The success of this movie is that it does not have any deliberately sensationalism, contrast, or exaltation. It is a plain restoration of the original event, with a strong contrast before and after. The audience can experience in shock and shock why ordinary students would commit this on an ordinary day. Cold-blooded heinous crime. The film director Gus Van Sant is terribly calm from beginning to end, and the narrative process is almost non-emotional. And this kind of calmness and trust in the audience is exactly what makes this social movie commendable. In the face of social problems, everyone has their own opinions. Gus Van Sant didn't say anything, but presented the reality naked in front of the audience, and it was up to the audience to complete the parts of the film that they wanted to express but did not express.
I think whether it is a playwright or a director, it is easier to say than to say nothing, and it is even more difficult to say nothing, not to say than to say. It is easy for ordinary writers/directors to jump from behind the scenes to the screen to instill their own views into the audience, and the truly wise director will mobilize the audience when everything is right, excite the audience, and let the audience think about how to make the best characters. The joy of characters. Only when the audience and the characters are combined, and only when the audience actively enters the plot of the movie, the story/movie is not just dozens of minutes on paper or on the screen, it is truly transformed into the audience’s own thinking and will remain in the memory forever . Only such works can be called classics.
The famous American documentary director Michael Moore also made a documentary on the same subject: "Bowling for Columbine", to explore the root of this social phenomenon from another angle.
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