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Video Review |
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Last Updated 03/31/03
Email: robitai@our-town.com
Bowling for Columbine
Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore asks, “Are we a nation of gun nuts or are we just nuts?” “Bowling for Columbine” recently won an Academy Award in the “Best Documentary” category. It was the moment Moore was waiting for. His incendiary remarks about Bush and the war earned him a fulsome round of loud “boo’s” from the audience.
Although “Bowling” has had limited release in metropolitan area (it recently showed in Dallas), its documentary format precludes it from coming to smaller theatres that traditionally show mass market movies. The video version release date is set for May 13. Mark your calendar if you want to see what all the stir’s about.
I had problems getting by the title, but the essential question Moore asks merits attention: “Why are Americans are so prone to violence?” In an interview, Moore explained the film’s scope: “I could have made this film ten years ago as easily as now because ultimately this film isn’t about Columbine or even about guns. America was the same place then as it is now. It’s about our culture of fear and how that fear leads us to acts of violence, domestically and internationally.”
The film combines an unusual mix of humor and tragedy, including some previously unseen and unsettling images of the Columbine tragedy. Moore obtained security tapes from cafeteria cameras as well as from the personal testimonies of seriously injured students. He takes students who were paralyzed in the shooting to interview executives of K-Mart, the store responsible for supplying the bullets used at Columbine. As a result of their visit, K-Mart soon announced that it would no longer sell bullets for automatic rifles. The group finally journeys to the Beverly Hills home of Charlton Heston to ask questions about the NRA.
Moore takes the audience on an emotional odyssey that offers no answers. As he makes his way through the topic of fear, he addresses the idea of our complacency to violence. The title takes its name from information gleaned in interviews with Columbine students who had attended bowling class with the shooters the day before the tragedy.
Moore shot 200 hours of footage, often engaging in direct confrontation that has become his signature. This is cinema verité that unearths the issues at their core. Moore asks difficult questions of people who should be able to answer them honestly. Unfortunately, they sometimes don’t.
A European audience gave Moore a ten-minute standing ovation at the
film’s initial premier in Cannes last summer. It was quite a contrast to his
reception at the Academy Awards. You might not agree with his politics, but
Moore is fearless in his pursuit of the truth.
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