Bowling for Columbine Review
by Tim Wick
Beware - one cannot really review a Michael Moore film without showing one's political leanings. Be it known that I am a unapolagetic liberal and that certainly colored my opinion of the film. I just thought you should know that up front.
I find a tragic irony in the fact that less than an hour before I saw this film, I learned of the death of Paul Wellstone. Wellstone was one of a handful of senators that recently voted against giving our president the power to declare war on Iraq without a formal declaration from congress. As I watched a movie that was asking why Americans were so violent, I couldn't help but think of a lost soul who had clearly wondered the very same thing.
Bowling for Columbine is a funny movie about a very serious topic. Actually, that is not fair. I don't really think the movie is a comedy. Instead, I think it is a serious exploration of America's obsession with guns and with violence that includes some very funny moments.
From the outset of the film, it is clear that director Michael Moore does not believe we need all these guns. One could easily guess from the film's opening that he is using the Columbine massacre as a thesis for gun control.
I can't help but wonder if that is exactly what he planned to do when he started making the movie. Yet as the movie continues, he discovers that the answer is not as easy as finding ways to prevent sixteen year olds from having access to semi-automatic weapons. Certainly he believes they should not have it, but he does not believe that restricting access to guns will solve our problem.
In fact, he points out that Canada has less than 100 gun related murders per year and almost 7 million guns in 10 million households. America has over 10,000 gun related murders annually. How is it that neighboring countries can have similar gun to household ratios and astronomically different gun related murders?
A telling moment is when Moore puts this question to NRA president Charleton Heston. He presents Heston with proof that the issue is not gun possession but something else. Heston is unable to come up with an answer because he hasn't thought of one. He also doesn't really have an answer for why he keeps loaded guns in his home when his neighborhood is a gated community patrolled by private security.
What the movie suggests is that the issue of gun possession is part of a larger issue - why do we have all these guns? Canada is a nation of hunters. Most firearms in Canada are rifles used for hunting. Certainly many Americans use firearms for similar reasons but why do we also trade so heavily in handguns? Do we need them? He interviews many people who claim to have a handgun for protection but he can't find a situation where any of them have actually needed to use their gun for that purpose.
Gun control is not the issue to Moore, but the mentality of a society that claims to need the guns. We are quick to anger and quick to point fingers but we never seem to be able to point fingers at ourselves. In fact, one of his most articulte interviews is with rocker Marylin Manson - on whom much blame was placed for the Columbine massacre. Moore places Manson's interview against speeches at an anti-Manson rally to show the viewer just how much hatred and fear can incite and how the reality of the man is far different from the man people have singled out as the source of their pain.
Now the major question one might ask is if Moore's message is too heavy handed (as most of them tend to be). Well if his message was that guns are bad and gun control is good, it might have been heavy handed. But the message is that there is no simple answer to why we are a society of violence. He certainly offers some conjectures but he doesn't really have any answers.
What is hard to do with this film is to separate the politics from the film. If one is politically opposed to what Moore is saying, you will hate the film. If you agree you will love it - but does that mean it is a good or bad film?
Personally, I think the film is very solid. Moore does have a tendency to get sidetracked by amusing people or situations but for much of this movie he retains his focus. He continues to look at the cetral question rather than be distracted by amusing side notes. Once observing that our society has what could almost be called an obsession with fear, he proceeds to look at how that obsession manifests itself.
A few of his trademark confrontations don't really work as well. I often wonder why these people - who must know of Moore by now - are still so afraid of him. Why, for instance, doesn't a high ranking Republican agree to sit down and talk with him when they look like a far bigger idiot when they run away? After a while, though, they stop looking like idiots because they look like everyone else.
But minor structural complaints aside, this is a powerful piece of cinema. It treats the subject of the Columbine massacre with remarkable care. Moore can see the humor in a great many things, but he knows what is not funny. The event that inspired the movie was a horrible moment in human history but the question that lingers in our head is how can we stop it from happening again?
Moore clearly hasn't got it figured out yet. The only thing it would seem that he does know is that nobody else has it figured out either. While people are pointing fingers at Marylin Manson and violent video games and even the NRA, they are not pointing the finger at the problem. The problem isn't the guns themselves, the problem is why we want them.
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