In a tidy suburban housing tract, the neighborhood kids, aged thirteen, fourteen, have a lot in common. In fact, everything. They are heroin addicts: this is the sum total of their summer days. There's nothing cultish or underground about it; Christine is not to be confused with a modern-day Reefer Madness, though it was meant to alarm. It takes a low-key, straight-on approach, and no "brat-pack" here: Clarke deliberately chose unknown actors to avoid lending false excitement to the hard work and killing boredom of addiction. In fact this is a teenage Jeanne Dielman-with yet a new use for the cookie tin-and surpasses that film in its deconstruction of Kitchen Sink drama. Only the camera hovers over Christine like a concerned parent, wanting but unable to caress. Christine is one of Clarke's walking films, and so is Elephant, or rather, it's a marching film as its people cross parking lots, turn corners, tromp down alleyways with purposeful intent: to kill. Elephant is Clarke, degree zero. Eighteen assassination-style murders are enacted, with no dialogue to provide a context, only the location: Northern Ireland.