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TELLURIDE - With each recent act of horrific violence in this country - the Oklahoma City bombing, the Columbine massacre, Sept. 11 - people have said we must question everything in search of reasons. And then we go back to business as usual - or try to. But Michael Moore, whose 'Bowling for Columbine' had its North American premiere this weekend at the Telluride Film Festival, has taken that admonition seriously. His documentary, by turns chilling, witty and heart-rending, aims to find out whether this nation's current climate of fear is a cause of its violence - especially gun-related homicides - or a result. The film has its flaws - many of Moore's points can be argued. But at its best, it searches for a link between this inarguable climate of fear and business as usual - a consumerist economy. That's classic populism. 'Keep people afraid and they consume,' the rocker Marilyn Manson tells Moore backstage at a Denver concert. While this is a film, then, about more than just the 1999 Columbine killings, it is very definitely about that. That becomes frighteningly, soberingly clear as Moore shows us the surveillance-camera footage of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold's rampage, accompanied on the sound track by frantic police-communications messages. As the audience watched this for the first time at Telluride, there was a stunned silence similar to watching planes fly into the World Trade Center. How could anything like this have happened here, you could sense people wondering. And you could almost grab at and hold the fear in the room. The 'Bowling' title comes from the fact Harris and Klebold were high-school bowlers. It seems intentionally ironic, but Moore draws a wholly unexpected and very moving connection to the Jan. 3 murders of three people at AMF Broadway Lanes in Littleton, not far from Columbine High School. His point is that gun-related violence in the area, and nationwide, rolls on. 'Bowling' is not a polemical film meant for those who already agree with Moore's politics. It is a movie about its questions rather than answers. Moore admits he is challenging himself as much as us. As in his other films, he makes himself a central figure, sometimes for comical effect. But he gives others center stage, such as Tom Mauser, father of slain Columbine student Daniel Mauser. Some of his investigations seem more productive than others. His search for a link between the mass destruction at Columbine and that wreaked worldwide by the military-industrial complex - including Colorado-based NORAD, Air Force Academy and the Lockheed Martin plant - seems tentative. And his wondering about a moral equivalency between domestic violence and U.S. involvement in Kosovo is unconvincing. Surprisingly, Moore's film is not anti-gun. He's an NRA member. Some of his strongest material comes from wondering why Canada, a nation with 7 million guns, has just a fraction of the gun-related homicides the U.S. has. This question, fueled by his anger at the murder of a 6-year-old girl in a Michigan classroom, led Moore to interview NRA spokesman Charlton Heston. This is 'Bowling's' most dramatic moment; Heston seems confused and doddering, walking out on Moore in Heston's own home. In a Saturday public interview with Vanity Fair writer Christopher Hitchens, Moore defended the interview in light of Heston's recent announcement of having Alzheimer's-like symptoms. Moore said he didn't think Heston seemed like a sick guy, as Hitchens suggested. "I felt more like when you talk to some actors, if they don't have a script, it's very hard for them to function verbally," Moore said. "He's confused because he had no lines to give."
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