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Movie Reviews
| Bowling for Columbine. Dir. by Michael Moore. Prod. by Dog Eat Dog Films. MGM, 2002. 120 mins.
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| The filmmaker Michael Moore is an enigmatic figure. During a time of war, characterized by militarism, unbridled patriotism, governmental encroachment on civil liberties, and growing corporate influence, Moore challenges the political orthodoxy of President George W. Bush's America. Moore's muckraking Stupid White Men (2001) enjoyed a long ride on the best-seller lists, while the documentary film Bowling for Columbine, which received an Academy Award and a Cannes Film Festival prize, did considerable business at the box office. Moore also earned notoriety when, in his Oscar acceptance speech, he denounced American intervention in Iraq. Nevertheless, rumors of Moore's demise were greatly exaggerated, as Bowling for Columbine continued its lucrative run after the film-maker's controversial remarks. |
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In Bowling for Columbine, Moore uses the April 20, 1999, murders of thirteen people at Columbine High School in the Denver suburb of Littleton, Colorado, as a vehicle to investigate violence in contemporary America. The film takes its title from the fact that shortly before their shooting spree, Columbine students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold attended an early morning bowling class. Entranced by the juxtaposition of the mundane with the violent, Moore bowls a few frames and poses the question of why over eleven thousand Americans die each year from gunshot wounds. |
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Moore's investigation leads him into the debate over gun control in the United States. But viewers should hardly expect a scholarly discussion regarding the origins of the Second Amendment or the academic discourse surrounding Michael A. Bellesîles's research or lack thereof. Moore's evidence is anecdotal; the film focuses on what the director perceives as a cultural obsession with guns. The jovial Moore talks with Americans at shooting ranges and, in one of the film's more amusing sequences, proudly receives a rifle for opening a new account at a midwestern bank. Moore also takes aim at the accessibility of arms and ammunition. Learning that Harris and Klebold purchased their ammunition from K-Mart, Moore takes wounded survivors of the Columbine shooting to K-Mart's corporate headquarters, demanding that the corporation halt its sale of deadly bullets. |
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Moore also takes on the National Rifle Association (NRA), chiding the organization and its former president, the actor Charlton Heston, for a lack of sensitivity in holding rallies at the sites of gun violence, such as Denver. In fact, near the film's end, Moore interviews Heston in the actor's home. Caught off guard by Moore's questions regarding the victims of gun violence, Heston's defense of the NRA is hardly articulate, and in frustration he terminates the interview. Yet knowledge that Heston has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease makes it difficult for audiences to share the director's glee at placing the often arrogant actor on the defensive. |
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Moore's film, however, should not be perceived through the narrow lens of the gun control issue. Observing that although Americans and Canadians share similar frontier histories and that both nations have few laws limiting the availability of guns, Moore points out that Canada has a far lower rate of gun violence. Moore contends that Canadians are simply not as afraid as Americans. And to prove his point, Moore ventures into Toronto neighborhoods where he discovers that few residents bother to lock their front doors. Needless to say, he finds a very different response on the other side of the border. |
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