I've always thought of Michael Moore as a good showman and a fair editorialist, but not much of a filmmaker. "Roger and Me" was a funny movie with a discouragingly weak thesis, and that business of going after corporate executives with a camera and microphone and getting turned away wore pretty thin after the third or fourth episode of "TV Nation." (We won't even get into "Canadian Bacon"--that was just a mistake.)
Along the line however Moore has either matured as an artist and polemicist, or more likely has learned how to collaborate with artists and polemicists as good as or better than he is (which is really the secret of all good film directors) and has made a fantastic film that is both entertaining and genuinely moving. I was expecting a shallow screed against gun nuts, but this film is so much more complex and open-minded than that. It locates the horrors of American gun culture not in guns themselves (though it does carry a strong argument against non-sporting weaponry) but in the paranoid American attitude towards our fellow human beings that causes us to turn our backs on each other and hide behind locked doors with our guns cocked rather than pooling our resources to build a civil society (Canada is offered as an example of how gun-nuttery and positive interpersonal relations can be effectively reconciled.)
I am wondering now about the coincidence of Charlton Heston announcing he has Alzheimer's just as "Bowling for Columbine" hit the theaters. Heston comes across as such a cold, lying man in this film that he and his handlers may well have felt they had to dredge up some excuse for it.
Along the line however Moore has either matured as an artist and polemicist, or more likely has learned how to collaborate with artists and polemicists as good as or better than he is (which is really the secret of all good film directors) and has made a fantastic film that is both entertaining and genuinely moving. I was expecting a shallow screed against gun nuts, but this film is so much more complex and open-minded than that. It locates the horrors of American gun culture not in guns themselves (though it does carry a strong argument against non-sporting weaponry) but in the paranoid American attitude towards our fellow human beings that causes us to turn our backs on each other and hide behind locked doors with our guns cocked rather than pooling our resources to build a civil society (Canada is offered as an example of how gun-nuttery and positive interpersonal relations can be effectively reconciled.)
I am wondering now about the coincidence of Charlton Heston announcing he has Alzheimer's just as "Bowling for Columbine" hit the theaters. Heston comes across as such a cold, lying man in this film that he and his handlers may well have felt they had to dredge up some excuse for it.