Guns kill people, but so do women

 [Cue Chandler Bing voice.] Could Michael
Moore’s Bowling For Columbine (opening Friday, November 15, at the
Little) be released at a more appropriate time? [End Chandler Bing voice.]
We’re still finding victims of the Beltway Snipers, who were apparently picking
people off from a distance with the impunity of Mark McKinney’s Head Crusher
from The Kids in the Hall. Instead of
thumb and forefinger, these crackpots used a rifle, and that’s pretty much the
upshot of Bowling: America is an
insanely violent place to live, compared to anywhere else in the world. Moore’s
new film tries to answer the age-old question of why. He also seeks to explore
the reasons behind America’s love affair with guns, and, more importantly, why
we insist on firing them at each other.

            When the film opens, with a scene in
which Moore visits a Michigan bank that is giving away rifles to its new
customers, you might think you’re in for a one-sided romp that will include
poking fun at gun nuts and the NRA — preaching to the choir, or shooting fish
in a barrel, if you will. But it isn’t as biased as you might think. Moore
still uses satire via mockery, but also listens to arguments from people on
both sides of the issue, including Terry Nichols’ brother, John, and a couple
of Columbine survivors.

            Moore draws numerous comparisons
between the US and Canada, and he certainly makes his point. Canada has a
higher guns-per-household ratio than the US, but their gun-related deaths clock
in at 300 per year, while the US buries over 11,000 during the same 365 days.
When something like Columbine happens, people are quick to blame music and
video games, but those things are available virtually anywhere in the world at
this point. Bowling‘s title is aimed
at the finger-pointers — the Columbine shooters were both avid bowlers, yet
the game was never once mentioned as a potential cause for their bullet bender.

            In addition to the film’s many
interviews, which often pit Moore against people who must still be distracted
by his slovenly appearance (since they never see the hammer coming down until
it’s too late), there is a very funny Harold Moss-animated history of the US,
which depicts Americans in constant fear of something, thus explaining their
relentless need to arm themselves.

            But I think the segment that’s been
causing most of the uproar over the film is the one that follows Moore’s
interview with a bigwig at Lockheed Martin, who insists the weapons his company
creates are for defensive purposes only. Moore jumps from the interview to a
montage of US offensive attacks over the last 50 years, concluding with a
chilling look at 9/11. The Lockheed Martin connection is interesting, if not a
bit of a stretch. The company is Columbine’s biggest employer (so, like, no
wonder their kids are so damn violent), and the day of the school shooting just
happened to coincide with the US’s biggest one-day bombing of Kosovo — using,
presumably, bombs manufactured right there in Colorado.

            Bowling‘s
ambiguity might put some people off, as Moore never really gets a chance to
answer his one big question. Sometimes his point is unclear or ineffective
(like the weak Work-For-Welfare segment), and his biggest staged stunt is upstaged
by a shocking revelation. But nothing can top the film’s big finale — Moore
vs. Charlton Heston. Moses has vague-sounding answers for Moore’s questions
about holding NRA rallies in Denver just days after Columbine (and again, in
Flint, immediately after the youngest school shooting on record), but fumbles
when asked why he thinks America is so violent when compared to the rest of the
civilized world. Heston’s startling answer is enough of a surprise to make me
wonder if he’s faking the whole Alzheimer’s thing just to avoid the backlash
that should certainly follow him once Bowling is released.

            On Thursday, November 21, the Little
will host an open forum after their screening of Bowling that will include guests from the Rochester City School
District and the Rochester Police Department, as well as representatives from
TV, print, and radio journalism. This is your big chance to ask your own
gun-related questions.

A
desperately welcome polar opposite to the atrocious Moulin Rouge, François Ozon’s 8 Women (also opening Friday,
November 15, at the Little) is about as much fun as you should be allowed to
have in the dark, while still maintaining possession of your clothes. It’s
pretty easy to cram a bunch of good-looking, super-popular stars into the same film
and hope their charisma will overshadow a lack of originality, but Women is the rare example of an ensemble
picture that doesn’t disappoint when it comes to style and substance.

            Set at an isolated French country
estate during a Christmas Day in the late ’50s, Women quickly establishes itself as a murder-mystery. Family
patriarch Marcel (Dominique Lamure) is found in his bedroom with a knife
jutting out of his back. The phone lines have been cut and the gate is
completely blocked by snow, leaving the house’s eight occupants (both family
and servants) as suspects in Marcel’s murder.

            Oh, I know what you’re thinking — Women sounds an awful lot like Robert
Altman’s Gosford Park. But the two
films are like night and day. While Gosford featured two dozen characters, most of whom were almost indistinguishable and
instantly forgettable, Women expertly
fleshes out its eight roles in such a way that each will stay with you long
after the credits roll. And it manages to do it all in a fraction of Gosford‘s running time.

            Like any good whodunit, all of Women‘s characters have a motive to want
Marcel dead (and there’s no butler to blame, either). His estranged wife, Gaby
(Catherine Deneuve), and sister, Pierrette (Fanny Ardant), squabble over his
money and his will, which may or may not have been recently revised to cut one
of them out of the inheritance loop. Or maybe it was the new chambermaid,
Louise (Emmanuelle Béart), since she was the one who found his body. You can
never rule out any member of the staff, so count Chanel the maid (Firmine
Richard) as a suspect. Wheelchair-bound Mamy (Danielle Darrieux, playing
Deneuve’s mom for the fourth time) seems to be capable of murder, as does her
prim, dour daughter, Augustine (Isabelle Huppert), who has a lot of pent-up
aggression. And don’t discount Marcel’s two kids, Suzon (Virginie Ledoyen) and
Catherine (Ludivine Sagnier from Ozon’s Water
Drops on Burning Rocks).

            Speaking of Burning Rocks, I almost forgot to mention that Women also features eight campily choreographed (by Burning Rocks‘ Sébastien Charles)
song-and-dance numbers that will either make you giggle uncontrollably or roll
your eyes heavenward (Women seems to
be a love-it-or-hate-it experience). In between the singing and dancing,
accusations fly, and each of the characters start to reveal the cards they had
previously been holding very tightly to their chests. As the film progresses,
the secrets and admissions get more and more lurid (including infidelity,
incest, and murder). Numerous epithets are administered, including, but not
limited to: tramp, whore, hussy, witch, and sapphist (twice). And there are a
couple of choice catfights thrown in for good measure, too.

            A comedic murder-mystery with
song-and-dance numbers — quite the departure from Ozon’s last offering, the
deadly serious critical favorite Under
the Sand. In a way, Women might
be his way of blowing off steam between weighty films, sort of like Paul Thomas
Anderson and his unusual romantic comedy Punch-Drunk
Love, or whatever the hell Steven Soderbergh meant with Full Frontal. With Women, Ozon spoofs everything from Technicolor musicals to the
shooting style of ’50s sitcoms to Agatha Christie and mystery-novel junkies.
His cast look like they had an unbelievable time making this movie, and here’s
hoping that the DVD will feature what I can only imagine will be some
incredibly funny outtakes.

Interested
in unsanitized movie ramblings from Jon? Visit his site, Planet Sick-Boy, at
www.sick-boy.com, or listen to him on WBER’s Friday Morning Show.

This article appears in Nov 13-19, 2002.