I have conflicted opinions of Michael Moore. On the one hand he’s a major force for good, I’ve always had a ‘yay’ reaction to anyone willing to challenge corporate and political bulls**t spreaders. On the other hand, he can definitely go too far. But on the last point, I get conflicted again… how far is too far when I agree with his goals wholeheartedly? Do I care if he’s unfair if ultimately I’d probably do the same were I in his shoes? Is it okay to stoop (well, almost) to the bad guys’ level, as long as you’re the good guy?

The main place in Bowling for Columbine where all these questions rear their head is in the Charlton Heston sequence. I just don’t like Michael Moore’s tactics there, and it’s sort of clear that he hasn’t quite prepared, as his nerves allow him to go too far: he’s just received the miraculous news of success in stopping K-Mart from selling firearms, and he’s greedy. Yes, Charlton Heston comes across as the idiot he probably really is in this sequence, yes I like seeing him squirm and dodge the issue etc. But the whole moment is obtained under totally false pretenses, and Heston really should’ve been given the opportunity to prepare a response – he gives Moore an appointment at extraordinary short notice, Moore’s been working on and researching this subject for god knows how long, Heston gives himself barely over 12 hours. Serves him right? Maybe. Don’t get me wrong, I think he deserves to be seen like this, ‘cos showing up in those towns so soon after the tragedies was an a$$hole thing to do, and somebody must have informed him of the tragedies, he can’t have not known… but like I said, I have a mixed reaction, basically because you can never know the whole truth, even if Michael Moore’s telling it to you.

It’s like when Michael Moore appeared at the Oscars this year in the comedic opening. I couldn’t stand that moment. I loved the whole sequence except him lampooning his own Oscar speech tirade. I liked the idea of getting him in there, I appreciate it’s pretty funny… but the fact that Moore agreed to do it really gets me down. He has such power with words and can get these anti-lunacy messages across better than anybody, and he uses comedy to do that, but sometimes the comedy can take over too much, and people stop taking him seriously. They’d rather hear a Bush joke that simply has him jumble his words in a funny way than laugh at the idiocy of something he really said while at the same time fearing and wondering if maybe they should do something about it. I have mixed feelings.

But back to the documentary… mixed feelings aside, it’s probably the best documentary I’ve ever seen (I can’t really say “best documentary ever” though I’d like to, ‘cos I’ve not seen many documentaries and don’t really intend to). It’s funny, like I said, but also very moving, very insightful, and as you can see above, it raises many questions, for me, anyway. Everybody should definitely see it, ‘cos it really will start discussion, start you looking at things differently – the media and politics – especially if you’re in that increasing minority (whoo!) of people who aren’t cynical about such things yet.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 17th, 2004 at 4:32 pm in 4 hearts, Movie Reviews and tagged as documentary, guns, political. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.