MOVIE CLUB: BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE
From: Sam Hallgren
To: Adam Kempenaar; Eric Baker
Subject: Moore Than Enough

I may be wrong (and couldn't we all start every post this way?), but I would conjecture that most documentaries get made because the director already has some opinion about the subject, whether it be good, bad or conflicted. Sam Jones isn't choosing to spend months of his time with Papa Roach or Nelly or Shania Twain. Granted, it could be said that Wilco was an "important band" at an "important stage of its career," but this "importance" falls away pretty quickly when placed in a more global context. Jones spends time with Wilco because, at the very least, he respects the band. Then again, the very thing that makes "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart" so dramatically interesting, the split of Tweedy and Bennett that took place during Jones's filming, may be less "luck," as Adam describes it, and more brilliant intuition. Tweedy's break with Bennett was not his first public split with a band member. The first took place almost a decade ago, when Tweedy and present Son Volt frontman Jay Farrar split up their seminal alt-country group Uncle Tupelo after four years and three albums together. Tweedy also famously threw out the original recordings that made up Wilco's last album "Summerteeth" and started from scratch. Jones was very likely a fan of Wilco's; even more likely, he knew that he would be entering a volatile recording environment. He may have gotten more than he expected (or hoped), but I think it's safe to say that he was looking for a story, not just an opportunity to hang with his idols. I haven't seen "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart," but it's my understanding that Sam Jones stays behind the camera. The same cannot be said, unfortunately, for Michael Moore. What worked so well in "Roger and Me" has become less and less effective over the course of a decade. "Bowling for Columbine" is a frequently provocative, moving and insightful documentary; but it is undermined by Moore's sloppy, shoot-from-the-hip documentary style. What starts as an easy attack on the NRA and the gun culture it promotes, becomes an effective riff on America's media-sponsored paranoia. But then he strays from this very interesting idea to bully and bait the aging NRA figurehead Charlton Heston. The tone of the film (and of Moore) is so caustic and faux-naive that it will ten times out of ten fail to engage a dialogue between opposing sides of the gun control issue. And isn't this more important than preaching to the choir? I couldn't be a stronger advocate of gun control, and yet I found myself frequently turned off by Moore's style. Perhaps the most telling moment for me took place when, with two Columbine shooting victims, Moore goes to KMart's Michigan Headquarters and tries to return the bullets (which were originally purchased at KMart) that were still lodged in one of the boys' bodies. Moore sets up the scene as a chance to show off corporate greed and insensitivity -- while at the same time showing himself to be a public-spirited martyr. Instead, in a shocking turn of events, KMart actually agrees to stop selling bullets within x amount of months (perhaps, being on the verge of bankruptcy as they were, they had nothing to lose). Moore is shocked. If I were a cynical person, I would say that he was just as disappointed as he was shocked. And yet, despite all of my criticism of Moore and his film, I support what he does, and I liked the film more than I disliked it. Moore is doing what no one else in the big-money entertainment industry is doing. He's our big, loud, funny, occasionally irritating conscience. I think that a more effective, less-conflicted film could be made from the raw material that Moore shot, but if "Bowling for Columbine" is what we get, so be it. I don't think a single gun rights supporter would sit through more than 5 minutes of this thing; but man does it get my liberal blood boiling. For the record, and this should really irritate people in the Feedback Forum considering how much time I spent trashing this movie, it stands at #7 on my films of the year. One question: do either of you have any trouble putting documentaries in the same category as fiction films, as in the case of a year-end best list? It didn't seem fair to compare "The Bourne Identity" with "Columbine." Thoughts? Also, quickly: last night I saw "Tully" (a small independent film that has been waiting for distribution since 2000) and "Heaven" (Tom "Run Lola Run" Tykwer's first English-language feature, based on an unproduced script by Krzysztof "Trois Couleurs" Kieslowski). I wanted "Tully" to be better than it was. I tried not to have expectations, but I wanted it to be the kind of perfect small picture that reminds you how a simple story and simple acting can be so much more powerful than big budget extravaganzas. The dialogue was a little clumsy. The acting was decent, but not revelatory. And the story was a little contrived. Still, it was nice. The kind of movie that might disappear off of a TV screen if you were to rent it; but seen in a theater, projected large across a big screen, the actors voices booming out of the stereo speakers, it took on a more profound aspect, and it won me over during its cathartic last 15 minutes. "Heaven," too, was flawed; but it was also somehow perfect. Tykwer is a master filmmaker. Compared to "Tully"'s leisurely pace and leisurely direction, "Heaven" felt immediate and certain. The plot of the film, like in Kieslowsi's other films, doesn't follow any familiar logic and is really just a means of contemplating philosophical questions and ethical dilemmas. This kind of ambition could weigh down some films beyond salvation -- as it did for me in Kieslowski's own "White" and "Red" (his "Blue" I found moving an intelligent) -- but "Heaven" found a nice balance, helped immeasurably by impeccable performances from Cate Blanchett and Giovanni Ribisi. And Tykwer is a visual master. The movie looks amazing and has some of the most memorable cinematic images I have seen in some time. One of my favorite films of the year.