Family Gatherings Must Be Weird

Film: The Graduate
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

Certain films slip under everyone’s radar. Every film geek and snob has a film or two that they haven’t yet seen for one reason or another. Me? I have a whole list of those films. One of the ones at the top was The Graduate until just now. For the generation before mine, the older section of the Baby Boomers specifically, this is a pivotal film in many ways. One could argue it as one of the most important films for that generation pre-Woodstock, and I don’t think that argument would be amiss.

Because it is such a pivotal and important film, it’s a difficult one for me to judge, because I my initial response to this film is to dislike it mildly rather than be completely enraptured by it the way I’m supposed to be. It’s kind of icky. It’s supposed to be a blend of comedy and drama, and I get that it could be seen that way, but so much of it is unpleasant that I have trouble seeing it that way. It’s not unpleasant in the way a number of films I’ve seen in the past two years is, but there is sort of an oily film over it.

Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) has just returned from college where he was quite the big man on campus. Now back, he is completely without direction, uninterested in getting a job and unequally uninterested in graduate school. He’s also very young—a college graduate and about a week from turning 21. At a party celebrating his return, he offers a ride home to Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), who attempts to seduce him and tells him that she is “available” to him whenever he wishes. Just to make things jolly and fun, her husband (Murray Hamilton, immediately identifiable by his voice) is the law partner of Ben’s dad (William Daniels).

This goes on for awhile. Ben drifts aimlessly (and quite literally in the family swimming pool) and has copious amounts of sex with Mrs. Robinson. He discovers that he really has nothing in common with her. She’s essentially a bored housewife who drinks and smokes constantly and is looking for a little something more in her life, thus Benjamin. Ben, on the other hand, is pretty much disgusted with himself for sleeping with his father’s partner’s wife, but can’t break away because he doesn’t have anything else to do. This changes when he is forced to take the Robinsons’ daughter Elaine (Katherine Ross) out on a date. After a very rocky start, the two end up falling for each other, making one creepy and strange love/sex triangle. Like I said, there’s sort of a film of oil on this movie.

And yet, in a very real way, I understand exactly what all of the hoopla is about. Liking this movie is all about the “when.” This is a movie that needs to be seen at a particular point in life, at a particular time or age, and I’m well past it. It reminds me in many ways of The Catcher in the Rye. People who read that book at 15 or so love it and identify with Holden Caulfield for the rest of their lives. I read that book in my 20s and wondered what all of the fuss was about. Furthermore, I wanted to reach into the pages and bitchslap that little snot.

And that, for me, is The Graduate. I’m in my 40s now, and find nothing appealing or interesting about these characters. Benjamin Braddock is a creep, a jerk. He does little but feel sorry for himself and whine about it. The world essentially gets handed to him on a plate, and none of it is good enough or interesting enough to do anything for him. Elaine is a mush and a bit of a twit, a pretty face with nothing behind it. And Mrs. Robinson is, bluntly, a selfish bitch.

But here’s the thing: all of that is completely intentional. I get precisely what the point of this film is, I think, or at least a possible reading of everything in it that makes coherent sense. I’m not going to say that everybody else has it wrong, but I will say that the people who find Ben appealing and somehow laudable have it dead wrong. He’s a punk and he’s supposed to be a punk. Ben does nothing but screw up, and that’s exactly what he’s supposed to do here. The film isn’t about Ben “rescuing” Elaine or about the affair with Mrs. Robinson, or Oedipal issues. It’s about listless people adrift in the world doing things because they can’t think of anything else to do. Ben and Elaine and Mrs. Robinson are pitiful and pitiable because they can’t really be anything else.

And so, for that, this film is genius.

I don’t love this film, and I’m not sure at this point if I even like it. I do, however, respect the hell out of what Mike Nichols has accomplished with it. He has, for lack of a better word, tapped into that feeling of ennui, that complete lack of a point that everyone experiences at one time or another. Everyone is Ben Braddock at some point in life.

I’m not that guy anymore, although I’ve certainly been him in the past. I think if I had watched this film during those years of my life, I may well have placed this as one of my favorite movies ever. I’d see Ben Braddock as something of a hero, or at least as a sort of cinematic spirit guide. But I missed my chance. And so this will remain a film for which I will have a deep and abiding respect, but it’s platonic. Try as I might, I just can’t love it.

As a final note, almost all of the most famous moments from this film come in the first 20 minutes. It's kind of a letdown when everything you know of a film happens right away; it's almost like there's nothing to look forward to.

Why to watch The Graduate: Arguably the most iconic film of the 1960s, and everyone borrows from it.
Why not to watch: There’s something unappealing about the characters and especially the situation.

Post-Traumatic Stress

Film: The Best Years of Our Lives
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

I talk about Old Hollywood a lot on this blog, in part because I know that I have a couple of occasional readers who are either devoted fans or who hate it passionately. I understand both sides. I have an appreciation for films of the ‘30s and ‘40s, but I understand precisely why some folks don’t like them. I feel it’s a duty to suggest when a film fits into that stereotype and should be avoided by the haters or when it transcends them and should be seen by everybody.

The Best Years of Our Lives is very much a film that transcends the stereotype of overacting, schmaltz, and pure escapism. This is a film that would have been very much at home following virtually any war. I could see this film being made about returning Vietnam veterans, or Gulf War veterans, or vets of Afghanistan. In short, while the details of this film have aged in many ways, the themes have not, and the story is still as fresh and real and vital as it was in 1946 in the days following World War II.

We follow the fates of three men. Fred Derry (Dana Andrews) was a bombardier in Europe. In the days before his deployment, he met and married Marie (Virginia Mayo). Now home, he has a wife he barely knows and no career. The only thing he’s capable of doing is working at his old job in a drugstore, spending part of his time behind the soda counter making floats and sundaes. His marriage never really got going and is now a shambles, in part because Marie was more in love with the uniform than with him, and in part because she isn’t content to stay home every night.

Al Stephenson (Fredric March) is the flipside of Fred. While Fred went from being poor in the real world to being a captain in the Air Force, Al went from a job as a loan officer in a bank to a mere Army sergeant (no disrespect meant to the sergeants of the world—this is strictly a rank issue. Sergeants, after all, make the military go ‘round). Now back with his wife Millie (Myrna Loy), daughter Peggy (Teresa Wright), and son Rob (Michael Hall), Al is attempting to fit back in to his civilian life. He does this with the liberal use of alcohol, much to Millie’s silent suffering.

Finally, we have Homer Parrish (Harold Russell), a Navy man who had both of his arms blown off. He’s left with two hooks for hands, and can do almost anything with them, except, as one of our other main characters notes, hold his girl, Wilma (Cathy O’Donnell). Homer’s story is in many ways the most tragic. For him, the loss of his hands means a loss of self-reliance. He wants only to be taken as the man he was, and sees any act of charity or assistance as pity, and he won’t have that. Moreover, he is unwilling to condemn Wilma to a life of looking after him because of his injuries.

What’s noteworthy about this film is that it doesn’t put a rosy spin on everything. Al’s drunkenness, for instance, is never really played for a laugh, but as a symptom of what he saw and experienced in the war. Called upon to give a speech at a gathering, Al continues to drink and Millie grimly ticks off the number of drinks he consumes. It’s tragic. Fred’s relationship with his wife turns sour the moment his back pay from the military runs out, and it never magically gets better because he deserves it or because that’s the way Hollywood movies work out. Their relationship enters a death spiral almost immediately and continues to circle until close to the end of the film. As for Homer, his anger and frustration are perhaps the most easily understood, but even here, we aren’t given a true Hollywood story. In the most poignant moment of the film, he brings Wilma into his bedroom and shows her the reality of his life without hands. It’s stark and painful and very, very real.

And this is precisely why this film is so good. It was created in a time when Hollywood directors and producers and studios sugar coated everything, a time when melodrama was king. But not here. These stories are real and visceral and human, which makes them compelling and worth watching. No one is spared the tragedy of these men returning from hell, least of all the audience.

It’s worth noting that Harold Russell really did lose both of his hands. He made only five movies in his lifetime, and this was his first. That he is less adept on screen than his costars is understandable. That he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for this role is equally understandable. While he is certainly not the greatest actor on this screen, he adds a real human touch to the film, and the presence of those twin hooks is so shocking and startling at first, the we almost ignore the man. By the end of the film, though, Homer Parrish the character is far more than the two metal hooks he wears, and that is a testament to any actor, as well as to a brilliant screenwriter.

This is a tremendous film, one of the great films of its decade and one of the great films of American film history. Just off years of making propaganda, pro-war films that boosted the morale of the home front, Hollywood managed to create one of the most powerful and moving post-war films ever conceived. The Deer Hunter works in much the same vein, but not with the same effect. The Best Years of Our Lives gives us no flashy situations, no violence or loss of life. What it does give us, though, is the sort of quiet human tragedy that any war creates. It is brilliant and sad and uplifting all at the same time, a true work of cinematic art.

As a final note, it’s been years since I saw this. The first time I did see it, I was a little kid. My father rented the film—on reels, no less—from the public library, and screened it on a fold-up movie screen in the living room. It was no less powerful now, 30+ years later.

Why to watch The Best Years of Our Lives: A film perfect for its own time, and continually relevant today.
Why not to watch: The title leads one to think it’s a film about happiness and fluffy bunnies…and it ain’t.

Rule Britannia

Film: The Queen
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

When the world suffers a traumatic event, one question that gets asked frequently is “Where were you when you found out about _____?” When it comes to the death of Princess Diana, my answer is quite a bit different than most. Sue and I had just purchased a little vacation home (emphasis on little) and were spending that weekend working on it. We were completely out of touch with the world—no television, no radio, no newspaper. We didn’t find out for a good 48 hours. So I found out while eating lunch in a little townie bar on a Sunday.

The Queen is not about Diana, but at the same time, it is about her. The film covers the few days about and around the death of Diana in Paris and the week leading up to her funeral. So, while Diana herself appears in this film only as newsreel and interview footage, she is very much at the heart of the narrative. However, the film is truly about the royal family and how they dealt with Diana’s death and the aftermath. Central to this narrative is the head of the family, Queen Elizabeth II (Helen Mirren).

What this film does is create a real sense of the royal family not as figureheads or monarchs or titular heads of the British Empire, but as actual people with lives and emotions. And, they have a number of specific concerns that virtually no one else in the world can appreciate. As the royal family, there are hundreds of years of precedent and protocol that must be followed at all times regardless of the reality of the situation. For them, the death of Diana was a singular and unique event.

Why? Well, strictly because they are royals. Diana had divorced Charles (played here by Alex Jennings) and was no longer a part of the royal family (an ex-HRH in the parlance of the film). Being a royal allowed for particular rights and privileges that now, based strictly on protocol, needed to be denied. And those rights and privileges were precisely what the rest of the world wanted Diana to have. The film depicts crowds of British citizens irate to the point of vehement anger that there was no flag flying at half-mast over Buckingham Palace. It didn’t matter to them, nor to the rest of the world, that the flag never flies at half-mast there. In fact the flag flies only to show the residency of a monarch. But that is what the people wanted, and its lack infuriated them. Precedent and protocol, a thousand years of tradition, no longer seemed to matter.

What this film does is, as I mentioned already, allow Elizabeth to become for the rest of the world a real person. Upon Diana’s death, her first instinct is to do what many of us would do; she looked to protect her family and attempted to keep the tragedy as a private affair within the walls of the family itself. She wanted the ability to deal with things on her own, to deal with her grandchildren not as royal scions, but as children.

The four members of the royal family who are actual characters in this film come off fairly unevenly. Both Prince Phillip (James Cromwell) and the Queen Mother (Sylvia Syms) come across poorly. Both appear hidebound and reduced to following tradition as a matter of course rather than for any good reason. Both seem almost devoid of sympathy or pity, wishing only for things to go back to the way they were before Diana’s fatal accident. Prince Charles comes across far more favorably, although by no means perfectly. There is a sense that he wishes to modernize the country and is willing to go along with the throngs of British citizens. There is also a sense that he is ferociously paranoid and fears assassination. The Queen herself comes off as a woman worn down by her duty and desperate to stave it off, but unable to do so. She is shown to us as a paragon of that long-gone past history when the monarch’s job was to face stoically whatever threatened her or her people.

But is it good? I’m happy to report that it is. Frears has managed to catch something on film that is almost completely unique. Elizabeth has always been a popular monarch, but this crises damaged her significantly. Frears sugar coats nothing, hides nothing, and exposes anything he can. As a result, Elizabeth becomes more approachable—more of a human being. In my opinion, she comes out of the film looking like a tough woman who doesn’t get to make many of her own choices, and who holds up as well as she can.

The film also deals with the election of Tony Blair (Michael Sheen), a Labour Party candidate. Evidently, the Labour Party contains the anti-royalist element of England, but as the film progresses, Blair begins to take pity on Elizabeth just as we do. His wife, Cherie (Helen McCrory), comes out as sort of the other side of the coin from Prince Phillip. She’s opposite, but still just as insensitive and uncaring.

I’m surprised that I liked this film as much as I did. But I did. The fact that Elizabeth favors corgis doesn’t hurt, either.

Why to watch The Queen: A fair and honest portrayal of one of the major figures in the world.
Why not to watch: Extensive reliving of the death of Diana.

Buckle and Swash

Film: Captain Blood
Format: DVD from Mt. Morris Public Library through interlibrary loan on kick-ass portable DVD player.

There is always a bit of melodrama in old Hollywood films. The heroes are always as close to purely good as possible and the bad guys have nothing of the good about them. The good guys always come out triumphant in the end, the bad guys come to an appropriately bad end, and the people we’re supposed to like live happily ever after. There are plenty of people who dislike movies before a certain point, and honestly, I can understand that. It’s one of the reasons I tend to really like film noir. While, thanks to the Hays Code, the bad guys always got what was coming to them in film noir, they at least had motivations that weren’t entirely evil.

Captain Blood is not such a film. Dr. Peter Blood (Errol Flynn) is as perfect a movie hero as one could find. We learn right away that he is a) a medical doctor, b) willing to put himself at risk to save the life of a fellow man, c) has a history of sailing and adventure, and d) devilishly handsome. Called to the aid of a friend wounded in a rebellion, Blood is arrested as a traitor for giving aid to a traitor. Rather than being hanged, he is sent off to the West Indies by the auspices of the foppish and arrogant King James where he will become a slave.

It is here that Dr. Peter Blood is purchased by Arabella Bishop (Olivia de Havilland), niece of the local military commander, Colonel Bishop (Lionel Atwill). And I don’t almost need to say what happens next, do I? The pretty and idealistic Arabella does what she can for the benefit of the sexy, equally idealistic, proud and manly Tasmanian stud, who publically is displeased by this but secretly appreciates it. Romance blooms slowly. She helps out by allowing him to treat the gout problem of the local governor (George Hassell).

Of course, this doesn’t stop Blood from trying to escape, and escape he does when the Spanish raid the West Indies settlement. He becomes a pirate, soon developing a reputation and a huge fortune. It’s evident that the governor can’t handle the pirates and he is replaced in favor of Bishop, who does all he can to quell the pirates. In the ensuing chaos, Arabella is returned to England. Oh, but she’ll be back, of course. There’s no reason she wouldn’t be, since all adventure-y, swashbuckling films of this era need a strong element of romance. And it wouldn’t be too much of a shock to tell you precisely how it ends, since you likely have an idea already, but I won’t spoil it completely. It does, however, end precisely as you think it will. Actually, it probably ends quite a bit more positively than you might think possible.

It’s worth mentioning that the great Basil Rathbone appears here as a villain as well—he’s initially an ally of Blood but takes to piracy to easily and too thoroughly to be considered a good guy. It’s just as well, because Basil Rathbone plays a pretty good villain. Of course, this ends with a massive sword duel, one of the better ones of the early cinema.

This movie rises and falls on the talents of its two main leads, Flynn and de Havilland. Fortunately for the film, they are both excellent in their roles even if their roles aren’t at all believable. Really, no one is as pure-hearted as Peter Blood (and certainly not the real-life Errol Flynn), but that’s okay. It’s all a part of the mystique of the film and of the era it comes from. It would not be at all a stretch to suggest that this film is a big part of the pirate mystique, too. In fact, I might go so far as to suggest that in many ways, Captain Blood is a big part of the reason that pirate films are what they are, and why pirates—traditionally about as evil as one could get in the real world—have a romantic image in the public consciousness. Yeah, Pirates of the Caribbean doesn’t hurt either, but Captain Blood came first by 70 years and influenced everything that came after it.

It’s hard not to like this film on some level. It’s not believable, and the characters are certainly idealized versions that are nothing like real people, but there is a real charm here. Olivia de Havilland was an absolute charmer, and Flynn, well, he was a movie star in every sense of the word, at least in this early part of his career. For the early years of adventure films, they don’t get a lot better than this one.

Why to watch Captain Blood: It’s a hell of a swashbuckling adventure.
Why not to watch: If you don’t like old Hollywood, you won’t like this one.

Month 23 Status Report

Another month come and gone, with some interesting results. I don't honestly have a ton to say about what I watched in November except to say that my goal was to watch a lot of more rare and unusual films and didn't see as many as I intended. After all, these films are rare, and difficult to find, and so finding a lot of them all at once is even more difficult. I did manage a few, though, and have a real rarity lined up for the next few days, possibly as soon as tomorrow.

As for December, I expect that the next couple of weeks will be slow (end of term nuttiness) followed by a massive number of films to round out the end of the year.

The real news is that I'm now a mere five films away from half--540 watched, 549 to go. It will be an interesting feeling to be on the back half of this experience.

A Very Short Marathon

Film: Lola Rennt (Run, Lola, Run)
Format: DVD from Rasmussen College Library projected on screen.

Lola Rennt (Run, Lola, Run) is a film with which I have a strange history. Several years ago, I was called in to substitute for a film study class. The movie that had been selected for that night was Lola Rennt. Tonight, essentially the same thing happened. I needed to find a film that would create a good discussion, that wasn’t too long, and that was immediately available in my school library. Naturally enough, I selected the same film. So I’ve seen this film twice, both times in a classroom that I wouldn’t normally have been in charge of.

Tom Tykwer’s film is an interesting one, and as I predicted, it made for a good discussion after we had watched it. There were, in fact, some excellent observations from the students, some of which I will almost certainly mention in the next several hundred words.

Anyway, we start with Lola (Franka Potente), who receives a phone call from her boyfriend, Manni (Mortiz Bleibtrau). Manni has been entrusted with a vast sum of money—100,000DM—but due to circumstances, left it behind on a commuter train where the sack of cash was picked up by a hobo. Now, he needs to replace that money in 20 minutes or his criminal boss will kill him, no questions asked. And so, Lola, who has her own problems, must run to help him.

From this point on, Lola Rennt becomes a sort of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure story, with the next 20 minutes played out three times, each one with minor changes at the start that create major changes in the ending. In each case, the changes that occur cause the timing of events to be slightly off, causing massive changes. A car accident is avoided by a sudden tap on the brakes, caused by Lola’s appearance a second sooner or later. Lives change and are changed, and in some cases lost, because of Lola’s position on the street at a given moment.

Really, this is the entire point of the film. Tykwer seems to be arguing that we are all merely puppets in the vast scheme of things, that our lives are entirely at the whim of forces that appear to be beyond our control. We see this not only in the cases of Lola and Manni, but also Lola’s father (Herbert Knaup), the woman he is having an affair with (Nina Petri), and even a few people who bump into Lola on her run through the city. We’re told these stories in a quick series of still photographs. In one case, for instance, a woman pushing a baby carriage experiences a series of events that cause her to lose her child and steal another. Another time through, her encounter with Lola is different, and she wins a lottery.

The visual style is fascinating. Lola’s run through her apartment is told with animation each time, while her run through the streets of her unnamed German city are exercises in editing, pacing, and rhythm. Often, our view of Lola changes in time with the music, happening rhythmically as she progresses. We get flash cuts of her from different angles, see her from far above running through an open plaza, always moving toward someone or something that can help her save Manni. Visually, Lola is always the center of attention because of the severe color of her hair, a shocking red. Her clothing is relatively neutral in color, making her face the constant draw, and since she is almost always on screen, she is always where we look.

The runs are, as mentioned, heavily edited. Between, we are treated to slow, almost dreamy passages of Lola and Manni lying in bed talking. These moments slow the film down, but are necessary breaks from the overwhelming pace of the 20-minute segments. These segments are red, reminiscent of Lola’s hair color despite the fact that at these times, she is evidently a bleach blonde (or at least has a much lighter hair color).

I like this film. I think it’s entirely possible for people to dislike this film, mostly from being overwhelmed by it, but I think it’s frenetic pace works really well. More importantly for me tonight, the class seemed to enjoy it quite a bit, which made discussing it much more fun. One of the better observations in the class was that much like a video game with save positions, Lola appears to learn from her past experiences. She’s given a gun in the first run but isn’t sure how to use it and must be instructed. On the second run, she takes a gun from someone and is familiar with it immediately. It’s possible that the other characters learn as well; the guard at her father’s bank seems to understand at some level that Lola is going through the same thing over and over again until she gets it right.

Lola Rennt is an inventive and interesting film as well as an exciting one. Normally, when I watch something this short (it’s about 75 minutes without the end credits), I wish it would go a touch longer. Not in this case. The length is perfect. Any more would be unnecessary and completely overwhelming.

Why to watch Lola Rennt: A nearly unique take on narrative style.
Why not to watch: Lola runs…a lot.

Boo Radley

Film: To Kill a Mockingbird
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on portable DVD player.

I don’t know when filmmakers really first took a long look at the idea of racism as a topic ready for film. Griffiths touched on it back in the silent era, albeit not very sensitively. But it took a very long time for Hollywood to actually really address ideas of racism and racial equality, a topic still being addressed to this day. In many ways, today’s results are just as uneven as they have ever been. We’ve gone from a culture which depicted non-whites as negative stereotypes to one that has a tendency to depict non-whites as positive stereotypes.

To Kill a Mockingbird goes for something in the middle, attempting to depict something much closer to reality. The main black character in the film, Tom Robinson (Brock Peters) is truly neither negative nor positive, but is merely innocent. He’s nothing more than a man accused wrongfully of a crime, and as a black man, is unable to get anything like a fair trial in Depression-era Alabama.

Ah, but I’ve gotten far ahead of myself here. This film is an accurate depiction of the book of the same name by Harper Lee. Our main character here is Scout (Mary Badham), a young girl of allegedly six, despite the fact that she comes off much more as either eight or nine. She and her brother Jem (Phillip Alford) live with their father, Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck), who is a lawyer in this small Alabama town. Over the summers, they gain a playmate in Dill (John Megna), a startlingly ugly little kid who spends summers with his aunt.

It is generally through the eyes of these children, particularly Scout, that we see the film. When Tom Robinson is accused of assaulting and raping a white woman named Mayella Ewell (Collin Wilcox Paxton), we learn almost nothing of the crime or the preparations of the trial until mid-way through the film. While these events are central to the story, they aren’t central to the kids, and are thus glossed over until they become central to them.

Much of the film deals with the identity and nature of Arthur “Boo” Radley (Robert Duvall in his first real screen role), the allegedly insane son of the Finchs’ neighbor. Boo Radley is a figure of fascination and fear to the young kids. They are fascinated with his insanity and his evident social reticence, and terrified of the story that he once attacked his own father with a pair of scissors.

The reason this film works, and work it does, is in no small part because of the kids, Scout in particular. While she absolutely does not pass for the age she is supposed to be, she is incredibly natural in the role, and completely believable. She comes off as both wise and innocent, which is the perfect and necessary combination for the role. There is a sense that, for instance, when she prevents a lynch mob from stringing up Tom Robinson before the trial, that she may know precisely what she is doing.

While the film comes from Scout’s point of view, and from a lesser extent from Jem’s (particularly at the trial), it is Atticus who is the real center of the film. As the defense attorney, he is obviously central to the trial, but he is also the moral center of the film as well. He decides to defend Tom regardless of the personal cost to him. He knows that in this small Alabama town that his case is a loser no matter what. He demonstrates clearly the man’s innocence—the fact that Tom had no use of his left hand is a clear indicator of that—but Atticus knows that the case is lost from the first moments. His pleading with the jury is evidence of this as well. And yet, he goes through with the case because it is right to do it. One of the best and most moving moments of the film comes after the conclusion of the trial. Tom has been led out and the white spectators have left. Atticus stands alone on the courtroom floor packing his briefcase while the black spectators stand in the balcony above him. As he turns to leave, the black reverend tells Scout to stand as her father walks past, a gesture of respect for this man who has sacrificed his own reputation simply because it was the right thing to do.

There is a sweetness to this film despite its subject matter. There is a sense of nostalgia, of childhood in the games the kids play, the mystery they create around Boo Radley, and the loss of innocence as the trial comes to its inevitable conclusion. In many ways, the kids grow up through the film because they are forced to do so by the events that surround them. They, after all, are the children of the man who defended Tom, making the school playground a suddenly dangerous environment.

This is a truly great film, rewarding and deep and intelligent. Don’t let the fact that the book is regularly assigned to junior high students prevent you from finding this and watching it. You will not be disappointed.

Why to watch To Kill a Mockingbird: A bona fide American classic for a reason. Why not to watch: Robert Duvall looks weird with hair.