BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE (2002) ***1/2 Michael Moore is deceptive. He's not the kind of guy who, physically, strikes his interview subjects as a genius, so they trust him. He's not an articulate man, he can't make it through two sentences without using "um" or "like" a couple times, and he doesn't use big words. But he has the focus of an elite trial lawyer. His questions are simple but he perceives every deviation in the answer, however slight, and refuses to follow the conversation beyond the boundaries that he wants to talk about. He has an uncanny knack of knowing precisely when he can repeat the subject's own words back to him, and have them immediately disavowed. He's Socrates on a serial credibility assassination spree. His approach strikes me very much like Oliver Stone in JFK: he takes a subject far too expansive to be comprehensively covered (i.e., any political issue worth pursuing) and takes random samplings from around the periphery. Solutions are not offered so much as diverse evidence is found pointing in the same directions: gun violence in America may be so endemic because of the way America treats its poor (worse than other western nations), or because the corporate controlled media keeps the populace in a state of fear through selective programming (but aren't they just giving the people what they want? which is democratic, isn't it?), the fear leads to a suspicion of anything "different," causing an unnatural and psychologically dangerous stampede towards conformity (true enough, but didn't America used to be the nation of "rugged individualism?"). I hate to admit it, because I can't stand the guy, but Marilyn Manson may have even been on to something when he made a link between media-induced fear and sponsored-media consumerism. Even better was the short cartoon within the film, "A Brief History of the United States of America." It's much more of an indictment, really, overtly prejudiced (it's a history that doesn't show Americans ever doing anything right), but such stuff can be powerful because it forces you to determine what's wrong about it. And, after consideration, you may realize that it's not quite as biased as you would naturally presume, and that its perspectives, some of them, are actually legitimate perspectives. It's all a difficult question, and defies simple answers (which doesn't stop the politicians from giving them)...Moore's documentary is not so comprehensive as to rule anything in, or anything out, but it turns up interesting clues for anyone willing to follow them. Must viewing, also, for anyone who's ever wanted to see Charlton Heston's big ol' jaw drop, and get his ass kicked.
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