Bowling for Columbine
Written, produced and directed by Michael Moore
Opens December 26
At major cinemas
REVIEW
BY MARGARET ALLUM
Visiting the Bowling for Columbine web site is more like visiting an activist site than a film promo. There are options for getting involved in a range grassroots campaigns, information on which Democrats in the US Congress support the war on Iraq, as well as profiles of Green candidates who ran in the November 5 US congressional election. Click Operation: Oily Residue and you get an update on US aggression against Iraq.
This should not come as a surprise, since Michael Moore film maker, social critic and professional agitator is the force behind Bowling for Columbine. Moore's television series, The Awful Truth, won a huge audience for his mischievous anti-corporate ideas and progressive politics, and his book Stupid White Men and Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation was on the New York Times best-seller's list for 18 weeks.
A controversial segment of The Awful Truth was the Teen Sniper School. Its premise was that students at US high schools occasionally went on the rampage, gunning down their teachers and peers, but generally the body count was fairly low. Moore decided that specialised training was required to address the poor shooting skills of America's alienated youth.
Those who didn't appreciate the pointed black humour of the segment were horrified to see images of teens and pre-teens being trained to use semi-automatic weapons. While this part of The Awful Truth was screened in Australia, it never made it to US TV screens.
I was expecting Moore's latest cinematic venture to be something of an extended and developed version of Teen Sniper School, but it was much more.
Bowling for Columbine examines shootings like the Columbine High School massacre in 1999 (which took place just after Teen Sniper School was completed), and other acts of individual violence, such as the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Moore positions these incidents within the wider culture of violence in the US. At one point, he compares it to the similarly gun-toting (all that moose huntin' and shootin'), yet generally much less violent, Canadian society.
Bowling for Columbine describes the US love affair with guns, which manifests itself in supermarkets that sell firearms and banks that offer a bonus rifle when a new account opened.
Moore takes two Columbine students, who still have bullets lodged in their bodies, to confront the managing director of Wal-mart, the supermarket chain in the US which stocks ammunition and, until recently, firearms.
Patriotism and individualism are taken to the extreme in the US. Some believe that it is downright un-American not to own a gun. Moore interviews Charlton Heston, the Hollywood actor and president of the National Rifle Association (which incidently was set up by the Ku Klux Klan). Heston makes it his mission to speak at pro-gun rallies in areas that have been tragically affected by school shootings. From my cold, dead hands! is Heston's gladiatorial rally cry, as he explains how his gun will be taken from him.
Interviewed in front of his movie poster collection, Heston cuts a less than Ben Hur-like figure these days, and seems distinctly uncomfortable with the direction of Moore's questions about his role in the NRA and his attitude to the school shootings.
Bowling for Columbine looks at racism and the development the culture of fear as it relates to gun ownership. A segment of the cartoon series South Park within the film manages to be both a hilarious yet sobering potted history of the violent European colonisation of the Americas.
Wider questions of poverty and inequality within US society are also tackled by Moore. The shooting of a six-year-old girl by her classmate at school is discussed. The six-year-old shooter found a gun at home and brought it to the classroom. Instead of pointing all the blame at the parents, as much of the establishment media did at the time, Moore exposes how the unsupervised boy's mother had to leave home well before her son to attend a welfare to work (work for the dole) program several hours' travel away.
In typical Moore-style, US television personality Dick Clark, the owner of the restaurant that employed the woman, is grilled about his sense of personal responsibility for the tragedy. Not surprisingly, Clark is less than willing to engage in dialogue. And yes, within days of this tragic event, the Charlton Heston roadshow came to town.
But this is also not just a movie about gun violence and gun control. Bowling for Columbine also exposes US violence in the broader context of US President George Bush's war on terror and US militarism. Moore scathingly reports the US military's global aggression and gives a brief history of US military interventions to bring truth, justice and the American way to the world. According to Moore, the day of the Columbine school shootings coincided with the largest US bombing raids in the Balkans war.
When it opened in Britain, Bowling for Columbine grossed US$250,000 in its first weekend, a record for a documentary. It was the first documentary film in 46 years to be accepted into official competition at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the 2002 Special Jury Prize and received a 13-minute standing ovation.
Reviewers have criticised the film's lack of cohesion; it does sometimes appear to be less than smooth flowing, but it's not really such a major flaw.
Moore doesn't really present solutions to the problems he exposes, but it is the exposure that plays an important role in awakening people to the issues raised.
Go and see Bowling for Columbine. For many Green Left Weekly readers, much of it will not be new, but it is information presented in a clever, entertaining and sometimes confronting way. Better still, bring someone with you who you think deserves an education in some of the realities of the global environment.
[Visit <http://www.bowlingforcolumbine.com> and <http://www.michaelmoore.com> for more Mike Moore.]
From Green Left Weekly, December 11, 2002.
Visit the Green Left Weekly
home page.