Harper Lee's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1961 novel To Kill A Mockingbird is undoubtedly one of the quintessential and classic works of American literature ever written. And its 1962 film adaptation equally stands as a classic piece of American film. The story's setting (in Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression of the 1930s) evokes particular memories of growing up in a time and place in American history, illustrating contrasted themes of innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, hatred against love, humor and pathos.
Told from the perspective of young Scout Finch, the story goes through different seasons, beginning in summer, as Scout and her older brother Jem befriend Dill Harris, attempt to spy on the mysterious Radley residence down the street (including the unseen "Boo" Radley), and deal with school and hometown news. Things take a controversial turn when their lawyer father, Atticus Finch, is assigned a case in defending a black man accused of raping a white teenage girl.
Though it would be impossible to condense every detail of the book into a two-hour feature (there are liberties taken in eliminating or reducing certain characters like Aunt Alexandra, Calpurnia, and Reverend Sykes), what the film does maintain is the novel's sense of seeing the world through the eyes of a child, and its transition into experience. This is evident from the opening title sequence, which shows Scout (Mary Badham) drawing, coloring, and humming, (that's John Williams playing the piano in Elmer Bernstein's score, by the way), and up to the famous courtroom scene, cemented by Atticus's appeal to the jury, and not just to black and white races, in fact. Gregory Peck (as Atticus) is thoroughly honest and genuine, and represents in Atticus Finch the ideal man who makes the case for humanity and for what is right in this world, and exemplifies how to maintain one's dignity and humility in times of crisis and division.
I've read this novel three times now, one of which was for a Film & Literature course I took in college. Now, thanks in part to SparkNotes, I began to really understand, this time around, Scout and Jem's childhood lifestyles, what Tom Robinson's trial represents and how it effects the town of Maycomb, what Atticus teaches and exemplifies to his children and to Maycomb (i.e., "You never really know someone until you learn to see things from their point of view"), and how social injustice affects Jem and Scout differently; although the book dives deeper into this latter notion, ditto the symbolism of mockingbirds. And the moral that parents cannot shield their children from everything in the world, but can most certainly prepare them for it, rings especially true here.
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| Mary Badham (as Scout) and Gregory Peck (as Atticus Finch) in To Kill A Mockingbird |
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