The American gun

The American gun

The American gun, directed by Aric Avelino, is a film that tells three small stories. Three quiet tales in which people are not strident so much as sad, and one of those tales ends without an ending so that the other two may begin to close. These are stories about people discovering that their own lives have become nearly unlivable because others have had guns in their hands.

The first tale presents us with a mother named Janet whom Marcia Gay Harden plays. Three years ago her son shot and killed some students at his Oregon high school and then was shot dead himself. She carries on with another son, David (Chris Marquette), who attends a private school. But she needs money; and so she agrees to be interviewed on television for pay by a local station whose reporters are asking everyone they can find teachers, policemen for words about the boy’s rampage Janet cannot seem to articulate anything very useful during this interview What can she say?

Like them all, she lost someone in that shooting Perhaps being the parent of a killer is harder than being the parent of someone who has been killed Then David has to leave this private school when it goes bankrupt, and he enters the same public high school where his brother did the shooting.

Also interviewed is a cop (Tony Goldwyn) whom some people think saved no lives on what should have been his busiest day ever He followed department procedures But he feels blamed for those deaths Both mother and cop go speechless when TV reporters ask them questions like “How do you feel?” They’re not slick enough to fall into remorse and redemption

In story number two Forest Whitaker stars as Carter, a principal in an inner-city Chicago high school. He came here from Ohio thinking he could make things better His wife (Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon) believes she is losing him to this job Now Carter is worn down past tired past hope Jay (Arlen Escarpeta), one of his honor students, is caught near the school with a gun and may be expelled We follow Jay to work at an all-night gas station where he sits alone all night inside a padlocked cashier’s station Any customer who comes in there might come in pointing a gun at him He needs to carry a gun for protection; it isn’t loaded

The third tale never ends. Donald Sutherland plays Carl, an old man who runs a gun store in Charlottesville His granddaughter Mary-Anne (Linda Cardellini) enrolls at the university and gets a part-time job in his shop But Carl is not what you call a gun nut He could be selling fishing tackle instead And Mary-Anne feels creepy about working there Then one of her girlfriends gets assaulted.

Each of the three tales raises one question: how can you lead a rational life when many of your compatriots have guns? There seem to be two possible answers: they should be disarmed; or you ought to be armed. A third answer, suggested by certain gun owners, is that they should be armed but many other kinds of people shouldn’t. They never include themselves in those categories. I think about my friend McHugh, who was shown a gun by a guy in a bar. “Why do you carry that?” McHugh asked him. “I live in a dangerous neighborhood,” the guy said. “It would be safer,” McHugh told him, “if you moved.”

At one point in the film, Janet’s neighbors mark the third anniversary of the high school shooting by planting flags on their lawns, including a black flag on hers. They are vindictive and revengeful. Did it occur to them to plant signs calling for a ban on handguns? No. Guns don’t kill people. Janet’s son does.

“American Gun” is the first feature from Aric Avelino, who co-wrote it with Steven Bagatourian; he shows an almost gentle restraint in his storytelling, not hammering us with a message but simply looking steadily at how these lives have been made difficult by firearms. The mother’s actual answer to the television interviewer could have been: “My son killed his schoolmates because he had a gun and he could.” The Columbine shooters without weapons would still have been antisocial psychopaths, but they wouldn’t have been killers.

As for the Chicago principal well, who can blame him for despairing? In the same week that I saw “American Gun,” two children were shot dead in Chicago as collateral damage from guns; they weren’t targeted but happened just to get hit. The price of guns is multiplied day after day and year after year and body after body in our society. The rest of the world looks on in wonder.

The right to bear arms is being defended by the sacrifice of the lives of its victims. That doesn’t mean gun owners are bad people. Donald Sutherland’s dealer seems like one of the nicest guys you’d ever want to meet. On the door of his store there’s a sign: “We buy used guns.” Just a sign. No big deal. It’s how the movie ends.

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