*** (out of ****)
A documentary written, produced, and directed by Michael Moore
2002 R
Mmmm….a political movie. This should be a fun review. Recently when Trent Lott had to step down he remarked basically that all his enemies are atheists. Later that day Hilary Clinton accused the Republican party of being racist. The status quo goes on.
I’m not the biggest fan of documentary filmmaker Michael Moore. He strikes me as a liberal Rush Limbaugh: obnoxious, snide, arrogant, preaching to the choir, not terribly patient with the opinions of others, and a pound or two overweight. The moment I started to feel unease about him was when he referred to himself as “the only white man in America who thinks O.J. Simpson is innocent,” as if the rest of us, black and white, were too stupid to see past our race, and we were lucky we had him to show us the way. Or maybe when he lumped pro-life activists in with the American Nazi Party or the KKK. Regardless of what your stance is on abortion, you have to admit that pro-lifers do what they do because they believe the unborn are alive, not because they want to oppress anyone. Still, Limbaugh, I mean Moore, is pretty clear with his message: if I don’t agree with you, you must be evil.
When it comes to politics I think I’m a moderate in a true sense of the word. I don’t advocate that conservatives and liberals both have good ideas and that we should take the best of each and create some mythical third entity. I think that we need the yin-and-yang, the push-and-pull of these two opposing forces to create the proper balance, just like every whole person should have a sense of mercy and responsibility. We need Democrats to say it’s all society’s fault, let’s tolerate other cultures, and if we were all left to our own devices no one would care about the trees. We need Republicans to espouse individual responsibility, to say we’re good and it’s just a few bad seeds, and that other culture or not you don’t go around cutting out people’s hearts for Cali. One of the many reasons I can’t stand watching politicos is because they behave as if they are completely correct and the other side is just a joke. Perhaps this is just an act they play in order to show pep rally-style solidarity.
But on to “Bowling for Columbine,” Michael Moore’s new documentary about America’s love affair with the gun and its culture of fear. Of course the movie is biased (I once saw a bumper-sticker that read “Only fools believe the biased liberal media” and I wanted to give him another bumper-sticker that would read “Only bigger fools believe that media of any kind can exist without a bias;” such is the nature of language and communication, to instill every word with a value judgment, and there’s nothing more insulting than someone who believes his arbitrary personal bias is “common sense,” but we’ll save that for another time). But Moore is openly biased, which is much less offensive than trying to disguise his bias as middle-of-the-road vanilla. The movie’s opening scene is loaded—no pun intended—when Moore walks into a bank that is giving away a free rifle or shotgun to anyone that opens an account.
At first glance, this is an absurd premise, but wait…don’t I have in-laws from beautiful, open territory in these United States, with fresh unpolluted air, clean water, plentiful wildlife, and jaw-dropping vistas—and don’t they walk out to their cars with shotguns because they’ve seen bears roaming around before, or because the nearest police officer is twenty minutes away? If Moore’s bank is in such an area, the idea seems a lot less absurd. Still, Moore is a lifelong member of the NRA, and a trip to his hometown of Flint, Michigan early in the movie, which is packed with guns, quietly sets the tone that America’s problem is not with hunters and sportsmen, or the bolt-action rifles and pump-action shotguns that are their weapons of choice.
“Bowling for Columbine” begins with a onslaught of data and theories about violence in America, both from Moore and the various sources he interviews. We see an NRA rally in Columbine not long after the shootings, interviews with Columbine survivors, and take a trip to the Lockheed Martin plant near the high school where weapons of mass destruction are created daily. Moore also meets Matt Stone, co-creator of television’s “South Park,” who grew up not far from Columbine, and who recalls the school as being a place of overwhelming normalcy, where students are taught that getting into seventh grade honors math is crucial to not spending a lifetime being a loser. Poverty is given a good hard look, as well as the violence that springs from it, including the youngest school shooting in the nation. Most disturbing, of course, is the ghostly and ghastly black-and-white security footage of the Columbine massacre, which has mercifully been trimmed.
Longer interviews include the brother of Timoth McVeigh’s partner, who comes across as a wacko, and who really does keep a loaded .44 Magnum under his pillow. We also meet with shock rocker Marilyn Manson, who is protested in Columbine and all throughout the country for his vicious lyrics. When speaking to Moore, Manson, in good Spinal Tap fashion, makes a concerted effort to appear contemplative and educated while painted up like a freak, and recites his typical battle-cry of “everyone hates me because I do what I want and not what they tell me to do.” But he does make a good point that we live in a culture that teaches us to constantly feel inadequate and afraid.
Moore’s visit to NRA president Charlton Heston does not go well for Heston, who is polite but unable to put his thoughts in order. The interview is, of course, a little skewed, because Heston is really damn old, and Moore does a few manipulative edits that I’m not sure if I can trust (in one shot we see Heston leaving while an off-camera Moore is trying to show him the photograph of a girl who died because of gun violence, but we only see Moore speaking these words in a reverse shot which had to have been filmed later). Heston also speaks sloppily and mentions that America’s ethnic diversity contributes to its violence. Because he was the star of the anti-racist “Touch of Evil” I’m inclined to believe that he doesn’t mean that a good ethnic group is being put upon by a bad one, but that different groups have always historically squabbled when put next to each other before eventually learning to live together. Even if you have one fistfight because of a culture clash that’s still one fistfight more than you would have had otherwise, one could argue. Still, it’s the price we pay for America’s rich diversity, and the salsa-coated proof that there is a God, which we know better as Tex-Mex.