An American bombing: the road to April 19 (now streaming on Max) finds director Marc Levin and his producing partner Daphne Pinkerson returning to a story they visited in 1996, for an NBC documentary Oklahoma City: One Year Later. The new documentary is a deeper retrospective that reconstructs the narrative of Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995, killing 168 people. Levin also broadens the perspective, examining the origins of the brand of modern right-wing extremism that gave rise to McVeigh, and argues, quite convincingly, that the nastiest domestic terrorist ever recorded was not a “lone wolf,” but rather a part of a larger clique.
AN AMERICAN BOMBING: THE ROAD TOWARDS APRIL 19: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The essence: Kathy Sanders remembers in vivid detail the morning of April 19, 1995. She sang to wake up her grandchildren, fed them breakfast and took them to daycare at the federal building in Oklahoma City. Shortly after, her son, in her spare time from his job as a police officer, saw his nephew among a row of dead children. He wanted to hug the boy and say goodbye but he was stopped. They told him this was a crime scene. The body was proof. We see disturbing archival footage of people staggering, bleeding, walking away from the decimated building; Officials cradle injured children and take them to receive medical care. The media came to the hugely foolish conclusion that this horror was the result of Islamic terrorism. We see President Bill Clinton ask the American people to let the investigation play out before pointing fingers. Then we see Clinton today saying that he thought from the beginning that the attack had many of the hallmarks of domestic terrorism, like the kind he saw brewing among militias while he was governor of Arkansas.
We probably already know the gist of the rest of the story: McVeigh, interestingly, was already arrested for driving without a license plate and carrying a gun without a license. He was tried, found guilty and, in 2001, executed by lethal injection, without showing any remorse. His motive was to start an American Revolution; Among his last words, he called himself the winner of this conflict, because the count was McVeigh 168, the US government 1. From here, Levin interviews journalists, relatives of victims, lawyers involved in the case of McVeigh, numerous government officials, and even a former right-wing extremist, putting together a much broader picture to contextualize the attack.
Levin flashes back to 1983, labeled on screen as the “first wave.” In the wake of President Carter’s ban on exporting crops to Russia, farmers suffered a significant financial hit; President Reagan subsequently vetoed a rescue package, essentially leaving them to suffer. The seeds of anti-government discord were planted and militias began to form, united around white supremacist and Christian fundamentalist ideologies. In the 1990s, the militia movement coalesced in tragic events in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and Waco, Texas, both notable for the U.S. government’s failed attempts to end stalemated sieges with heavily armed extremists; the first resulted in high-profile conspiracy charges that the defendants successfully rejected, and the second found McVeigh present as 80 people at the Waco complex died as he burned. McVeigh was galvanized, but so were many others. When Levin reaches the “third wave,” we see images of the January 6 resurrection. It’s all part of the same mosaic of modern American history.
What movies will it remind you of?: Surely it is not an exaggeration to say An American bombing is a spiritual predecessor to HBO’s January 6 documentary Four hours in the Capitol.
Performance worth seeing: Sanders has been steadfast in his insistence that McVeigh did not act alone, that the government was not diligent in trying only McVeigh and an accomplice, Terry Nichols. He even corresponded with Nichols while he was in prison, as he found comfort in forgiveness.
Memorable dialogue: Bud Welch, who lost his daughter in the bombing, fought against the death penalty for McVeigh and even reached out to McVeigh’s father to offer comfort. Because? “The day our parents die, we go to the top of the hill and bury them,” he said. “The day our children die, we buy them into our hearts. And that never goes away.”
Sex and skin: None.
Our opinion: A clearer and clearer argument can be presented than the one Levin puts forward in An American bombing. The film covers a lot of ground—the origins of the modern white supremacist movement, the emotional fallout of the bombing, the U.S. government’s inability to land a solid blow against domestic extremism—but at times it feels rough. Several narrative threads are mixed together and could be edited to finer points that generate stronger statements.
But the film is nonetheless informative and revealing in its retrospective scrutiny of a true American tragedy. Levin reveals a strong sense of disillusionment among military veterans who return from war (in McVeigh’s case, the Gulf War) with no job or sense of purpose, and with a probable case of post-traumatic stress disorder. Most interesting are the interviews with Kerry Noble, the former extremist who provides information that confirms and exposes many of our assumptions about right-wing Christian militias (he shares an anecdote about how his particular group of crazy people wanted to attack a church that functioned as a space safe for homosexuals, but changed his mind when he came to see them as fellow Christians); Noble could be the focus of a separate documentary.
Levin traces McVeigh’s life and misdeeds, shows us how the right-wing media had been complaining about Democrats taking their guns for decades before the slew of mass shootings in recent years, and frequently returns to Sanders and Welch. The film balances emotional and intellectual approaches. The overall story touches on racism, religion, capital punishment, cults and gun proliferation in America – too much to cover in 106 minutes. But the film ultimately focuses on two claims: Journalist Mike Boettcher puts it bluntly when he says that the bombing was a signal for America to “wake up.” And Clinton says McVeigh’s statements and reasoning “literally sound mainstream.” today.”
Our call: TRANSMIT IT. crowded like An American bombing occasionally it may be, however, it is compelling in its intent.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic living in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
