Elephant Song 2014

Dr. Toby Greene, Bruce Greenwood, is a psychiatrist at an asylum who finds himself pulled into a chilling psychological game by his patient, Xavier Dolan Michael Aleen. Michael is a disturbingly calm and intelligent presence who centers his conversations on the disappearance of Greene’s colleague, Dr. James Lawrence, Colm Feore. As Michael weaves intricate memories and convincing lines, Greene starts bending the rules, influenced by the patient’s knack for turning truth into a trap. Head nurse Susan Peterson, Catherine Keener, warns Greene to keep his distance, but the allure of understanding what happened to Lawrence proves hard to resist.

The tension in Greene’s life outside the clinic bleeds into the sessions. Olivia, Carrie-Anne Moss, appears at the hospital in a confusing role that leaves Greene uncertain whether she is his sister or wife, intensifying the strain that already hangs over their shared past and Greene’s memory of their lost daughter Rachel, who died three years earlier. Meanwhile, Amy Greene, Melody Godin-Cormier, the child at the center of Greene’s occasional interactions, becomes a focal point of family ambiguity. Greene recalls telling Amy that Auntie Olivia makes the best pancakes, but also tells Michael that Amy is his own niece—an echo of the blurred lines between truth and story that runs through the entire tale.

Michael guides Greene into his narrative, asking him to distrust file rooms and form his own conclusions from Michael’s accounts. The patient unfolds troubling episodes from his past—the strained relationship with his parents, a singular moment in a nature reserve where his father killed an elephant, and a mother whose distance is tied to her singing career. Michael’s most provocative claim is that he “killed his mother” by refusing to call an ambulance after she overdosed, choosing to sing the “elephant song” instead as she lay dying, a revelation that unsettles Greene and unsettles the boundaries of responsibility and care. The patient’s stories hint at an inappropriate doctor-patient dynamic with Dr. Lawrence and a volatile, love-hate link with Nurse Peterson, and Michael seems to know intimate details of Greene and Peterson’s fractured history.

As the plot thickens, Michael tries to trade information for an early release, offering a concealed note in exchange for his freedom. He ultimately convinces Greene to barter a box of chocolates for the note, which claims that Lawrence has simply gone to be with his sick sister. A tense phone call to Lawrence seems to confirm the ruse, but Peterson notices the chocolates and warns that Michael is allergic to the nuts. The ensuing emergency—an adrenaline shot, a frantic resuscitation—ends with Michael’s death. Greene sacrificially seeks forgiveness from Peterson, weighing the cost of truth against the price of letting go.

When Dr. Lawrence returns, he confirms that he did care for Michael, though not in the way Michael had implied, and reveals his own scandals of misappropriation. The fallout at the hospital is swift: Greene resigns and Peterson is suspended for a period. The film closes on a quieter, intimate note, with Greene and Peterson meeting in a park and holding hands, suggesting that the uneasy bond between therapist and patient, and the fragile ties of a damaged family, may endure beyond the confines of the asylum.