Montages Of Different Occurrences Throughout Moore's Film example essay topic

A Ride You " ll Never Forget The Academy for Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' criteria for "Best Documentary Film" includes in their definition for a documentary that it should be a non-fiction film that creatively addresses cultural, historical, social, etc. subjects. Bowling for Columbine won the Academy Award for best documentary film and has stirred up quite a bit of debate amongst its viewers. Thousands hail Moore for his ingenious creativity and are ready to take a stand to change America after seeing it. Bowling for Columbine is a great documentary because Moore creatively puts what seem to be unrelated shots and scenes together to create viewer's minds to open up and think about things in ways they may have never thought about before. In order to create such a thought provoking experience Moore puts footage of different shots together in order to get the viewers mind wondering on different pathways of possible reasons for America's violence issue. For instance, the footage of the crashing of the twin towers and the Kosovo bombings were played right after one another.

Nobody would have thought about those two situations having a connection before viewing Bowling. Moore really gets deep into his viewer's hearts and almost physically opens their eyes to see possible relationships between the unimaginable. A good aspect to any film is the power to motivate and to take people on a ride they " ll never forget. The montages of different occurrences throughout Moore's film expand your mind and take you on a life time experience.

Many will say that the film has no point and has many bizarre connections brought up throughout the film. In reality Moore does have a point and certainly does not make any crazy connections. Rex Reed states "as the irrelevant facts multiply, the focus jumps all over the map and the point of the movie blurs". In Bowling for Columbine there are several montages put together which contain many different happenings throughout America's history that may seem unrelated. Reed has obviously been blinded by all these "unconnected facts" as he spends most of his time hunting for one specific point when the film really addresses several points such as fear, violent video games, TV shows, poverty, etc. to links for America's violence.

Throughout the film Moore approaches several different forks in the road through his unique displays of clips. By doing that Moore suggests certain relationships between possibilities for America's violent streak. Never in the film does Moore pound his opinion upon the viewers. He considerately lays out different possibilities before his audience and lets them choose whether to acknowledge it or not. Anybody should be able to realize that and should be able to see that the point of Bowling is not to force conclusions into our heads but to take us along with Moore on his search for the ambiguous answer to America's violent streak. The so called "irrelevant" facts that Reed speaks of are added into the film to make possible relationships between things that nobody would have ever thought about.

A good example would be when he puts the shots of the polluted smog filled Hollywood hills, clips of the T.V. show Cops, and clips of random news stations all in a row. Moore interviews Dick Hurley, the producer of the show Cops, and suggests to him a less violent approach for the show. Dick Hurley proudly announces that the content of their show draws in the ratings and that it catches people's attention when they see the scandalous scenarios. In another incident Moore happens to be walking down a street in the inner city of Hollywood when a news crew pulls up.

He tries to talk to part of the news crew while they are hustling down the street to catch a clip of a man with a gun. He tells the news crew that they should film the pollution in the Hollywood Hills, but the crew doesn't say anything back to him and walks away. By making these confrontations with the different media sources Moore allows the audience to see first hand that the news really only cares to cover all the violence that happens in our society and ignores the good or the obvious. Being mislead leads to the fear factor that Moore talks about. The Hollywood sign up in the hills cannot be seen from a certain distance away because of the smog that hides it, just like how our television shows and even news stations smog us from the real world.

The news and television shows only show the bad things that happen, so in return Americans live with the fear that what they see on TV will most likely happen to them. Putting a scene of the Hollywood hills with a montage of news casters filming a crime in action may seem like a ridiculous thing to do according to Reed. If you think deep enough into the reason why those shots are put where they are you will see that it happens to be another example of how Moore's intelligence and artistic capabilities come into play. By putting those scenes together he opens up another door full of questions, which in return leads his audience down another winding trail of possible answers leaving the viewer's minds searching all possibilities. Moore raises another issue with the fear concept that definitely makes the audience get their brains ticking. Not only does the issue of fear bring up probable cause for the Columbine incident, but for everything that has been happening to our society in the past years.

One of the most effective and thought provoking elements Moore uses to get his message across would be the shots of buildings being bombed in Kosovo, the crashing of the twin towers, and the text that states Osama bin Laden uses his expert C.I.A. training to murder 3,000 people all put together. Our nation was devastated and d welled in a state of fear after the 911 attack. The very man that Americans drowned in fear of was trained by our nation! Not only was Osama trained by us, but some of his right hand men such as Ali Mohammed, who was charged for bombing US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, were trained at the al Kif ah Refugee Centre in Brooklyn, New York. Osama's operatives were given paramilitary training in New York and then were sent to Afghanistan.

By training these people, the U.S. thought they could help other countries fight against the soviets. Training people extreme sabotage should not have been the way to go about winning a battle. By putting these happenings together Moore makes the audience realize that the United States really brought the whole situation upon them. Viewing the montage that was strategically put together makes the viewers look at the situation a little differently. The fact that Moore thought to put the Kosovo bombing footage in with the twin towers footage happens to be another good example of the creative way he provokes his audience to engage in a deeper thought process.

Going from the planes crashing into the towers to the clouds that poof up into the air from the bombs being dropped in Kosovo really makes the viewers think about what actually happened. Would it have been different if Afghanistan would have dropped bombs on us instead of flown planes into our buildings? As a nation we sat here trying to understand why anybody would ever do such a heartless act when in reality we did the same exact thing to another country, except using bombs instead of planes as our weapons. The connection that Moore made between these two terrible incidents is amazing and enhances the eye opening journey that he tries to get his viewers to take through out the film.

The connections that Michael Moore makes are what provide the audience with the thought provoking experience that Bowling provides. A.O. Scott implies through out his review that Moore makes idiotic connections with many different things. He states that the connection of the sequenced shots listed above is "hardly worth engaging", because it distorts the meanings of the events. Moore certainly does not distort any meaning but only opens the minds of the audience to think more openly about these radical happenings. Moore adding in his thoughts along with the facts gives the film a kind of twist that makes his documentary unique from any other. Nobody else could come up with such an effective way of capturing an audience's mind. Throughout the film Moore brings up several fearfully intense incidents that happened to America.

Bringing up these incidents allow the viewers to look back on things and realize how far we have come and how safe we really are. According to Kopel, Moore "blaming" the media for provoking fear into society comes off as contradicting in the fact that Bowling "uses cheap sensationalism to promote fear. "The very technique which he decries in the media, Moore uses himself", Kopel goes on to claim. If Kopel would only open his eyes he would see that Moore does not inject more fear into his audience, but simply shows them that they really have nothing to be afraid of all the time. Moore reinforces the no fear point at many stages in his film. A good example would be the clips from the news that reveal such stories that involve the advancement of the killer bees in North America, the shootings in the inner cities, the Y 2 K scare, etc.

Take the Y 2 K scare for instance. The news gave that dilemma so much coverage and made it sound like it was going to be the worst thing in the world. In return it caused our society to go out and stock up on all of the necessities in fear that they would not be available when the clock struck 12 a.m. on January 1st, 2000. When Moore shows the news video clips of the frantic shoppers it sends the message across to the audience that the way society acted during that time was very ridiculous. Everyone was so afraid of a terrible outcome and when the clock struck midnight everything was the same as it had been before. The message only enhances what Moore tries to point out and makes his viewers realize that America doesn't need to be afraid anymore.

Clips of the "horrifying" situations were only shown to make people realize how over dramatic they can be and to just stop and relax once in a while and everything will be okay. Kopel stating that the film only works harder to make its audience still more afraid is really not legitimate, considering Bowling does nothing of the sort. Having these intense occurrences in the film reverses the fear factor in the end. This film has an ingeniously powerful way of making its viewers go against the grain and think about things never thought about. Waldron-Montgani helps point out that it takes its spectators down many different pathways and thought processes. "Bowling for Columbine is the right movie at the right time, and if it were seen, it could change America", Montgani proclaims.

It will bring you from laughing to tears with the amazing footage on an extraordinary journey in search for answers that will never exactly be found. Bowling bears a few messages that are most definitely worth considering. Even if everyone doesn't agree or see things the way Moore does, he digs up questions that are worth asking and certainly worth pondering. Any film that can create such a mind boggling journey deserves a merit. It's a difficult task to make a film that addresses a serious issue and to use such extraordinary techniques to take the audience on a ride they will never forget, but Moore seems to have mastered it in his film Bowling for Columbine.