Filmmaker Michael Moore has outdone himself. You need to watch “Bowling for Columbine” over break.

Normally, film reviews are reserved for the arts and entertainment pages of this newspaper, but after watching the movie this week, I feel compelled to spread the good word. Call it shameless propagation if you like, it doesn’t matter. Just go watch the movie.

The chilling documentary takes a tough — and balanced — look at violence in America and manages to weave into the story racism, poverty, foreign policy and welfare, among other things.

The film is the brainchild of Michael Moore, who is best known for his film “Roger and Me” and his 9-month New York Times best-selling book, “Stupid White Men.”

This film shocks even the most hardened gun aficionado and peace activist alike. Count me among film novices, but know that this is one of the best I’ve ever seen, and apparently people who actually know something about film agree.

The film was the first documentary in 46 years to be admitted to the prestigious Cannes Film Festival and won the jury prize there. It received a thirteen-minute standing ovation from some of the toughest film critics in the business at its world premiere.

What makes Moore’s movie so powerful is its simplicity. Moore, with his camera crew in tow, has the audacity of 10,000 network TV “whistle-blowers” and asks the most difficult questions in the most difficult of circumstances.

Only Michael Moore can manage to get a camera crew (legally) into a weapons factory in Littleton, Colo., on a night training exercise with the Michigan Militia (who count Timothy McVeigh as a former member), and a chat in the sunny Beverly Hills home of NRA Chairman Charlton Heston.

There are heart-stopping scenes from security cameras inside the library at Columbine High School as Eric Harris and Dylan Kleibold shot and killed twelve students and one teacher.

Moore obtained that footage employing the Freedom of Information Act, and told the Toronto Star that, “As exploitive as television usually is, no network or station played those tapes. Why is that? My only answer is that what’s scary about those tapes is the normalcy of them. It looks like any bunch of suburban kids in any suburban high school and, wow, that’s just too close to home. We like our monsters to look like monsters.”

This comes with a biting and emotional critique of the mainstream news media in which he juxtaposes facts that coverage of violence has risen some 600 percent, while violent crime in the United States has fallen 20 percent.

While he comes to no clear conclusions, Moore essentially argues that as the world’s most powerful nation, we suffer from a severe insecurity caused by xenophobia and racism. This insecurity, he implies, is a significant factor in the disparity between gun homicide statistics between the United States and comparable nations.

Racism’s role in violence then hit full force when Moore enlists the help of Littleton, Colo., native Matt Stone, a creator of South Park, to put together a hilarious comedy

sketch of American history. The cartoon traces American fear and insecurity of people of color from the Pilgrims through slave owners on plantations to the gated suburbs that surround today’s American cities.

In addition, he ambushes in trademark style former “American Bandstand” host Dick Clark to ask his opinion on the condition of a woman working in one of Clark’s restaurants. The woman’s 6-year-old son promptly shot and killed a fellow first grader in Michigan after finding a weapon under his uncle’s bed.

Rather than going after the uncle, Moore chose to ask Clark about getting a tax break for his restaurant being part of welfare-to-work program which forces parents away from home.

The film makes several points, but one stands out above the rest. As a nation we must begin to analyze issues of systemic fear and ignorance that arguably provide some of the world’s worst violent crime statistics.

So go watch Michael Moore’s “Bowling for Columbine” over the break and consider it a gift to yourself and the country.

Omar Tesdell

is a junior in journalism

and mass communication from Slater. He is the online editor of the Daily.