A Brief Unsolicited Enthusiastic Recommendation: Tower

(A new feature. Looking for something to watch? Let this occasional movie blogger be your guide. Presenting "A Brief Unsolicited Enthusiastic Recommendation." First up: Tower from 2016.)

On August 1, 1966 a man with a sniper rifle went to the top of a tower on the campus of the University of Texas and opened fire. For a long time (but not long enough) it held the record for the most deadly school shooting. Tower is a documentary of the 96 minutes the shooter spent on his deadly perch. It is told in typical documentary fashion, with interviews, voiceovers, flashbacks and reenactments. But the reenactments and some interviews are portrayed using rotoscope animation. Rotoscope means that the animation is done overtop of real footage of the subjects. The technique creates a unique look that manages to be both lifelike and abstract.

Reenactments in documentaries can be distracting. The actors often look nothing like the people they portray and the scenes and effects are often cheaply made - like when survivors of a shipwreck are obviously floating in a small pool inside a studio, or when lost hikers survive the night in a cave clearly made out of plaster and foam. The animation in Tower is used brilliantly to avoid being distracting. It seems counterintuitive, but by not attempting to be lifelike re-creation, the animated scenes end up making the action seem more real, true, and vivid. It achieves this while still maintaining its own artistic beauty: the animation itself is just really cool.

The story of the shooting gets to the heart of tragedy and the beautiful things that almost always come out of it. Its focuses on the bravery, selflessness, and heroism of the first responders, classmates, faculty, and citizens who took action during the crisis. It also explores the healing and forgiveness that came after, highlighting the beautiful side of human nature and showing that that side is the dominant one or maybe the only one. There may not be an evil side. The movie doesn’t portray the the shooter as an evil monster or less than human, but as a severely ill individual. That doesn’t make anything he did acceptable or even understandable. But for at least one woman in the film, it helped her forgive and move on. And that’s a beautiful thing.

Tower is currently available on Netflix.

(Even if rotoscope-animated school shooting documentaries aren't your typical fare, give it a try. You won't be disappointed.)

TOWER Trailer from keith maitland on Vimeo.