4/20
Added 2022-04-20 01:53:05 +0000 UTCTomorrow of course, is a memorable date for multiple reasons, including the 23rd anniversary of the Columbine school shootings. I'm the resident expert on the whole event around these parts. I've been looking into it on and off for almost 10 years at this point. Personally I find this particular case unique compared to many others. I finished Sue Klebold's book, "A Mother's Reckoning" recently. Sue is of course, the mother of Dylan Klebold, one of the two Columbine killers. I find her perspective so fascinating and devastating. To be a mother of a murderer on this scale, that she never saw coming, to me is an incredible thing. I always wished more movies could be made from that perspective. Does anyone know any that I'm missing? I know WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN is the typical go-to. But I really struggled with that film overall. A lot of pseudo-artsiness, and I don't feel it has a mature grasp of the subject matter at all, which is a real shame. What do you guys think? And again, welcome to suggestions.
Comments
Thanks! Yes that's right. Mass has been on my list.
Deepfocuslens
2022-04-21 05:05:37 +0000 UTCI haven’t seen we need to talk about Kevin but one film I have seen that I have similar thoughts on is Denis Villeneuve’s Polytechnique. I thought there was a lot of overly artsy techniques there that didn’t serve the film well. It’s in black and white so I thought they were trying to focus on the expressions of the victims or something but there are a lot of really long establishing shots of a snow-covered town in Canada that I just didn’t see the point of. Also I thought it wasn’t particularly well acted. I did appreciate that the film was more about the victims as I don’t like the idea of sensationalizing the shooter. I also like the idea of focusing on the mother of the shooter since that’s a rare perspective.
Jackson Littlewood
2022-04-20 09:11:11 +0000 UTCA film called The Dirties.
Saku Työrinoja
2022-04-20 09:10:13 +0000 UTCPerhaps Peter Bogdanovich's first feature, Targets (1968)? Boris Karloff's last film.
Oscar Mitt
2022-04-20 06:34:24 +0000 UTCI watched Elephant after the Parkland shooting and it stuck a nerve with me. I don’t feel the need to revisit it since it is so raw and painfully violent.
Emerson B
2022-04-20 03:02:12 +0000 UTCThis is not a good example because it's not on the same scale of horrible but it's the only one that comes to my mind that has a mother's perspective on her kid. One of the best things about Robert Redford's Ordinary People, which was mostly about Timothy Hutton, was Mary Tyler Moore and how she was trying to brush the whole family trauma under the rug in order to appear to people she knew as the perfectly functional housewife to the perfectly functional middle class family despite one son dying and the other surviving a suicide attempt shortly after. Even though she cares more about that than the well being of her husband and mentally traumatized son, she was just as much a victim in this as them and the fact that she couldn't overcome it at the end, unlike her son, was profoundly tragic.
Wolfman Brandon
2022-04-20 02:48:49 +0000 UTCMass is definitely one I would recommend. That was my favorite film of last year. I’ve also heard really good things about an Australian film called Nitram, which is based on the man who committed the Port Arthur massacre in 1996. Caleb Landry Jones plays the lead. That’s available to rent on Amazon.
Bennett Oliver
2022-04-20 02:29:43 +0000 UTCIt looks like Mass is the movie to check out. I haven't seen it but I remember a few people in here praising it awhile back. The only other movie I can find that even tackles the subject from a parent's perspective is a movie called Beautiful Boy (2010) starring Michael Sheen and Maria Bello. In general, it seems well received.
Stephen
2022-04-20 02:20:46 +0000 UTCGus Van Sant's Elephant seems the most obviously related. I saw it in college and don't remember any clear opinion of it, but it was definitely Columbine inspired.
Arthur Augustyn
2022-04-20 02:01:01 +0000 UTCThe recent movie Mass I thought brought a very three dimensional perspective to both the parents of victims and perpetrators. It's essentially just a chamber play filmed but I found it very powerful and engrossing just for its subject matter.
Tyler Shobe
2022-04-20 01:59:15 +0000 UTC
