A Fine Screen Adaptation of a Beloved Book

Rating: 8/10 (6 November 2006)

"To Kill a Mockinbird" is one of those movies that is bound to fail on a first viewing, because it has to of course compete with the book on which it is based, which has captivated readers ever since it was written.
But when you revisit the film after the initial "it's not as good as the book" reaction, you find that it's a wonderful piece of art in its own right, and if it sacrifices much of the texture and detail that makes the book so compelling, it keeps the tone and the book's humanist message intact.
Gregory Peck was perhaps born to play Atticus Finch. I most admire him and the screenwriter and director for keeping the role of Atticus true to the book and not allowing a certain cloying brand of sentimentality typical of Hollywood films to creep into the performance. Atticus is a noble and good man, and a reliable father, but he's rather cold and formidable. Scout and Jem love him, but they're also slightly scared of him, and he keeps them at a distance. The very traits that count as deficiencies as a father are what make him a good lawyer. This aspect of Atticus's character always fascinated me, and Peck gets it just right.
My biggest lament is that the filmmakers could not include the story of Jem and Mrs. Dubose, the mean old lady who lives in the Finches' neighborhood, that provides perhaps the single most beautiful moment in the novel. As punishment for destroying her flowers, Jem must read to Mrs. Dubose every day after school, for increasingly longer periods of time. When she dies, Jem receives a box containing the petals of a flower, the kind that Jem destroyed. He thinks she's haunting him from the grave, but Atticus explains to him that Jem was unknowingly helping Mrs. Dubose kick a morphine addiction. Jem's reading distracted her through her periods of withdrawal, and enabled the proud woman to leave the earth without taking the shameful secret with her. Sending the flower to Jem was her way of thanking him. What a wonderful moment in 20th Century literature.
Grade: A