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Bowling for Columbine
By Dave DePino
What is it that documentarian filmmaker and social thinker Michael Moore and Moses, a.k.a. Charlton Heston have in common? Well, believe it or not, they are both card-carrying members of the National Rifle Association (NRA). The difference is that the latter is a cheerleader for the organization and the former, a thorn in its side. After reaching some kind of fame and even a sliver of eminence for giving us the most famous and well touted box office, documentary success in history, Roger & Me, Moore now turns his attention to America's obsession with firearms and violence. With baseball cap and dark-rimmed glasses, this roly-poly, somewhat sloppy man, seems an odd David to the many corporate and societal Goliaths roaming around.
The NRA is an easy target for Moore because the spokespeople for the group appear to be insensitive to the terrible consequences resulting from the types of guns they give the okay to. To kill a deer or protect yourself from a burglar you don't need to have a weapon that could take down a large elephant or drop forty kids in a schoolyard or cafeteria in a matter of seconds. But who is really to blame? Is it NRA and the manufacturers of firearms? Is it the violence in video games and/or television programming and films? Is it racism? Is it the government? Is it Goth-rocker Marilyn Mason's lyrics? This is what Moore purports to set out to explore; however, the exploration is heavily tilted to the left.
This film, as you would expect from its title, has to do with the terrible event that took place in 1999, in Littleton, Colorado at Columbine High School. It is said that the two boys who shot up the school went bowling before class and then turned automatic weapons on their innocent contemporaries. In the pursuit of highlighting this outrageous mass murder, Moore takes this film in a dozen different directions, always floating somewhere around America's history of violence and the out-of-control gun problem we are trying to deal with in this country. Sometimes one forgets that the prime focus of the film was supposed to be Columbine. Points are made that Canada has as many or more guns per capita as we do, but the number of murders there is about a dozen times less. Canada, along with the rest of the armed Western World is exposed to the same TV shows, films, video games and music. Is it that our media has scared us into feeling a need to be well armed? Are they merchants of unnecessary fear? Moore throws around a lot of questions, none of which really get answered.
Moore brings in the Oklahoma City bombing incident and actually has a mind-boggling and unbelievably frightening, face-to-face interview with Terry Nichols's brother. He then, unfairly corrals Dick Clark and accusatorily questions him about a policy in place at one of Clark's facilities in Flint, Michigan, where the shooting death of a six-year-old child at the hands of another six-year-old child occurred. There is a darkly funny cartoon showing the history of violence in America and a satisfying segment where Moore, along with two victims from Columbine - with bullets still inside them , go to K-Mart and get the executives to faze out the selling of ammunitions. There is some heart-wrenching footage from within the cafeteria as the slaughter was taking place that will move you to tears. Then there's more fun with some Chris Rock standup, an interview with the liberal producer of the TV show "Cops," a visit to a bank that will give you a gun if you open a new account, and the crowning finale, an interview with Moses himself. In this last segment, Moore tries to get Heston to apologize for going to both Columbine and Flint just days after the murders to rally the NRA members. Heston, embarrassed and cornered in his own home, walks away from the camera looking very much like a sad, old man and not the tiger at the podium demanding his right to bear arms.
This two-hour film is very much worth seeing, even if it seems to skip all over the place. And, it is a bit overly ambitious in trying to make its points so fiercely that in some cases, Moore almost shoots himself in the foot by compromising his factual accounts and statistics with overly liberal trimmings and anticlimactic tags. Though a lot of his views are near the mark, I don't remember one instance where there was any real balance in reportage.
Writer/director Moore's documentary is only slightly more slick than a guerilla-style, film verite, but it does have the same, realistic feel. Brian Danitz handles the photography, with Harold Moss's animation, Jeff Gibbs's music, and Kurt Engfehr editing the old and new footage.
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