Friday, August 10, 2012

To Kill a Mockingbird (Movie Reivew)

To Kill a Mockingbird
(2 hrs & 9 min, b&w, 1962)

2012 marks the 50th anniversary of this brilliant, practically flawless and by now immortal motion picture.  Though based upon a best seller, namely Harper Lee’s bitter sweet evocation of life in the deep south during the Great Depression, the film has taken on a life of its own on the silver screen over and beyond the book.  It was released in late fall of 1962.  At least three generations have become acquainted with it; it has become legendary in its veneration, for its rectitude of spirit and for its unimpeachable honesty about a crucial segment of American life and history.  Seldom does a first rate novel lend itself so perfectly to movie treatment. 

Director Robert Mulligan, Screenwriter Horton Foote and Producer Alan J. Pakula (who later became a celebrated director) did everything just right.  All the book’s rich and essential details have been superbly captured and illuminated under their penetrating and watchful eyes.  They correctly understood that the story is basically concerned with a child’s enlightenment through tragedy and pain and through the ministry of a loving parent.  Accordingly, all that happens on the screen is told from the children’s point of view, just as it should be. 

And who are the children?  A six-year-old girl named Scout and her twelve-year-old brother Jem, played with gusto and complete sincerity by Mary Badham and Philip Alford respectively, live in a world unto themselves, full of mischief and make believe and wonder and perplexity.  Scout is a very fitting name for the girl, because she is not the sweet, demure little southern cutie that many would like for her to be.  She can hold her own in a fight and can match the boys toe to toe in the daring department.  It takes all the gentling of which he is capable for her widowed father Atticus Finch, a small town lawyer, to give her the stability she requires and really wants beneath her feistiness.  These kids are confined within little more than their quaint neighborhood in their small rural town, until something momentous happens to expand their horizons, something awesome, troubling, bewildering and eventually traumatic.  They are caught up in their father’s defense of a poor black man against a charge of attempted rape.  The fallout from this trial lands upon their tender heads.

Gregory Peck gives a warm, shaded, luminous portrayal of Atticus – arguably the best of his career.  Few scenes of courtroom contention have ever been as stirring as the one in which he takes center stage, where with simple honesty and eloquence he battles for the life of his client against entrenched redneck prejudice.  And Brock Peters rocks me to my soul’s foundation as the victimized African American whose fate hangs in the balance.  

Add to all these qualities the film’s intricate disclosure of the mores and folkways and rhythms of the community.  Mulligan and Foote linger over small details, soaking up local color.  They take their time and accomplish the remarkable feat of telling a story surrounding a sensational trial without getting caught up in the sensational in their manner of presentation.  I shudder to think how vulgarized Lee’s book could have become in the wrong Hollywood hands.  And keep an eye out for Robert Duvall making his movie debut in the small non-speaking role of a mentally handicapped young man who ultimately plays a crucial part in the children’s lives.   

So many priceless scenes!  I could write pages and pages about this great work!

The reminiscing voice of Scout as an older adult woman provides us with the film’s narration, once again in respect for the novel, in which the same story-telling device is used. Some of the film’s most beautiful poetic language falls from this person’s lips.  Regrettably I have not been able to find out who does this narration; I presume it is Harper Lee herself, since it is drawn essentially from her own writing in the book.  No mention of the name appears in the credits or in any of the special features attached to the DVD.  I am also inclined to believe it is Lee because there is much of autobiography in the character of Scout, Atticus being a fictionalization of Lee’s own father.

That lovely sequence during the opening credits has no equal.  Scout is heard off screen humming to herself as she goes through a treasure chest and does crayon drawings, finishing off with a giggle. It combines soothingly with Elmer Bernstein’s gentle, dreamy score.  We are being promised that each subsequent scene will be just that – a treasure, a jewel, something extracted delicately from a hope chest of memories.  And the film more than lives up to this opening promise.  Try as I may I have never been able to get through the last fifteen or so minutes of the movie without becoming tearful.  Not that the movie is a “tearjerker” in the colloquial sense; it just strikes many tender chords.  Though I never lived in a small town as a child I feel as if I am revisiting a place inside myself. 

It is inconceivable to me that anybody should miss seeing “To Kill a Mockingbird” at least once in his/her lifetime.  A gift from heaven!


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