This was a tough one. I had never read the book in high school, so I read it before watching the film. So unfortunately, my recap will do little more than compare the book and the movie. I know that kind of discussion is boring, but hopefully you will read it and get a sense of how I relate to the film and what I liked and disliked about it (which is also boring, but you are the one reading my blog, sir).
Obviously, both are great, even though the book is exponentially greater. The world this book created was so powerful because it was so detailed, so smarmy and tongue-in-cheek, given that it was from Scout’s perspective. It also had the luxury that novels have to really set the stage, to stress Scout’s existence, what her father was like, what her relationships were like, the enigma of Boo Radley, Maycomb County as a whole, etc. So, when the trial of Tom Robinson was presented, it slowly built in intensity as Scout realized this was a bigger and bigger deal. *That* was the way that we saw racism through the eyes of a child, and that is the key to why this story is so renowned.
The film couldn’t accomplish that. You simply could not film all the things that happened to Scout and Jem, the details and stories of Maycomb County, and build that setting. I think that the setting is paramount for the intensity of the story. The trial of Tom Robinson grew out of the scenery of Maycomb; it built slowly and it was never an isolated event, but connected to everything else that happened in the town. For example, in the book, we had several encounters with Walter Cunningham and understood him as one of the townfolks before there was that final confrontation between Atticus, Jem and Scout. In the movie, it was less powerful for Scout to just recognize a friend, because we knew him less as Walter Cunningham, and more like one of the casual characters introduced in the past forty minutes.
The role of Atticus was less striking for me in the film as well. In the book he is seen as quiet, but troubled. Imperfect and confused but trying to do right. In the film, he is stoic and noble in a way that I didn’t dig as much. The film doesn’t embody the way that Scout’s perspective cuts to the core of Atticus Finch, and doesn’t portray him as anything else then a strong, decent lawyer. The character from the book is more complex than that. He fucks up, he gets mad, he loves his pot liquor, and he really loves his kids. Gregory Peck did not act out all of the complexities of the man that I admired in the book.
In its favor, what the film was able to that the book could not was stress the iconic moments more. The testimony of Tom, of Mayella, and the final revelation of Boo Radley, felt all the more powerful. These characters were brought to life more because of their details and physicality. Those things appeared less so in the novel because Scout would never notice or bring to the surface; she’s a kid. She doesn’t notice the way Tom’s lips peel back and his head shakes when he’s scared. She just notices that he look frightened.
The film was able to bring some of the side characters to life in a more intense way, and to see and feel fear and pain for the wrongfully accused, and see the sorrow on all of the faces, is something the book could not convey, because it was not something Scout could ever really convey. These details drive the point of racism home, and make the story a saga about how racism can squeak through the holes of our legal system. At the end of the day, our legal system isn’t some magical, god-ordained system that holds all the answers. It’s just a big pile of messy and confused people and ideologies, and the heartfelt pursuit by several individuals to pursue a sense of “fairness” and “justice”, which aren’t things that exist in the world, which aren’t things that we even know exactly what they mean. But beautiful, dogged people still strive for them, even though they don’t work. And that’s nice. That’s what the film did for me.
For that reason, I suppose the film connects more with me than the book does purely when it comes to using it to understand how I relate to the legal system.
Nancy Is A Lawyer?
I love Atticus Finch. Everything about his calm resolve to just do the best he can to do right, and his dedication to then just go home and take care of his kids. I love his broken stoicism and the clear way he sees right and wrong, how he understands the folly of racism and hatred and blames no one for it. I love his recognition that the world is a broken place and he is not going to fix it, but his steadfast and calm determination to at least try.
Obviously, this film doesn’t fill me with a profound sense of justice or victory. Which works in its favor. I would not go into law as someone who believed in changing the world, but as someone who believed in sucking it up and doing your part as an informed and hard-working person to enact some modicum of change, somewhere, if you can, maybe, if you’re lucky, but probably not.
This film has very little of the showy aspects of legal films – the trial where key pieces of evidence are analyzed and the attorneys do some trickery and zero in on something brilliant and unconsidered which closes the case. This also works in its favor. The smarmy showiness and arguing that is associated with law – whether or not that is the case – is not exactly my favorite part of it. This film stressed the sense of preparation and work – the only key piece of evidence on the part of Atticus was the issue of Tom Robinson being right-handed. No one was doing any fancy-schmancy, My-Cousin-Vinny lawyering. I think that shit is cute and all, but that’s not why I want to go into law. I liked the bare-boned simple case and the hard realities of law. And I like working hard without any consideration for the results, but working for the sake of good work itself. So yeah, Atticus Finch got me all jazzed up to be a lawyer. That was wildly unpredictable.
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