What the heck is film for? Most folks see mainstream Hollywood movies as a form of entertainment or escape. For them, seven bucks is a small price to pay for 90 minutes of silly jokes, noisy chase scenes, pumped up action heroes or hot sex.

Others, including a growing number of youth workers and pastors, try to harness film's power to help them teach or preach. Some culture experts say attempts to use movies in this way leave your audience more excited about the film snippets you show than the theological points you try to make.

"Shock and Challenge"

Some of the independent filmmakers who work outside the Hollywood system are hard-core believers in the idea that film should shock and challenge viewers by forcing them to face up to social realities they'd often rather ignore.

In Elephant, director Gus Van Sant (Good Will Hunting) revisits the horrors of Columbine by examining the deadening boredom and alienating social rituals that are such a big part of the high school experience for so many teens.

The April 20, 1999, school shootings at Columbine left 13 dead and made the Denver-area school a symbol for everything wrong about kids, public education, and suburbia. For many people the events of Sept. 11, 2001, knocked Columbine down a rung or two on their rankings of national tragedies; but the World Trade Center and Pentagon terrorist attacks haven't lessened the horrors of high school life for millions of kids, who continue to report to class even though they're afraid they may get shot, beat up, or harassed in the hallway.

Elephant

Elephant (which won best picture and director awards at Cannes and will be available soon on DVD) was filmed in Portland, Ore., using real-life high school students, most of whom have no previous acting experience. Alex Frost and Eric Deulen play the two killers, who cope with constant taunts at school by becoming lost in their own little world of weapons, violent video games, homosexual longings and neo-Nazi fantasies. The two teens seem sanest and happiest while meticulously assembling and maintaining their extensive arsenal of guns, knives and explosive devices.

There's been some debate about the meaning of the film's title. Some say it refers to the kinds of big obvious subjects in the room that nobody wants to address. Others say it's an allusion to the parable of the three blind men who describe different parts of the same animal. Both meanings make sense, as Elephant tries to force people to think once again about the complex and confusing realities of teen life that the Columbine killings exposed, but which most of us tried to forget about as soon as we could.

Elephant is far from the only pop culture product that attempts to dissect Columbine and ascertain its deeper meanings. Another film called Zero Day covered similar territory; and Michael Moore's acclaimed documentary, Bowling for Columbine, tried to expose the darkness at the heart of America's gun culture the same way his Roger and Me looked at uncaring corporate CEOs. There also has been a flood of Columbine-inspired novels about troubled boys, including DBC Pierre's award-winning Vernon God Little, Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk about Kevin and Jim Shepard's Project X. Don't forget Hey, Nostradamus by Douglas Coupland, who drew raves a few years back with books such as Generation X and Life after God.