Review: To Kill A Mockingbird
Posted by Anura Samara, 21 June 2016
An iconic movie based on an iconic story. Why haven’t I see this before?
It’s incredible that for such an iconic story, I’ve never read the book or seen the movie. These days, most movie adaptions of famous books wouldn’t qualify as ‘iconic’ but I think with the famous Gregory Peck the movie of To Kill A Mockingbird should qualify.
It was weird approaching this movie – so much about the story is in popular culture that you think you know it, but then within the first few minutes you realise that you know nothing at all.
The first thing I found out was that it is narrated from the perspective of a child, one of the children of the famous Atticus Finch. This means that although the themes are very much centred around an adult world, they are described as a child would see them. So here we have the great themes of racial bigotry, legal wrongs and the exclusion of anyone seen as different presented as simple and obvious wrongs, as child would see them.
The courtroom scenes where Atticus defends Tom Robinson, an African-American man charged with the rape of a white women, are supposedly the most powerful of the movie. But for me, it’s really just the public face of protest against oppression and was constrained by the demands of the law and expectations of behaviour in a courtroom.
The real courage comes from the protests that take place in daily life. Standing up to thugs who wanted to lynch poor Tom Robinson. Standing up to childish name-callers. Looking out for those who society shuns and degrades.
There are so many overlapping themes that it is hard to identify and think about each on separately. In the end, for me the story is about quiet courage from daily actions, and compassion for everyone. By telling the story from the perspective of a child, it makes the point that to some extent children are better able to see the world in simple and uncomplicated terms without the overlays of race, class, justice and accepted norms that adults impose.
The film itself is a reminder of an older style of film-making. No special effects, simple dialogue and slow timing which allow the themes to build up, minimal dramatic effects and honest acting. The reason I don’t watch a lot of modern movies is that they struggle to follow these basics.
Categories: Shows
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