Pick of the Week: "Bowling for Columbine" DVD

Michael Moore’s brilliant, darkly comic, controversial “Bowling for Columbine” (2002) won the Academy Award for Best Documentary. Although it’s a difficult film to watch in many ways, I think it is the best documentary I’ve ever seen. Moore takes on the subject of guns in America, but it seems to me the film is really more about the larger topic of the country’s so-called culture of violence. He doesn’t get into specific public-policy issues; instead he presents some freewheeling reflections on why so many Americans are killed with guns.

I am amazed by the way Moore sometimes gets his point of view across with hard-hitting dark humor. For example, he goes into a Michigan bank, which is also a licensed firearm dealer, where he gets a free gun for putting some money into a Certificate of Deposit. The bank’s newspaper ad for this deal is headlined: “More Bang for Your Buck!” Later, Moore goes to a barbershop where he buys a box of bullets while getting a haircut.

One part of the film I found incredibly moving was when Moore takes two of the survivors of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre to K-Mart Headquarters in Troy, Michigan.

The survivors request that the store chain stop selling handgun bullets. After some delay, a spokeswoman comes out and announces that K-Mart is phasing out the sale of handgun ammunition.

However, in his attempt to examine the forces behind America’s culture of violence, Moore sometimes draws some connections that seem pretty tenuous to me. For example, he makes a big point of the claim that the Columbine massacre occurred on the same day as the largest one-day bombing by the U.S. in the Kosovo War.

There’s an interesting sequence near the end of the movie where Moore talks to Charlton Heston at the actor’s home near a poster for “Touch of Evil.” Given that Heston was president of the National Rifle Association, it wasn’t unreasonable for Moore to ask him some hard questions. But even though I have my own misgivings about Heston’s political stances, the way that Moore mercilessly confronted the aging actor made me extremely uncomfortable.

As the film takes on the subject of guns in America, Moore questions what drives the so-called culture of violence, and along the way he weaves in what he believes to be the forces at work shaping this.

Although this movie might appear disorganized, I sensed there was careful structure and thought underlying the film’s seemingly casual style. Some of the forces he suggests are the easy availability of guns and ammunition, race, poverty, television, and the climate created by U.S. military actions.

While I don’t entirely endorse Michael Moore’s views and methods, “Bowling for Columbine” dazzled me as a film, even just in terms of craft. Moore can be relentless—if not flat-out heavy-handed—at showing things through his perspective, but he is skillfully assured as a filmmaker.

The DVD provides a variety of bonus materials, and I have listed them below.

Selected Special Features on the DVD:

• Anamorphic Widescreen (16:9)
• English Dolby Digital
• English Subtitles
• Spanish Subtitles
• Writer-Director Michael Moore’s Audio Introduction
• Receptionists’ and Interns’ Audio Commentary With Director’s Intro
• Michael Moore on His Oscar Win and Acceptance Speech
• Michael Moore at the University of Denver (Feb. 26, 2003)
• Film Festival Scrapbook (Cannes, Toronto, London)
• Marilyn Manson Music Video “Fight Song”
• Teacher’s Guide
• Michael Moore Interviewed by Clinton Press Secretary Joe Lockhart
• Segment From “The Awful Truth II: Corporate Cops”
• Michael Moore on “The Charlie Rose Show”
• Mike’s Action Guide
vStaff and Crew Photo Gallery
• Theatrical Trailer