mine). Anyway I caught a portion of elephant at a friends house once and thought it looked like an art film with no grasp of the matter. I bought Zero day under advice from a teacher and yeah it was the best movie about a columbine event Id seen.

However does anyone else think the movie lacked a little bit of emotional realism. The performances were good and I loved keeping away from the notion of bullying being the central cause because that theory is flawed. Nevertheless I thought they just missed the boat by a few inches in capturing the pathology of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, particularly Eric. Andre lacked his viscous rage and the duo didn’t express anger, or bravado about what they were doing, dangerous excitement. Zero Day is good but the journals and videos of the real killers were much more unsettling and violent. I just thought the makers oversold the idea of random violence being completely random and the idea of just doing it for the sake of doing it. Its accurate and goes about columbine in the right way but it could have been better for the reasons mentioned; anyone else agree?

[–] ubugger 18 years ago

Some background:

I'm a student in the UK and most school shootings haven't interested me at but Columbine has (and I've done quite a bit of amateur research into it after seeing Bowling for Columbine). I would also wholeheartedly agree with your assertion that Columbine is comparable to a terrorist attack (and I myself have drawn this conclusion independantly from reading Eric's journals etc). It's nice to see somebody making the links I am. :)

Question:

"Nevertheless I thought they just missed the boat by a few inches in capturing the pathology of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, particularly Eric."

After watching the movie I felt the exact same way. However, after watching it a good 5 or 6 times and reading interviews with Ben Coccio I have come to a different conclusion. I think to truly understand this film you must look at as a completely separate event to Columbine in which the director tries to demonstrate how a school shooting could occur rather than how the Columbine school shooting occurred. In my eyes it shows two totally new set of school shooters going about their "attack" in their own way. Obviously, Ben Coccio has drawn from elements of the Columbine shooting but he has created a fictional set of characters and shown how easily it could occur again. An poignant quote which demonstrates the directors intent is that "When he [Ben Coccio] heard what had happened, he said, "I remember thinking that I was surprised that it hadn’t happened sooner." I think that while Ben Coccio undeniably draws inspiration from Columbine, Zero Day is more personally how Ben Coccio could imagine a high school shooting coming about.

In creating his movie, Ben Coccio created a set of characters who were much "cleaner" than the Columbine shooters. He has managed to capture the essence of characters that could be involved in a school shooting (while drawing on some aspects of the Columbine). I don't think the movie would have been anywhere near as moving if Ben Coccio had had to try to faithfully depict every aspect of the Columbine shooters who are extremely paradoxical and "messy" characters with varying motivations. Personally after watching the available tapes of Dylan and Eric I found I could associate far more with Andre and Cal in Zero Day. Andre and Cal were inherently more "normal" than Eric and Dylan and this is what gave the movie more impact for me knowing seeing how somebody so normal could carry out a school shooting. On the other hand Eric seems more like a ticking time bomb, who could have equally been a serial killer in later life. I believe Zero Day is definitely "inspired" by aspects Columbine but certainly not based on it.

As a final note I'd say that Zero Day was produced in 1999 in a time where most of the evidence on Eric and Dylan was anecdotal (to my knowledge) and I'm 99% sure that Ben didn't have access to half the information we have now (namely Eric's Journals which I believe were released fully this year). Therefore considering the information Ben would have had in 1999 I think his portrayal is remarkably vivid in capturing core elements of the Columbine shooting.

P.S. I wrote this quite hastily and may as well apologise for parts probably not making sense and I think I spelled "Coccio" wrong. However, I hope you find my insights interesting and maybe you'll even agree with some of them :).

[–] natalieinthewhitecoat 18 years ago

How may I find this information concerning Eric's journals?

[–] Lizzy_LaVey 18 years ago

I agree that Andre and Cal were not nearly as violent as Eric and Dylan, but remember, this is a movie. If the characters in this movie were as violent and destructive and angry as Eric and Dylan were then far fewer people would've seen it. That ammount of negative emotion is hard for 'normal' people to comprehend, and unless you are in that mind-space (which I was when I saw this film) then it is really hard to deal with it. It has to be toned down, if only so that it is easier for the audience to accept the events of the film, and be able to relate those events to their own lives.

Also, by making the characters violent, it would've been too much like making excuses for their actions, and what makes this film so great is that it specifically veers away from making excuses and creating blame.

"His name is John. He's a very interesting person."

[–] Dorian-Kellaway 18 years ago

After watching the movie I felt the exact same way. However, after watching it a good 5 or 6 times and reading interviews with Ben Coccio I have come to a different conclusion. I think to truly understand this film you must look at as a completely separate event to Columbine in which the director tries to demonstrate how a school shooting could occur rather than how the Columbine school shooting occurred

I dont really agree with that. I had a quarrel with this film in the sense that it dident seem like andre and cal would genuinely carry out a massacre. I could see how Cal would as you probably would have said the same about Dylan, but you need a dominant like Eric Harris. Andre did not sell that enough. Fair enough I see your point completely this isent about columbine, but Andre and Cal are too disconnected from a real school shooter pathology.

“Personally after watching the available tapes of Dylan and Eric I found I could associate far more with Andre and Cal in Zero Day. Andre and Cal were inherently more "normal" than Eric and Dylan and this is what gave the movie more impact for me knowing seeing how somebody so normal could carry out a school shooting.”

Again I don’t feel someone completely normal could carry out a school shooting in the sense that although they appear completely normal they are not. I personally found myself able to associate far more with Eric not so much with Dylan, I couldn't really associate with Andre and Cal at all. People like Andre would not carry out a real school shooting, so although Coccio is being fresh in his approach maybe he should have been more realistic. Hatred is the key and the boys dident express enough.

“That amount of negative emotion is hard for 'normal' people to comprehend”

I agree and even this film is only viewed if your seeking out material like this. I read about it in my school research and so when I was out and saw it on dvd I bought it.

[–] haliad 12 years ago

I have to agree. This film was excellent in nearly everything, but the one aspect that I couldn't quite believe about it was seeing them pull off the massacre. I knew they had a disturbed mindset (when they talked about being God-like near the end, you could see their delusions shining through) but I didn't see a whole lot of violent urges in them to make me think they were capable of pulling off the massacre.

Andre doesn't seem all that angry (at least not any angrier than your normal kid) and Cal in particular shocked me. Throughout the film he's very soft spoken and tame, and then we see him suddenly explode at the end and it doesn't make sense. More of their hatred for people should have been shown to make it clear that they had very violent feelings to act on.

Let's take out some puppets

[–] RepublicofE 10 years ago

Trust me, Ben Coccio knew exactly what he was doing with Cal's sudden "personality shift" in the library. It's exactly what happened with Dylan Klebold, for whom Cal is allegorical, during the actual CHS shooting. Eric Harris was the brains of the operation, while Dylan was subordinate, just like the relationship between Andre and Cal, but when they were actually doing the massacre Dylan mysteriously became the predominantly vocal one who did all the screaming and taunting while Eric was more subdued.

[–] RepublicofE 10 years ago

In fact if anything Cal wasn't quite violent enough to be exactly like Dylan Klebold. Klebold went around taunting people in the library for specific traits like wearing glasses or skin color or breast size. Cal just sort of generally yelled at everyone and ordered them to be quite.