Sometimes you just need a good classic

[chani]

I indulged myself with some DVD time tonight and rewatched To Kill A Mockingbird.

I think I hadn't watched it for 15 years or so...Gregory Peck has always been one of my favourite actors. For some people it's James Stewart, or John Wayne or Robet Mitchum...For me it's Gregory Peck. I guess it started when I saw him in Duel In The Sun, playing that bad boy of Lewt whom Jennifer Jones lusted after. I was quite young but I thought that Pearl Chavez was a lucky girl, even though the ending is bloody tragic! It wasn't Gregory Peck's best role, the film sucks sometimes but it's a guilty pleasure and Gregory was simply beautiful.

 

 In To Kill A Mockingbird, he doesn't rely on his good looks, but more than never he's the big man on screen, a big hero, bigger than life. A man good at heart. My favourite performance of his, besides the famous scene in which Atticus leaves the court room, is when he hears about Tom Robinson's death.

And the children are terrific. They are the spirit of the film. The shot on Scout's eye inside of her Halloween costume trying to see something terrible and scary that is happening sums up the movie. The camera angle is perfectly done. It's like a mise en abîme. The fact she leaves the costume in the woods is meaningful too. And when she says "Hey Boo" when facing Robert Duvall at the end of the movie, it's just one of those moments that rock.
Of course the trial is the central piece of the film, but I wouldn't call it a a courtroom drama or a film about racial injustice. It's mostly about children getting out of the cocoon that is childhood and seeing real world in all its ugliness and beauty (school being a part of it!). And when they manage to get into the court room to watch the trial, they go upstairs with other "social children", black people...
So the first part of the film is very important because they are still in childhood, playing with mysteries, fearing the boogeyman down the street while being so curious about the forbidden house at the same time. To have fun they keep trying to make "Boo" come out of his house. What I like about "Boo" appearing in the third part, as an unlikely saviour, isn't the heroic rescue of Jem and Scout in the woods, but the parallel with the main theme, the children's journey and with Atticus' own role as a man doing what must be done.

"Boo", the mentally deranged man, the for ever child, got out of his house eventually.  But of course he got back to his house, led by the little girl, while Scout kept standing outside after she learnt from Sheriff Tate, finally, what a compromise was. She's gonna grow up and he will probably not, but the monster "Boo" used to be in her imagination, is now the symbol of a lost/broken innocence (and all is connected as the innocent Tom Robinson broke after he was convicted guilty as charged and died) and of unpleasant/dirty jobs that must be done...

Comments

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

I love the film and I love the book though I don't own them.

I saw the film first, when I was quite young - around 11 maybe? I was allowed to stay up to watch it because it was one of the classics my Dad thought I should see. Then I got my hands on the book.
Both left a really deep impression.

Thanks for reminding me.

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

I never read the book.

Chani