American Tragedy

It was significantly drawn out with a ton of unnecessary and super slow reenactments. While reenactments are fine and a typical part of stories like this, they are generally quick and to the point. That's not the case here and I lost interest less than halfway through. The story itself is interesting and deserves to be told but this missed the mark.

Sooo much talk about mental health, preventing suicide with mindfulness (!?) But not a word about two major problems in the US - gun control and bullying in schools! Why do school shootings only happen in the US??? I live in Europe, we don't have "active shooter-drills" in schools here.

I thought this was going to be an open account from the family of a mass murderer. Instead it was positioned as a mental health piece where she describes herself as a parent of a suicide child? Huh? Yes he committed suicide and he obviously had mental health issues but he intentionally and vindictively murdered and attempted to murder lots of people first. They have other parents discussing their kids actual suicides, again how is that relent to her? I do feel sorry for her to have had the loss of her son but she isn't looking at it rationally. I would have imagined she would have went on to help other parents of mass murders or spoke in schools about how school shootings are not the answer in addition to mental health awareness. Also low quality actors to show vignettes from the past just poorly done, actual images and videos would have sufficed. They kept showing Dylan in photos before he looked like the kid with long hair that shot up the school. Felt more they were trying to have you sympathize with Dylan rather than the actual victims.

Mother of Dylan Klebold, one of the Columbine school shooters, is who this documentary mainly circulates around. She tries to grapple with how her son became the monster that shot up a school. When Columbine happened in 1999, at the time such an incident was unheard of although now it has sadly become so common in occurrence. Sue Klebold attempts to look back at the moments she missed, what she didn't see in Dylan, how she didn't notice the arcinary he was building in their garage. This documentary brings up interesting points about how America should be concentrating on preventative care as a way to curb future mass shooter creations. With so many aspects of physical health, we promote healthy eating and exercise but with school shootings we teach people what to do in the moment when it's already occurring. The documentary pushes for mindfulness which is great and all but we all know that the real problem is how easily youth can gain access to assault type riffles is what is problematic.

If you're looking for a documentary about the Columbine Tragedy from Susan Klebold's perspective, this isn't it.

While she is open about certain aspects of her son's life, she is not an open book. I didnt expect anything new or enlightening, but I was interested in hearing her speak about their lives up until April 20. Unfortunately, it felt like the filmmakers used her name & the tragedy to market an 80 minute Public Service Announcement about their ideas on Mental Health.