Bowling for Columbine

Movie
German title	Bowling for Columbine
Original title	Bowling for Columbine
Country of production	Canada , USA , Germany
original language	English
Publishing year	2002
length	about 114 minutes
Age rating	FSK 12
Rod
Director	Michael Moore
script	Michael Moore
production	Charles Bishop
music	Jeff Gibbs
camera	Brian Danitz Michael McDonough
cut	Kurt Engfehr
occupation
Charlton Heston Marilyn Manson Michael Moore Matt Stone Dick Clark

Bowling for Columbine is a documentary of the American director and political activist Michael Moore from the year 2002 . He has received an Oscar and numerous other awards.

content of the film

Based on the 1999 Littleton school massacre in which two Columbine High School students shot twelve classmates, a teacher and themselves, Bowling for Columbine is primarily based on conversations between Canadians and Americans with Michael Moore about the US arms trade from the United States Years 1999 to 2001. In contrast to his film Fahrenheit 9/11 , Moore only briefly mentions the events of September 11, 2001 , primarily deals with the American arms industry (e.g. Lockheed Martin ) and the NRA, and places in The comic strip is an outline of the history of North America from his point of view. American celebrities like Charlton Heston , Matt Stone and Marilyn Manson were also interviewed for Bowling for Columbine .

Moore presents his answers to the questions about the reasons for the rampage and the number of violent crimes in the USA, which according to statistics is higher than in other democratic states such as Germany , France , Japan , Great Britain , Australia and especially Canada . Moore criticizes the fact that, in his opinion, the American media explained the Columbine rampage almost exclusively with the fact that the two perpetrators heard the music of Marilyn Manson . Based on the fact that they were bowling before the act (in reality, however, the perpetrators skipped the bowling class), he asks the question whether it would not make just as much sense to hold bowling responsible for the act. The title of the film is derived from this.

Moore argues that the higher gun-related homicide rate in the United States is not related to the number of guns, as there are also many guns in Canada, and gives alternative reasons: In his opinion, the violent repression of the Indians in the past is out of the question, since other nations with a violent background such as Germany ( time of National Socialism ), Japan ( occupation of China in World War II ) or France ( Algerian war ) have lower murder rates today. He also addresses militarism , racism and, in particular, a fear of the white majority of the population of the black minority as well as the social order of the USA with competition, income differences and the welfare instead of social system. Consideration of the American media landscape takes up a lot of space, which, according to Moore, contributes to a general feeling of insecurity and fear through an emphasis on violence and crime. Moore visits a school where a six-year-old shot his classmate and speaks to teachers and politicians. In this context, he asks whether society is complicit when socially disadvantaged mothers have to do several jobs at the same time without having time to look after their underage children. Moore tries to interview Dick Clark, who employs low-paid welfare recipients in his restaurant chain, but Clark refuses.

The film ends without giving an answer, but suggests that a “culture of fear ” in the US is the cause of the unusually high rate of violent crime.

statistics

To make a comparison of how many people are killed by firearms in other industrialized countries each year, Moore shows a statistic (the numbers in brackets refer to the death rate per 100,000 inhabitants):

• USA - 11,127 deaths per year (3.601 / 100,000)
• Germany - 381 deaths per year (0.466 / 100,000)
• France - 255 deaths per year (0.389 / 100,000)
• Canada - 165 deaths per year (0.284 / 100,000)
• UK - 68 deaths per year (0.109 / 100,000)
• Australia - 65 deaths per year (0.292 / 100,000)
• Japan - 39 deaths per year (0.030 / 100,000)

What-a-wonderful-world segment

In one section, Moore lists the following US military and intelligence actions (to the song What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong ). The previously secret code names of the respective secret operations are added in italics , but they are not mentioned in the film:

1. 1953: The USA overturns Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh ( Operation Ajax ) in Iran and installs the Shah as dictator.
2. 1954: The US overthrows the democratically elected President Arbenz of Guatemala ( Operation PBSUCCESS ). 200,000 civilians are killed.
3. 1963: The US supports the assassination of the South Vietnamese President Diem .
4. 1963–1975: Approximately four million people are killed in Southeast Asia in the Vietnam War , with the participation of the US military .
5. September 11, 1973: The USA supports the military coup in Chile (Operation FUBELT ). The democratically elected President Salvador Allende commits suicide in the process. General Augusto Pinochet is installed as dictator. 5000 Chileans are killed.
6. 1977: The US supports the military government of El Salvador . 70,000 Salvadorans and four American nuns are killed.
7. 1980: The USA trains Osama bin Laden and allied terrorists with him to support the mujahideen in the fight against the Soviet occupiers. The CIA is funding this with three billion US dollars ( Operation Cyclone ).
8. 1981: The Reagan government trains and funds the rebels in Nicaragua to fight the Sandinista government. 30,000 people die during the so-called Contra War .
9. 1982: The US provides billions in arms aid to Saddam Hussein to fight the Iranians.
10. 1983: The White House secretly gives the Iranians weapons to fight the Iraqis ( Iran-Contra affair ).
11. 1989: CIA agent and de facto President of Panama , Manuel Noriega , no longer follows instructions from Washington. The US invades Panama and deposed Noriega. 3,000 civilians are killed ( Operation Just Cause (dt. Just cause ))
12. 1990: Iraq invades Kuwait with weapons from the USA.
13. 1991: The US invades Iraq. The Kuwaiti dictatorship is reinstated.
14. 1998: The US bombs a Sudanese "arms factory". It turns out that ASA was made there.
15. 1991 until today (at the time of the film): The USA bombs Iraq weekly. The United Nations estimates that 500,000 Iraqi children die from the bombings and the consequences of the sanctions.
16. 2000–2001: The USA gives the Taliban- ruled Afghanistan a grant of 245 million dollars.
17. The last shot of the montage shows the attack on the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001, with a final overlay showing that Osama bin Laden used his years of CIA training to kill 3,000 people.

Production and publication

Michael Moore was only able to produce Bowling for Columbine with the financial support of the Canadian film production company Alliance Atlantis and the German film fund Vif Babelsberger Filmproduktion GmbH & Co, as no producer in the USA wanted to participate in a film on this subject. It was produced by Moore's Dog Eat Dog Films . Production costs were $ 4 million.

After the success at the 55th Cannes International Film Festival , Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's subsidiary United Artists bought the rights to distribute the film on the US market at the initiative of its President Bingham Ray .

Bowling for Columbine is the third most successful documentary based on the box office. The worldwide cinema receipts amount to 58,008,423 US dollars. Until the release of the films Fahrenheit 9/11 and The Journey of the Penguins , this was the documentary with the highest and then the second highest grossing. The US theatrical release took place on October 11, 2002 in eight cinemas.

The applause at the screening of the film at the Cannes International Film Festival lasted 13 minutes.

reception

The film received mostly positive reviews. The review comparison portal Metacritic calculates a “Metascore” of 72 points for the film. On Rotten Tomatoes , the film scored 95% on the tomatometer and concluded with the critical consensus “ Though it may not always convince, Bowling for Columbine asks important questions and provokes thought. ”(Rotten Tomatoes, German:“ Even if it's not always convincing, Bowling for Columbine asks important questions and makes you think. ”)

The critic Edward Lawrenson notes that Moore's "radical subjectivity" with which he proceeds has been chalked up by many other critics. Moore's goal, "to pillory the USA because of its attitude to gun ownership, is not recognizable for some because of its didactic approach." However, the critic finds that one cannot ignore the conclusiveness of his statements. And while the film that links the “American love of gun ownership” and the “nationwide escalation of violence” was a commercial success, similar incidents in the United States would have shown that the film was “the American Psyche only reached the surface and did not shake it up permanently. "

additional

• Moore uses the Beatles song Happiness Is a Warm Gun . In this context, real footage of murders and suicides with firearms is shown.
• It is mentioned that an American city made the acquisition of firearms compulsory. This city is Virgin, Utah .
• Matt Stone , a gun rights advocate, criticized Moore for the interview in the film because it shows a South Park- like cartoon that links the NRA to the Ku Klux Klan .
• Moore's dealings with Charlton Heston were subsequently heavily criticized, so he was accused of knowing about Heston's Alzheimer's disease at the time of the interview and deliberately putting him into a psychological tightness by blaming him indirectly for the Littleton school massacre . At that time, Heston was president of the National Rifle Association , which advocates gun rights and did not want to cancel the long-planned annual general meeting after the massacre. Moore confirmed in an interview with Die Zeit that he deliberately wanted to provoke a scandal and named Heston as an "old, mentally engaged man with racist views", even though he campaigned for more rights for African Americans all his life . It was also repeatedly criticized that Moore portrayed Heston as the perpetrator of the school massacre and that he made direct accusations - at the same time, Heston was praised for his level-headedness and friendliness in the interview, which he refused to abandon even after the most serious allegations on the part of his interview partner.

Awards and nominations (selection)

• 2002: Anniversary Prize at the 55th Cannes International Film Festival
• 2002: Independent Spirit Award - Best Documentation
• 2002: Vancouver International Film Festival - Most popular international film
• 2002: National Board of Review - Best Documentary
• 2003: César - Best Foreign Film
• 2003: International Documentary Association (IDA) - Best Documentation Ever
• 2003: Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards for Best Documentary
• 2003: Oscar - Best Documentary
• 2003: Online Film Critics Society Awards - Best Documentary ; Nomination for best film
• The German Film and Media Assessment FBW in Wiesbaden gave the documentation the rating of particularly valuable.

See also

• Weapon abuse

literature

• Lexandra Hissen: Bowling for more than Columbine. Subjectivity and truthfulness in Michael Moore's films. Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, Trier 2004. ISBN 978-3-88476-695-8

Web links

• Bowling for Columbine in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Official website (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Dick Clark: A career in milestones (English)
2. ^ Bowling for Columbine. In: metacritic.com. Retrieved March 23, 2020 . 
3. ^ Bowling for Columbine (2002). In: rottentomatoes.com. Retrieved March 23, 2020 (English). 
4. ^ Lawrenson, Edward: Bowling for Columbine (2002) . In: Schneider, Steven Jay, Ueberle-Pfaff, Maja (ed.): 1001 films that you should see before life is over. Selected and presented by 77 international film critics. Twelfth, updated new edition. Edition Olms, Oetwil am See 2017, ISBN 978-3-283-01243-4 , p. 896 .
5. ↑ 'Team America' takes on moviegoers (English)
6. ↑ Interview: Panzerfaust under the pillow? No problem . In: The time . December 31, 1899, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed January 2, 2017]).
7. ↑ liligans: Michael Moore's shameful ambush of Charlton Heston. In: LiliGans.com. April 10, 2008, accessed January 2, 2017 .