Why you missed out on Tower (2016)
By: Harrison Engstrom
Tags: Classics, Art, Documentary, Movies To Watch, Film

2016 was a banner year for Documentaries. Tower may be the best documentary of that year and one of the best of the last twenty.

It’s hard to say after one viewing but let me explain my love of documentaries and why 2016 was so important for them. 13th, Tickled, Supersonic, Weiner, 8 Days a Week, I Am Not Your Negro, Nuts, Kate Plays Christine, OJ: Made in America and Life, Animated, all released in the same 12 month period that all talk about a wide range of incredible topics.

Dealing with trauma, Black History, Mental Illness, the Prison Industrial Complex, Politics in the light of Celebrity, Musical History, Sports History — etc. etc. but one that I put off watching for a long time was Tower. I’m not truly sure why though. It was something I knew about — the University of Texas shooting — but it felt like it was “less important” when it came to the big issues of the year. 2016 was a big year for everyone. Deaths, Politics, Madness, Truth; all colliding like a wall of death at a black metal concert — and the culture reflected that, especially in documentaries. One of my favourite of all-time, Hypernormalization by Adam Curtis, sticks out as a comprehensive breakdown at the dangerous avalanche of how neoliberalism and American capitalism ruined the Middle East and how it morphed into the horrific reality of the Trump era of politics. It’s a 2 hour plus behemoth that I’ve sat in pure awe and starred at mouth agape — eyes practically super glued to every horrific and terrifying moment that unfolds. It’s a film that has filled me with so much dread that I’ve often needed to take a quiet bath afterwards. I would count the drips from the tap in my head and wonder if right then and there — if a bomb were to drop on me from upon high — would I liquify into the bath water or would I simply float away in the newly formed steam created from the ensuing flames? That -in my mentally malnourished opinion — is the power of a good documentary. However, I’ve never shed a tear over Hypernormalization.

Sure, I’ve felt like crying — I’ve felt depressed and sad and angry and upset and incredulous — but more than that I’ve felt empty — an emptiness that comes with sadness. An emptiness that truly leaves you feeling like a ghost leaving your own body. In my naive experiences, I believe a good movie — or any good piece of art — moves me. It drills down to my hardened heart and seeps the texas tea from my heart and sells it through Exxon’s emotional division back to the artists and filmmakers in little vials with my name written in cursive. I don’t think I’ve cried this hard over a doco since possibly Fahrenheit 11/9’s ending — something I’ll write about down the track. But Tower, is something different, entirely. Tower is a beautiful documentary — and it’s hard to say that when the themes, story and overarching narrative are so heartbreakingly dark and gruesome. For those who are unaware of the story, a lone gunman climbed the tower at the University of Texas and at 11:48 am on August 1st, 1966, began picking off people with a high calibre rifle. Just random people. Students. Paper boys. Officers. Just random people. Click. Boom. Gone Forever.

The documentary is presented however, in a way that is truly breathtaking. The majority of the film is rotoscoped — a form of animation that draws over already shot footage to create a surrealist style that reflects an unreality of prudent faces but with just an edge that could make you feel like you could be dreaming. While I won’t go into the history of rotoscoping, I became enamoured with the art form at the age of 11 after watching Waking Life in 2001. It was so beautiful to me after watching a single decades worth of Disney, Looney Tunes and Anime, I felt like I had uncovered a whole world of animation that popped greater than any other form of animation. One of my favourite pieces of rotoscoped art, the much maligned and rarely seen, Ralph Bakshi’s American Pop from 1981, is a hidden treasure that goes through the history of American music and how it affects a family’s dynasty from the turn of the century all the way to the (then) current day.

Tower employs rotoscoped animation to give a more lifelike quality to the testaments of those who were there that day. While the film does use footage and newsreels from that day, the animation makes the experience unique and helps tell the story as if it were happening right now rather than just one day decades in the past. It creates a solid and wistful narrative that focuses purely on the victims, how they felt, what they looked like and how they were affected by that day. I’ve truly never seen another documentary tell their narrative this way and the closest comparison I can make is Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir or the adaptation of Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel, Persepolis.

Running at just over 82 minutes, it’s a stunning documentary from beginning to end and I highly recommend it for anyone who is a fan of American history or just great animation, in general. The behind the scenes of the film is also just as incredible as the film itself. Despite being all about a real location, which hasn’t changed much since the incident, the majority of the film was shot in the director’s backyard and then animators spent over a year, animating the rotoscoped sequences with the University of Texas and surrounding landscapes as background plates — but you wouldn’t know that with how seamless it all blends together.

Tower moved me in so many different ways. It made me cry at least three times, even if there was a cheap shot. Unbeknownst to the directors or creators of the film, that if you play Clare De Lune under anything, I will almost always burst out into tears. Just even thinking about that end sequence which employs Claude Debussy’s work right now gives me the sniffles. The structure is solid. The filmmaking and animation is brilliant. The talking heads are forthright and just brilliant storytellers and all based on real-life accounts. The combination of it all is a documentary that I won’t forget for a long time and will recommend to dozens, if not hundreds of people before my life is over.

My only real criticism is that it detracts from the wider narrative about the killer and what occurred prior to the attacks, but given the subject matter and the victims portrayed, I felt that it may remove the narrative focus, especially given how tight the runtime is, but I could have watched this thing for at least another whole hour.

Regardless, Tower is a must-see in my opinion and I am chastising myself for not watching it sooner. I will be purchasing it on Blu-Ray before the year is through.

Tower is not available on any local streaming services, but you can watch it on Kanopy or Curiosity Stream right now.