Bowling For Columbine

[IronParrot]

Caught a press screening of Michael Moore's Bowling For Columbine this morning - it doesn't open here until Friday, but should be out in most places in the States already.

It's excellent. Don't be scared off by the fact that it's a documentary... just go and see it.

My review: (please note that it was for a Canadian paper, in case you don't get my reference to that here)

At one point in Michael Moore’s documentary Bowling For Columbine, a perhaps not-too-surprising statistic is presented: the firearm-related homicide rate in the United States is over eleven thousand a year, several times that of all the other major nations in the world combined. The question that he then investigates can be paraphrased quite briefly: Why do Americans kill Americans? Why does the U.S. specifically suffer this torrential affliction of violence, when the frequently blamed factors of lax gun laws and cultural saturation of violence in the media is a scenario that exists worldwide?

Moore, a card-carrying member of the NRA, approaches the question as a master essayist, combining ironic interview sessions with montages of media footage to tackle the debate over Second Amendment rights in every facet imaginable. The result is a commendable work of cinema that not only serves as the definitive film about America’s gun craze, but also manages to both amuse and shock for two seamless hours.

Bowling For Columbine demonstrates documentary excellence, in the sense that it is a mosaic of celluloid evidence that is objective in its structure and cinematographic style, but juxtaposes these clips in a fashion that coheres as a cunningly subliminal and utterly convincing argument against everything that Moore blames for the proliferation of American gun culture, from the alleged racist undertones in Cops to the poverty line drawn by the welfare-to-work programme. Seemingly unrelated socio-economic issues such as these are linked in a way that examines the root of the problem in every way the general public does not, because as Moore shows in a simple montage of news reports, they are ever so ready to blame Marilyn Manson for the poisoning of today’s youth.

A highlight of the film that extends its relevance and applicability beyond American borders is when Moore contrasts the U.S. with Canada, including the indispensable man-on-the-street interviews demonstrating American ignorance, always good for a laugh on this side of the border. For example, according to our southern neighbours, we Canadians have a lower murder rate because we are all a bunch of pacifistic white guys who never watch violent movies.

Yet these interviews are meagre in impact next to those with the likes of John Nichols, an associate of Timothy McVeigh’s who has never heard of Gandhi, and Charlton Heston, everybody’s favourite ape-fighting NRA president. On the surface, these are just interviews – questions and answers on camera; but through this device alone, Moore scathingly unmasks a frightening degree of hypocrisy in the pro-gun argument that makes it collapse before our eyes.

The true impressiveness of Bowling For Columbine lies in the fact that more often than not, Moore simply steps aside and lets the images tell the story, in the true spirit of cinema. The security camera tapes of the Columbine massacre speak for themselves, as does a sequence that intercuts speeches by Heston and a Columbine victim’s father at their respective rallies, as does a mélange of cartoons, advertisements and propaganda reels that self-evidently dissect the country from whence they came.

What Bowling For Columbine does, at the simplest level, is string morsels of footage together in a way that nails the bullseye of persuasion, condemning almost every given of American society for its violent consequences. Often hilarious, other times powerfully sentimental, and important from beginning to end, it must be seen.