Bowling For Columbine (2002)

This review assumes you have watched the movie already.

Bowling for Columbine is my first review on a nonfiction film. During my very first class in the semester (but not in the polytechnic) we watched one of Michael Moore's biggest hits, Bowling for Columbine. Out of curiosity I had read the disturbingly violent plays that the Virginia Tech gunman had written, and participated in a few online discussions regarding whether video games were to blame for youth violence, but other than that? I was clean.

Sometimes a clean, ignorant perspective is good. Like how naive young children and teenagers can occasionally point out and take notice of things that adults miss over and over again. Whenever I'm diving into a new film, sometimes I like to read ahead and check out the scores on Rotten Tomatoes to know whether or not a good time is coming up, or a scoop of ice cream and some porn is in order. Sometimes I don't; sometimes I'm afraid preconceptions will mar how I enjoy the film.

With Columbine my brand new laptop was right beside me and I couldn't resist. 96% on the Tomatometer if I remember right. I was careful not to assume 96% meant a good film - it meant a film rated well by most critics and filmgoers. Which said nothing really, of how right (if there is a right) Moore's message would be.

The message in Columbine doesn't come through clearly at first; Moore meanders aside and interviews vaguely connected people. The common theme running through all of these ultimately boil down to how the US has scared itself into relaxing gun laws so it can buy more guns to assuage their fears of something that has been blown up by the media. The scared public demand guns, the guns are given freely, and when the wrong people get them, people throw the blame around and find a new host of things to be afraid of. Bottom line: things need to change.

Keep in mind: just because the film soars, doesn't mean it is right. Moore is indeed very skilful at evoking emotional response from the audience. He uses satire to get your attention then moves it down the lane of uncomfortable truths. At one point Moore is rebutting the assertions that the US keeps its weapons for self-defense only by playing a montage of American aggressiveness throughout history. It was a little humourous at first, I must admit. The final scene displays Osama bin Laden using his CIA training to bring down the World Trade Centre towers amid horrified yells from the public. At that moment someone in class stifled what sounded like a laugh. I looked at her in horror and wondered what the hell she was laughing at. I remained on edge until class ended.

But I didn't get angry at Moore. Moore comes across as sincere, because he gets out on screen to fight for his beliefs numerous times. One of my coursemates noticed that Moore tended to cut a lot and take things out of context. I can assure you that he does tailor and cut and move around scenes to make them powerful; one such example is interspersing the speech of a father who had lost his son to the Columbine killers with a speech defending the right to use guns. So he can look sincere, and look right, but does what he say really have it?

I can't answer that question, and after the film I knew that to find a truly satisfactory answer for myself would take me a very long time. So I'll just review some criticisms and parts of the movie instead of a whole.

Moore interviewed people from both sides of the argument; for some people such as Heston he pretends to be on their side in order to open a dialogue. Moore's critics have slammed these tactics. I think that it's alright for Moore to be dishonest about his intentions so that the subject content can be purer - if he were to approach them as the left-winger he was, his interviewees would certainly be a lot more careful with what they said. But we don't want some intricately carved excuse. We want raw naked opinion.

Moore's victory against K-mart might not have been as big as i seemed. The internet yielded many news articles concerning people who got angry at how K-mart stopped handgun ammo sales for a bunch of anti-gun lobbyists, but nothing from after Moore released Bowling for Columbine. Weird. Also, some talk about K-mart not keeping it's promise, and the fact that K-mart was losing greatly to Wal-mart anyway, who were by the way, released press statements assuring everyone that they would always be selling handgun ammo.

One thing my lecturer mentioned was the final interview with Charles Heston, where Moore corners the NRA president, and after the latter dodges a barrage of difficult questions, stalks off and cannot turn around when Moore confronts him with a picture of a girl that died in a shooting. I find it sad that Moore never mentioned that Heston was suffering was Alzhiemer's and prostate cancer. It's a major dent in an otherwise perfect ending.

There was a scene where a reporter was talking to a camera. His crew had just set up near the scene close to where the girl had been shot. The reporter held up a picture of the girl and said the usual concillary, television lines. Then the camera went off. The reporter huffed a sigh of relief, then began to talk about other things, like his hair. At first I thought it was just a sign of how callous people were, how people trivialised tragedy into news. But then I put myself in the reporter's position. I would probably have been saying the same things. I probably wouldn't want to talk about how a young girl, not even a teenager, was shot with a gun by a boy her own age.

Who would want to talk about that? We would rather make excuses to do something else. It's so damn simple to make excuses - whenever something terrible happens we either ignore it or want all the answers right away. We want to be able to blame someone right away, to have something solid, and when we can't we make excuses so we can. The NRA is strong in America - so what to do? Blame school, blame computer games, blame Marilyn Manson. Better play it safe and lock it all down, buy a gun too. The specific criticisms on Wikipedia accuse Moore of obscuring facts - not of screwing up his logic. Because he makes sense.

Bowling for Columbine is certainly excellent in terms of editing and presentation. It's a movie that'll probably make you laugh hard and perhaps even cry a bit. As to the subject matter, I cannot comment much. Michael Moore is so good at winning us over to his side that I don't trust the movie to put me in an impartial mindset. To Moore's credit, he advocates that you read up on it yourself. Make your own decision.