← Back to Reviews
 

To Kill a Mockingbird


MovieMeditation presents...
HIS FILM DIARY 2015
total movie count ........... current day count
292 .......................... 336

__________________________


August 28th

—— 1962 ——
To
kill a
Mockingbird

—— drama ——
REWATCH


"Neighbors bring food with death, and flowers with sickness, and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a knife, and our lives..."

When thinking about it, I don’t think I can come up with another film that blends such broad and diverse subjects into a seamless cinematic experience, as well as ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ does it. All the various focus points in the film can appear far from each other at first, but then you realize just how important each of them are and how they work flawlessly together – supporting and complimenting each other – in the end creating a very complete image beyond the basics of imagination. It is especially the very diverse but surprisingly distinctive thematic grouping of the innocence of colored people and the innocence of children and childhood in general. When combined, these two creates a strong and powerful picture of the morals of a human being and present them in a way that makes us think and feel a lot throughout the film.

When centering on the aspect of the children, the audience get to see innocence in its purest and freest form, all the while having the movie portray the gradual progression of these children and how they grow into a newer and largely darker understanding of the world. We discover the dominance of “good”, while slowly watching it being challenged by the opposition of “evil”, thereby showing the audience the most natural and honest view on such evils all the while showing another side of the case entirely – that being the view points full of prejudice and false judgments. The grown ups in this film are not all bad, but there is a large group unwilling to accept changes to their personal perception of things, which they have had for ages by now; unlike the children. It is equally interesting to see the different points of view collide with each other, creating something even stronger and much more thought provoking.

Gregory Peck is absolutely phenomenal in the role of Atticus Finch; the lawyer who are to defend the black man at a trial and thereby go against the general population and their radical reserved beliefs. The character of Atticus Finch is most certainly an all-time favorite of mine, mainly because he is such an admirable, respectable and righteous human being, who comes across as fair and firm about his decisions – as a father and lawyer, respectively. He seems to be a father who practices mutual respect and relevant morals from the time period of which the film takes place, but with that said, he seems to balance between firm and free upbringing and education of his children as well. All this really make him stand out as this powerful and convincing man, who in return is clearly just a humble human being when it all comes down to it. Scenes like the one with the dog comes to mind, but all in all many examples can be used throughout where he is portrayed from different sides of the same case – or in this case, different sides of the same human being. The movie is really just about humans and how our minds work – how it is born; how it is developed; and ultimately how it is either destroyed or saved. ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ might be the most complicated and tightly developed product of simplicity I have ever seen and I truly love it for being just that…






__________________________