‘Elephant,’ Narrated by Meghan Markle: Film Review
Of all the members of the animal kingdom we think of as akin to humans — chimps, dolphins, whales, perhaps (if we’re being honest about it) our dogs — elephants may be the most movingly and preternaturally aware. Because you can see how intelligent they are. You see it in a chimp’s face, too, of course, but elephants have that special pensive, lost-in-the-ages quality. These lumberingly noble, sad-eyed creatures, whose defining features — the massive ears and extended trunks — appear to have been sculpted out of modeling clay by a God who couldn’t decide whether he was making a clown or a sage, can live to 60 or 70 and are part of reverent extended families (they bond by delicately entwining their trunks). The reason we say that they “never forget” is that they carry the ancient weight of their experience in every movement and action, in every furrowed crease of their thick gray hides, ...