Michael Moore Asks Big Questions

Michael Moore is the documentary filmmaker that movie critics hate to love. The Los Angeles Times calls his new movie, "scattershot," "haphazard" and "all over the map." The New York Times accuses him of "slippery logic, tendentious grandstanding and outright demagoguery." And yet, with almost no exceptions, the critics heartily recommend "Bowling for Columbine."

If you're comparing Moore's work to a sepia-toned Ken Burns opus, it's easy to see where the criticism comes from. "Bowling for Columbine" aims for the gut, throws big ideas into the ring and doesn't really grapple with all of them. But it is gripping and powerful; it grabs you by the heartstrings and makes you laugh at your assumptions. And precisely because Moore does not pretend to answer all of the questions he raises, "Bowling for Columbine" is that rarest of beasts: A movie that makes you feel, and then makes you think.

“Bowling for Columbine” has already won a slew of awards, including a 13-minute standing ovation and the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. A limited release in Los Angeles and New York resulted in sold-out theaters last weekend on both coasts, and United Artists is now planning a 700- to 900-theater release nationwide. According to Moore, that's a record-breaking number of screens for a documentary -- beating out even his famous debut documentary, "Roger & Me."

Given the film's subject matter, its early success is already a remarkable achievement. “Bowling for Columbine” is about the root causes of violence in American culture; yet it grossed a healthy $206,000 on a limited release in its opening weekend. That bears repeating -- a documentary about gun control and crime in America is selling out. What's next, a treatise on international diplomacy sweeping the Christmas season?

But of course, the point is that Moore’s picture is not a treatise, it's not a presentation, it's not even really a single, coherent argument. Instead, Moore provokes, he searches, he even pokes fun. Regardless of what you think of the film, it seems almost impossible to leave the theater without turning to whoever is next to you and talking about it.

With war looming in Iraq and a sniper terrorizing suburban Washington DC, the film could not be more timely. Moore recognizes those events, but he's looking beyond any one news hook. "Forty people a day are shot and killed in this country," he said at a screening in San Francisco last Friday. The big question, for him, goes beyond the "geographically contained” bloodshed caused by one sniper. Why, he wants to know, is America so violent? Why do Americans shoot each other so much more than people do in other developed countries?

It can't just be the video games, because the Japanese play more of them and watch more brutally violent movies. It can't be our history of violence, because the Germans don't have as much trouble. It can't be poverty, ethnic tension or the number of guns, because the Canadians have just as many minorities, just as many unemployed and just as many guns per head. It can't be Marilyn Manson, because everybody listens to Marilyn Manson (who by the way is shown to be refreshingly articulate in the film).

One of his strongest sequences touches on the criminalization of the poor. In the movie, he tells the story of a Michigan single mother whose six-year-old son found a gun, brought it to school, and shot and killed a fellow first-grader. Moore goes where no news media dared, and looks into the particulars of the boy's life. The child was staying at his uncle's house because his mother, who was holding down two jobs, was about to be evicted. She was being bused from her own neighborhood to work in an upscale mall an hour and a half away, on state orders, as part of a welfare-to-work program. She didn't see her son take a gun to school because she had to leave home to catch the bus before he got up.