Great Scene: “To Kill A Mockingbird”
“To begin with, this case should never have come to trial. The State has not produced one iota of medical evidence to the effect that the crime Tom Robinson is charged with ever took place.”
To Kill a Mockingbird is one of my favorite movies for which reasons I get into later in this post. What scene to focus on?
So many great moments. Atticus Finch shooting the rabid dog. Scout inside the family car, threatened by a drunk and surly Bob Ewell. The night that Atticus stands guard outside the local jail to keep a mob from lynching Tom Robinson. The assault on Scout and her brother Jem by Ewell only to be saved by a mystery figure. The reveal of Boo Radley lurking in the shadows of the Finch house to make sure that Scout and Jem are safe — for it was he who saved them from Ewell, killing Ewell in the process.
So many profound moments, but it is impossible for me to watch the film and to this day not be moved by the closing argument Atticus gives at the trial.
Why is this speech so powerful? Its words work on many levels, but perhaps none more than this: Atticus puts racism on trial. “The defendant is not guilty, but somebody in this courtroom is.” The subtext goes beyond Ewell and his daughter; not just generalized bigotry, but the institutionalized racism that existed in the South at the time. Listen to Peck’s brilliant delivery of these words, how he rises in defense of Tom Anderson — and indicts bigotry (due to copyright issues, this video only has still images of Finch in the courtroom, accompanied by the audio track from the movie).
Why do certain movies cling to us throughout the years, so profound in their impact that they lurk just barely beneath our consciousness, scenes and moments that we can replay in our minds in an instant? In terms of To Kill a Mockingbird, I have a straight line from my own life-experience — through Scout.
At the time of the movie’s trial, Scout is 9 years old. My family moved from California to Montgomery, Alabama in 1963 when I was 10 (my father was an officer in the Air Force and attended the Air War College in Montgomery from 1963–1964). Although the movie To Kill a Mockingbird was released in 1962, I didn’t see it until a few years later, but when I did, I was completely sucked into Scout’s journey because of my experience of the institutional form of racism I witnessed in Montgomery — segregated schools, segregated Little League baseball, “Colored Only” water fountains and bathrooms, “No Negroes Allowed” signs at restaurants, and on and on. A white youth for the first time in an overt segregated world.
In 1963, George Wallace was sworn in as Governor of Alabama. In June of that year, he stood in front of the entrance to an auditorium at the University of Alabama, attempting to block the entrance of two African-American students. Every Sunday I attended church in downtown Montgomery — directly diagonal to the church Wallace attended.
Also that summer, President John Kennedy sent what came to be known as the Civil Rights Bill to Congress. He didn’t live to see its eventual passage as Kennedy was assassinated that November. When a school official entered our classroom to announce the news of the shooting, many of my classmates applauded.
In 1964, the Kennedy half dollar was first minted. The only physical altercation of my life occurred when one of my schoolmates spit on a shiny, new Kennedy coin and incensed, I jumped him.
As a 10 year-old boy, I grew to loathe Alabama. To this day, I can not think of the state without recalling a host of negative associations. And these were the experiences of a white person, standing on the periphery of the segregationist system, not a person of color subjected to its degrading impact on a daily basis.
To Kill a Mockingbird became an important place for me to go to try process my experiences in Alabama, but it also serves as a reminder that it’s possible to write a compelling, entertaining story that can at the same time hold up a mirror to expose social ills and cultural ignorance. And oh yes, to give us one of the most memorable cinematic heroes of all time — Atticus Finch.
Any other fans of Mockingbird out there? If so, why does the movie resonate with you? Are there other movies that speak directly to something in your own life experience?
For more articles in the Great Scene series, go here.
