2002-10-27
Bowling for Columbine is best movie I've seen this year, posted at 6:26 p.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com ***Note: Still messing around with this layout, but I'm sort of sick of it. I'll be back to fix it soon.***I maintained my "see a movie every weekend" goal today, by enjoying a solo trip to The Charles to see Michael Moore's new film Bowling for Columbine.
I'm still a little overwhelmed. I balled through many parts of it. Even though I was alone and no one was sitting within two rows of me, I still felt self-conscious about it and held it in as much as possible. But it was intense.
The biggest moment that hit me was when Moore was talking about African-American males and how society has such fear of them. They showed this huge montage of descriptions from news programs ("Witnesses describe the suspect as a black male, in his early twenties, etc"). They presented the clip of Susan Smith saying the guy who killed her two children was a black male, and how the public immediately lapped it up. The showed clips from Cops. Then they quoted this man who said something to the effect of, "If you are a young black male in this country, you immediately know that the majority of the people are afraid of you."
All of this made me think of my students. I connect well with my male students - generally better than the females - and it made me really sad and a little bit angry as to what they face in the world.
There were plenty of other parts that were overpoweringly emotional. The part when the two kids with bullets still lodged in their bodies from the Columbine massacre attempted to return the said bullets to the corporate headquarters of K-Mart, where the bullets were bought. The little bit of non-violent protest was successful, and the moment in which the K-Mart executive reads the press release that the store will stop selling bullets was incredibly powerful.
I also cried when the principal of the school in which the six year old 1st grader was killed by another six year old student was being interviewed. She said, "I just hope it doesn't happen again," and then she lost it and had to turn away from the cameraman. I lost it a bit, too.
This isn't to say this film is a downer, because I laughed a lot too. Michael Moore's comedic, thought-provoking style of documentary making is intact, and there were a lot of laughs. But this isn't as comedic as The Big One was. It's more along the lines with Roger & Me, a film that explores a thoughtful question with a mixture of pathos and humor.
One thing I especially enjoyed about the film was that it poses itself as an open-ended question, and it doesn't offer any conclusive answers. I had expected it to be a huge anti-gun film, but it wasn't at all. It was certainly anti-NRA, and one thing the film did for me was show the difference. One statistic that kept coming up was that Canada has a higher percentage of gun-ownership than America does, yet they have far, far fewer gun murders. Every reason that experts have given - a history of violence (um, Germany or Japan?), violent films (Canadians love 'em), rock n roll (goth rock emerged in Britain and Germany) - for our huge number of murders is debunked. The film offers the theory of the pervading sense of media-fueled fear that we have in our country, but nothing is conclusive.
I liked this, because obviously there are no easy answers in the issue. Michael Moore presents his film as a genuine exploration of the issue, and I loved it. This probably has supplanted Signs has my favorite film of the year thus far. And I think everyone should see this film, regardless of your political views.
***
So, I've accomplished about 10% of what I had planned to this weekend. This morning, in a spur-of-the-moment attempt to waste even more time, I put a new design on my diaryland page. For a long time, I resisted. I always have believed that it is content that brings people back to a journal, and design has never impressed me much. I have no qualms looking at one of the diaryland templates if it's well-written. In fact, there have been a lot of "fancy" designs that I feel detract from the overall quality; there are a number that I need to highlight because the font color is too light, for example. And I'd rather see a crappy design designed by the journal keeper than a fancy design designed by someone else.
But, after all that, I decided to go ahead and get a design. I found the guy through Barani's website, and liked his designs. I like the fact that the font size is smaller, and there is more room on the side for links and stuff. I like the blue. And I was getting tired of the old design, which had been up over a year. So, yup, I sold out. Let me know what you think.