A film that's close to my heart

Rating: 10/10 (6 December 2005)

About ten years ago, a year or so after I was married, I became quite ill and was bed-ridden for almost two weeks. I was in so much pain I could not sit on the sofa and look at television; my eyes hurt so badly from my fever that I couldn't even lie in bed and read. It was Christmas season and my husband, working in retail, worked extra long hours. With no way to entertain myself or even to sleep, the long hours spent alone were almost unbearable. Then I had an idea: I had seen that our public library had books on tape. I asked my husband if he would find something interesting for me, not having any idea what sort of "books" they might have. He chose To Kill a Mockingbird.
I had, of course, always heard of the book but apparently it was not on our required reading list in high school. Remembering how I had loathed so many of the books I was forced to read in school, I had mixed feelings when he brought it to me. Still, I welcomed ANY distraction to help pass the time. What an absolutely wonderful book it turned out to be. (If my memory is correct, it was read by Meryl Streep. What a beautiful job she did of it!) Looking back at it now, I'm glad I got so sick that winter, or I might not have had the opportunity to "read" it. What a comfort it was to me during a painful, difficult time.
A few years later I ran across the movie on television. I was so very pleased to see how well they translated it to film. No film ever captures EVERY facet of a book (or we'd have an awful lot of eight hour films out there!) but the book was definitely given justice. Having grown up in the deep south myself, even having myself attended segregated school and seen INTENSE prejudice amongst the privileged white upper-class, I applaud the book's writer and the film's producer all the more for producing such works during a time of indescribable social struggle and upheaval.
To Kill a Mockingbird is a strong, quiet film of great dignity... qualities that are sadly lacking in almost every film made in this country today. To me though, having first come across the book in the isolation of of sickness, listening to it hour after hour in the dim light of my bedroom, watching the grey winter clouds pass by the window as I listened, it will alway be my own special, personal film.