This is "America" distilled into an epic film.

Rating: Null/10 (12 June 2003)

This is arguably the finest motion picture ever made about the Vision called "America." It is an idealist recreation of small-town and rural United States. It explains the Great Depression, especially in the South, in a way that makes that period painfully real. This film is also about the goodness of one man in particular. Human nature, with both grandeur and evil contesting, is played out by a magnificent cast. The movie is not Harper Lee's novel, but it is the cinematically perfect rendering of her book, its time, place and people. Fatherhood has never been so splendidly delineated, childhood so perceptively depicted, bigotry so thoroughly skewered and decency so crystalline as in this film. It is a template for "Things as They Ought to Be," once racism is shown to be the stupidity that actually it is. The story unfolds on a summer day in the South, and folds closed almost a year later, on an Autumn night. Within these borders glisten keepsake items, much as we see in the superb opening credits, each item being carefully taken from its place in an old cigar box. And finally, in the closing moments, we connect the title to the basis of this story's morality, much as Atticus Finch tells it to his son, Jem, when presenting him with a small-calibre rifle: "... you must never kill a mockingbird ...." With Harper Lee's poignant autobiographical novel as a base, Horton Foote's award-winning script has distilled a time and place into a vision. It is a vision worth living up to, and seeing over and over. Every father should be Atticus Finch, every child should live in the secure simplicity of "Macomb." Elmer Bernstein's lyric score carries the story, rather than covering it, the characters and settings shimmer with truth, and a particular time and place in America is captured and preserved on film. "...Mockingbird" garnered over 20 nominations for national and international awards, including eight Oscar nominations. Gregory Peck won Best Actor, and Horton Foote best screenplay writer. The film won the "British Oscar" - BAFTA's award -for best foreign film, and Alan Pakula won BAFTA's award as best director of a foreign film.