Bowling for Columbine

In the spring of 1995, when I was in eighth grade, I began to conceive of a short story, one I would never end up actually writing. The story described a school terrorized by a mad bomber, indescriminately killing teachers, students and anyone else who managed to wander onto school grounds. At the end of the story, police would make the shocking revelation that it was one of the school's very own students behind the murders. The thought that this story was, in some way, my attempt to deal with the frustration, rage and alienation I felt on a daily basis at McAdams Junior High somehow never occurred to me at the time. But it did on April 20, 1999, when my English teacher announced to the class that two high school students in Colorado had opened fire on their classmates. And it came back to me once again as I watched Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine a second time, haunted by the security-camera footage of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold -- who, like me, were high school seniors in 1999 -- mercilessly stalking their classmates and teachers.

Though Moore's scathing film uses the Littleton massacre as a jumping-off point, Bowling for Columbine isn't about school violence or school shootings. Nor is it about gun control, though it seems to start out that way. Instead, Moore tries to get to the bottom of why we have so much violence in America: "Are we a nation of gun nuts," he asks, "or just plain nuts?" There's evidence to support either side, but at the end, Moore believes the latter.

Of course, everyone has theories abound concerning gun violence in this country, and Moore wastes no time in debunking them one at a time. Some say we simply have too many guns in this country...but Canada is a gun-loving country, too, and yet they don't have the same problems we do. (Moore chats with a police officer in Windsor, across the river from Detroit, who says he can only remember one murder in the last three years, and that was by a visitor from Detroit.) Others say our bloody history is to blame...but what about Germany? A lot of fingers are pointed at our violent movies and video games...but Hollywood blockbusters are just as popular overseas, and a lot of our violent games come from Japan. The breakdown of the traditional family unit? But England has a higher rate of divorce than we do.

For Moore, it all boils down to the fact that our culture is not one of violence, as some claim, but one of fear: drive-by shootings that lead the news, government warnings about threats in the vaguest possible terms, all designed to keep the citizens afraid of one another to distract us from the corporate crime that occurs all around us. And, as shown in a brilliant animated sequence written by Moore, that fear is cultivated from blatant racism, white America's fear of the black man, dating back to slavery.

Moore visits the Michigan Militia, who claim that being armed is a "responsibilty of every American....Who's going to protect your family? The cops?" James Nichols, who was arrested (but not charged) in connection with the Oklahoma City bombing, tells a clearly-frightened Moore that the evils of the government will result in a bloody revolt. When Moore asks if the man has ever considered non-violent protest, like Ghandi, he stammers and mumbles, "I'm not familiar with that."

In Littleton, Moore is shocked to discover that the town's largest employer just happens to be Lockheed Martin, the world's largest defense contractor. He theorizes that our nation's violence-is-the-answer foreign policy may have influenced the Columbine killers -- on the day of the massacre, the U.S. dropped more bombs on Kosovo than at any other point during that war. But elements like these were ignored in the post-Columbine rush to blame rock singer Marilyn Manson, whom Moore interviews. "The president was dropping bombs on another country," Manson says, "and yet I'm a bad guy because I sing some rock 'n' roll songs. And who's a bigger influence, the president or Marilyn Manson?"

It probably doesn't hurt that I agree with most of what Moore is saying. But there are certainly parts of his film that are inspired, like the trip he takes to Canada to try to look at our country from another angle. And it's interesting that those who took the brunt of the finger-pointing after Columbine, like Manson and South Park co-creator Matt Stone (who attented Columbine High School), give thoughtful interviews with Moore, yet NRA President Charlton Heston and sympathizer Dick Clark (whom Moore tries to interview) can't run away from the camera fast enough. Moore's outrage is both amusing and contagious, and his wit is razor-sharp: in a genius sequence, he demonstrates white America's anxiety toward blacks by showing comparative news clips of "Africanized killer bees" nesting across the street from a terrified old white lady.

But Bowling for Columbine, as good as it is, is not perfect. There are a few slips here, and they are pretty severe. For example, Moore visits two of the survivors of the Columbine massacre, and takes them to K-Mart headquarters to force the company to question their policy of selling handgun ammunition (the bullets Klebold and Harris used were purchased at K-Mart). It's interesting, no doubt, and it's a fine moment of triumph when a K-Mart executive announces that they will indeed cease the sale of handgun ammo. But since Moore has already spent a large portion of his film arguing, exhaustively, that easy access to guns and ammunition is not the problem, one wonders what the relevance of this could be. Moore also plays fast and dirty with some statistics -- rather than pointing out the differences in murder rates between nations, he throws raw numbers out there. Sure, it's shocking to know that Canada only has 165 homicides a year compared to our nearly 11,500, but ignoring the obvious differences in population between the two countries is a transparent attempt to give the message more impact, and it hurts the film.

But even with its flaws, Bowling for Columbine is a bold, stunning work that deserves every one of the many accolades it received. In the end, Moore never really does find many satisfactory answers to the questions he asks. What is it that makes some people snap and turn to violence? What's the difference between Klebold and Harris, who murdered their classmates, and frustrated people like me or Matt Stone, who channel that anger in another direction? But perhaps it's simply enough that the questions are being asked at all.

Rating: ****1/2