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Bowling For Columbine
Director: Michael Moore

Michael Moore’s enormously entertaining documentary about guns in America, Bowling for Columbine, which has been released by MGM Home Entertainment (1004115, $27), will make you laugh, make you cry, make you think, and it will make you angry, either at some of the subjects in the documentary or at Moore himself, depending upon your predisposition. 

The 2002 film won the documentary Oscar and for good reason, because although it is peppered with Moore’s highly amusing hijinks and flair for uncovering contemporary ironies (the largest employer in Littleton Colorado, where the Columbine High School massacre took place, is the weapons manufacturer, Lockheed), it is also legitimately educational and enlightening, not answering questions, but in the best Socratic spirit, asking them.  Every clichéd argument you can think of about gun control is completely and utterly ignored by the film.  Instead, Moore journeys through our cultural landscape searching for the reasons why there is such a proliferation of guns in America and why they are so epidemically ill-used.  When he corners Charlton Heston for the movie’s finale and gets the best of him (Heston just shuts up and walks away in defeat) it is not from any kind of argument about legislating firearms, it is instead about Heston’s publicized appearances to promote the NRA in communities that have suffered tragedies gun controls might have prevented, affronting the grief in those communities for the sake of maintaining an upper hand at all costs.  Moore also explores the fascinating preponderance of promoting fear in the popular media and how, despite widespread advances in technology and basic knowledge, new fears, largely unfounded and certainly exaggerated, continue to replace outworn ones.  The one and only true cure for the problem guns are causing in America is basically the cure for quite a few other problems as well, education.  To that end, Bowling for Columbine is an outstanding contribution, not just because of how successfully it massages the intellect, but because of how it has been constructed to hold a viewer’s attention as it teaches.

The film appears on one side of the DVD and there are a number of special features on the flip side.  The picture is presented in letterboxed format only, with an aspect ratio of about 1.85:1 and an accommodation for enhanced 16:9 playback.  The color transfer looks fine and, except for some archival footage, the picture is reasonably sharp and clean.  The film’s 5.1-channel Dolby Digital track brings a workable dimensionality to the musical score.  The 119-minute program has optional English and Spanish subtitles, a trailer, and a 4-minute introduction by Moore, accompanied by a montage of stills.  There is a commentary track of sorts, featuring the lowest level interns and assistants who worked on the film, most of whom were in college or just out of college when the film was being made.  In concept it is a nice idea, but in practice, they just sort of sit around and giggle at the film.  There are tantalizing references to sequences Moore dropped from the final cut, and a few other details about the research they did (it’s a shame nobody came up with footage from the finale of The Last Hard Men) and how the film was pieced together, but there is no comprehensive view of its production history and no sense of the environment in which it was created.

The flip side has a poorly designed menu, so it is easy to miss half the special features if you overlook the prompt to its second page.  The side opens with an impressive 15-minute monolog Moore delivers while sitting at a picnic table in what appears to be his backyard, in which he talks about winning the Oscar, which is there, with him, on the table.  The least satisfying feature is a 25-minute lecture appearance by Moore in Denver, about a week before the Oscars.  It is unsatisfying not because it isn’t interesting—Moore has a number of funny and insightful comments—but because it is clearly abridged and references have been left in to statements or stories that have been removed.  More or all of the lecture would have been a lot more satisfying.  There is a 17-minute collection of clips showing Moore winning awards at the film festivals in Cannes, Toronto and London.  In his Oscar monolog, Moore explains that the Academy of Arts and Sciences would not allow him to use the clip of his acceptance speech on the DVD, but his speech a few days earlier at the Independent Spirit Awards was very similar and there is no explanation as to why it hasn’t been included somewhere on the DVD.  A very funny interview with Moore and Joe Lockhart from the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival, running 21 minutes, has been included.  Among other things, Moore suggests that the French are the new Democrats, and that all the money that was spent to find out who left a stain on Monica Lewinsky’s dress would have been much better invested in answering phone calls from worried flight schools.  There is a 25-minute clip from The Charlie Rose Show, in which Rose interviews Moore, and it, too, contains enough new and intriguing insights to be worthwhile, though Rose doesn’t really get around to talking about the film all that much, and the nuts and bolts of how Moore came to put it together are never addressed.  Also featured is a very funny 7-minute clip from Moore’s TV show, The Awful Truth, in which he confronts a chemical company about the testing of DEET on unsuspecting human subjects, along with another collection of photos, a Marilyn Manson music video (excerpted in the film), and, on DVD-ROM, a comprehensive ‘Teacher’s Guide.’

Moore does supply a commentary track on the Warner Home Video release of his debut feature, Roger and Me (27645, $20), and it is exactly what is missing from the Bowling for Columbine DVD.  He talks about how the film was conceived and shot, explains what went on during the shooting of individual sequences, and shares more tantalizing descriptions of material he left out.  Since the documentary, about auto manufacturing plants being closed in the Eighties in Flint, Michigan, was made in 1989, he also has the opportunity to reflect upon the film’s continued relevancy (so long as corporations are insensitive to their laid off workers, the film’s testimony about coping with such layoffs will be vital and rewarding) and how it formed the basis for his career.  The film has three different levels.  On the first, Moore interviews people who have been laid off and takes a look at some of the ways they are coping with their predicament.  He also follows around a sheriff who is serving eviction orders.  On the next level, he looks at how the town of Flint attempts to cope with the layoffs, through civic projects and various booster events.  And then finally, Moore chases after the chairman of General Motors, Roger Smith, trying to ask him questions about plant closings.  Like Bowling for Columbine, the film is an engaging mixture of humor and pathos, using entertainment to hold a viewer’s attention as it explores its subject not so much by supplying insights or answers but simply by asking all the right questions.

The full screen picture transfer appears accurate.  The picture quality varies, particularly when archival footage is employed, but hues look bright and the image is sharp.  The monophonic sound is clear.  The 90-minute program has optional English, French and Spanish subtitles, and a trailer.

Chicago
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Straw Dogs
There's Something About Mary
Black Hawk Down
20,000 Leagues Under The Sea
Once Upon A Time In America
Gangs Of New York
Treasure Planet
Giant
Windtalkers
Die Another Day
War & Peace
Eraserhead 
Hearts & Minds 

- by Douglas Pratt

 

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