Bowing for Columbine - Four Stars

[catscradle]

Bowling for Colunbine was one of those movies that left me with a migraine afterwards. That's not a bad thing - except for the mind numbing pain part - this movie simply blew my mind away. It wasn't your average episode of The Awful Truth or TV Nation that's been extended to two hours - Michael Moore wasn't out for blood, revenge or a cynical laugh at the way our world works. Moore was looking for an answer: was perhaps our gun culture and the American proclivity towards fear the crux of what laid behind the terrible events at Columbine and other school shootings? Were we all, perhaps, pointing our fingers at the wrong culprits for what's gone terribly wrong in our country?

Michael Moore uses humor, disgust, respect and sympathy all in the appropriate places. While accused of being cartoonish by some detractors, the only time Bowling for Columbine becomes this is when Michael uses a cartoon to illustrate the history of fear and gun use in the US.

A very pleasant surprise is Moore's interview with Marilyn Manson. Manson returned to the Denver area for the first time in two years since canceling out of respect for the sensitive feelings of the community after the masacre. I never really paid much attention to him before as he wasn't really my taste in music - he just reminded me of Kiss and Alice Cooper of yester-year. But he answered all of Moore's questions with intelligence and as one who was very well informed of the political sitituation at the time of the Columbine shootings. When Moore asks "Are you aware that on the morning of the shootings at Columbine, that the US began it's heaviest bombings of Kosovo?" Marilyn answered, "Yes. I'd like to think I have more influence over the kids than the President, but I think the President has a little more than I do."

Many of the reviewers didn't get the connection of the bombing of Kosovo and the school shootings. They didn't get the connection made between Lockheed Martin - Littleton's/Denver's largest employer that manufacture Titan missles for the government - and violence and fear running amok in the communities. They didn't get the connection between all the fear and violence and the bombing of the World Trade Center. But it's all connected, and Moore does a great job illustrating that connection, despite the inability of many to get it.

I think the inability to understand the connection is not that Moore was inept at filming, but that it says something a little too dark and scary about ourselves. It says that we are responsible. It says that we let fear run us and that we're willing to listen to anyone that points the finger of blame at something else. When Moore showed us the collapse of the WTC, he was telling us that our fear and our violence towards others was circling back in on us. He's telling us, this doesn't have to be the case if we end the cycle. He's also telling us, that we better take notice of what our leaders are doing and not blindly accept it because they say it's all gonna be okay. Our ignorance can hurt us and has hurt us. So lets do something about it. Lets be informed about what these people in Washington are doing.

To illustrate the US as a nation of fear - and that fear being the leading culprit of shooting deaths in the US - Moore takes us across the lake from Detroit to a town in Canada. In the past three years they had one shooting death and that was caused by a man from Detroit. Canada is a nation of armed people. They have as many guns there as they do in the US per capita. I can't remember the exact statistic, but it was like 65 gun deaths in Canada per year to 11,000 in the United States.

Moore questioned many Canadians whether they lock their doors at night. They all said no. So Moore went door to door to see if it was true. Lo and behold - no one in that town in Canada locks their doors. Even with Detroit just across the lake ;) Their news stories weren't full of violence and fear mongering. As has been pointed out in a few reviews so far - in the United States, violent crime went down 20% but the reporting of violent crime went up 600%. Can it be that the media is making us so afraid that we're all buying guns out of terror? Moore asked the question, should a nation this afraid and jittery be armed?

Moore then takes us to Flint, Michagin where a little six year old girl has been killed by another six year old boy. The boy found the gun at his uncle's house where he and his mother were staying after having been evicted from their apartment. When asked why the boy's mother didn't see the child take the gun to school, the answer is tragic. It's not that his mother wasn't a good mother. She was at work. She was with a welfare program that ships people off on an hour and a half bus ride to their $5.50 an hour job. The mother worked two of these jobs and was still unable to pay the rent. One of her jobs was with The American Bandstand cafe, owned by - yes him - Dick Clark. He worked a deal with the government to give jobs to welfare people at only .35 cents above minimum wage. Plus Dick get's a tax break for all his noble efforts. So mom spends three hours traveling a day and works 70 hours a week - and for it all, she can't pay her rent and doesn't have any time to watch her kids. Not even the Mayor of Flint thought that the welfare program was effective or worth it's weight in manure. But hey, Bill Clinton thought it was a great idea and Dubya isn't changing it anytime soon. When Moore went to interview Dick Clark he was practically thrown from the moving van they were in. Dick didn't want to talk about the employees he was exploiting.

The NRA had a convention in Flint about a week after the tragedy - they held one in Denver only 10 days after Columbine. Charlton Heston was the key speaker at each one, encouraging the populace to buy guns as their God given right. His offical stance is to hold a rifle in the air and shout "From my cold dead hands!" as though evil liberals are behind every corner seeking to take his gun from him. At this point, I really can't tell if Charlton is just too old and senile to fully understand what he's doing. He claimed ignorance of knowing about either Columbine or the shooting of the little girl till after the meetings. Whether he knew or not, it's obvious that the NRA is doing what it can to keep Moses and God behind them.

At the end of the movie there was an applause. Despite the fact we were in Columbine territory, everyone seemed to love this documentary. The footage shown from within the school while Klebold and Harris held them hostage was difficult to watch - I even cried while watching the footage and listening to the 911 phone calls. It couldn't have been easy for this audience, but still they responded positively to the film. Perhaps it's the first time someone has tried to treat them like adults when dealing with the matter. Perhaps it was the first time no one was trying to skirt the real issues and look for blame in the absurd. Whatever the case, the people liked it.

On it's second week here, the matinee was almost full and as we left the theater, the people were lined around the building for the night time showing. Looks like it was going to be another full house for another week.

Congratulations, Michael, you made a powerful movie - one that's going to make us think for a long time.