Sorry, folks...

Rating: Null/10 (14 September 2004)

(Possible spoilers) Surely Harper Lee's morality tale was an impressive filming of an essential novel in 1962, but from the vantage point of four decades-plus it's an old-smoothie job -- respectful, careful, and entirely too pleased with itself. It's in black and white, and so are its issues -- you know from the first shot of the Ewells, from costuming, lighting, and angle, that they're white trash; you know from the first ennobling look at Tom Robinson that he's an innocent victim. You never have to think -- the movie tells you what you're supposed to think and feel at every juncture.
Peck's Finch is a plaster saint; I suspect that the praise heaped on him, and the Oscar, has more to do with the quiet heroism of the character (who wouldn't want a father, a lawyer -- heck, a President -- like Atticus Finch?) than any great acting on his part. The storytelling strains credibility at some crucial junctures: Surely the redneck lynching crowd wouldn't be dispersed that readily by The Simple Wholesome Innocence of a Child, and does Atticus have to be, on top of everything else, a crackerjack rifleman? There's Elmer Bernstein's treacly scoring to underline the already over emphatic pontificating, and the photography, handsome as it is, pretties up a small Southern town in the Depression perhaps more than necessary. On the plus side, yes, it's an unusually up-close and incisive look at the growing pains of early childhood, and Mary Badham's Scout hits remarkably few false notes. Pauline Kael once dismissed it, scornfully, as "a movie the industry can be proud of," and I know what she meant -- its prime function seems to be to allow non-bigots to congratulate themselves on their open minds. The fact that its viewpoint is right, proper, and laudable doesn't make the movie any less smug.