Bowling Score

The shootings at Columbine High School had a powerful effect on me back in 1999. I can't pretend to understand the emotions of the families who lost someone in the tragedy, or of the students and faculty who survived it. I didn't go to school there, and I didn't know anyone who did at the time. Nevertheless, I had been to the school many times growing up. (For the longest time, their school library doubled as the local branch of the county library system.) It was barely 10 minutes from my house. Literally and metaphorically, it felt "close to home."

Needless to say, a few years later, when Michael Moore released his documentary film Bowling for Columbine, the pump was already primed for me to love it unconditionally. And I did, going so far as to include it on my Top 100 Movie list when I originally compiled it. But now it's a decade later, and I'm able to approach the movie with a more reasoning mind. Which is just what I recently did.

I find that today, I'm much more conflicted about the movie. Michael Moore does make a number of great points. Particularly strong is all the material surrounding people who sought to explain the motivation of the shooters by blaming the music they listened to, the clothes they wore, or the video games they played. Then and now, the movie instills me with tremendous respect for Marilyn Manson, who appears in the film and comes off as the most reasonable, compassionate, and intelligent person in it.

I'm similarly compelled by Moore's suggested explanation for this and other gun violence in the U.S.: the sheer number of guns we have, and the ready access to them. He builds a strong case, and effectively takes down weak counterarguments like "we're a more violent culture because we have a more violent history."

But at other times in the film, even as he's won me over, he loses me. For example, he tries to extend his "prevalence of guns" argument to the Lockheed Martin plant here in Littleton, Colorado, suggesting that "of course kids are going to think weapons are cool when their parents go to work every day and manufacture them for a living." My father worked in that exact plant for most of my childhood. During annual family events, I got to tour the very factory floor on which a Lockheed representative is interviewed during the movie. And while what Moore says about Lockheed Martin's weapons manufacturing as a whole may be accurate, the implied statement here is patently false. For many decades, this Littleton factory made rockets for launching commercial payloads and communications satellites. The parents of Moore's analogy were going to work not to make weapons, but to help the world communicate with each other.

Grandstanding stunts are a hallmark of Michael Moore's films. So is making some of his interview subjects look bad (or letting them do it to themselves). And sometimes, it works. In this movie, when he obtains a free rifle for opening an account at a bank, and quips about the wisdom of offering guns at a bank, I want to cheer. When he's letting James Nichols (brother of Oklahoma City bomber Terry) reveal just how crazy he is, I laugh (and shudder). But the next moment, Moore is ambushing Dick Clark, implying it's somehow his fault that a 6-year-old was killed by a gun in a school because the shooter's mother worked at a Dick Clark's American Bandstand restaurant.

And then there's the big finale, where he lands an interview with (the now deceased) Charleton Heston. Frankly, it makes me cringe. From what I know of Heston's politics, there are few people in the world I disagree(d) more strongly with. But I want to see people I disagree with taken down intellectually, with reason. Moore lets Heston come unarmed to a gun battle -- almost in a literal sense. He lands the interview by leading Heston to think he's a proud supporter of the National Rifle Association, and then tears into him with a bunch of questions that the 80-year-old man isn't remotely prepared to answer. I say let the opposition come fully prepared with their best arguments. Tear those down, and you've truly made a point. Steamroll a few off-the-cuff remarks, and you haven't really done anything.

Still, I'd say there's much more good than bad in the film. The examination of Canada is very telling. The critique of "if it bleeds, it leads" media is right on the mark. Ultimately, I rate Bowling for Columbine a B. It's still a good movie. But today, I see its flaws, and realize that it isn't really Top 100 material.