Video: "A brief history of United States of America", Bowling for Columbine

        Hi everybody, today I’ll speak about a video which is a film strip of Bowling for Columbine by Michael Moore, a movies’ director. He turned fiction and above all militancy documentaries.

Bowling for Columbine is a movie about the slaughter at the high school of Columbine in Colorado. About ten of students were killed by two others classmates. Michael Moore takes this event as starting point to expose the violence provoked by uses of firearms in United States.

 Well, this video called “A brief history of United States of America” is a famous film strip of Bowling for Columbine. The video presents a summary of the history in the form of cartoon for children. I choose this one because I think we can understand the topic of the movie and the aim of Michael Moore as director. 

The cartoon is very caricaturing and Michael Moore reveals sarcastic. This small movie shows that the director takes really part against the NRA. This extract will be very controversial when the movies went out because of the simplicity and the humour with which the director describes the USA.

This movie receives lots of recompenses as the Oscar of the best documentary movie and the César of the best foreign movie. This disputed movie received as many praises as blame.

In one hand there is people estimating there is no link between the number of weapons legally possessed and the homicides’ rate. They assure that the majority of crime committed by firearms, were acquired illegally.

And in other hand, magazines say the movie is a clearly denunciation. Michael Moore masters the art to shake up things to point the propagation of firearms in USA.

I think this movie is very interesting. We can see what’s the lobby of weapons’ manufacturers in USA. I think sometimes Michael Moore goes far but it is his style and that removes nothing to the aim.

Hélène