why is it called To Kill a Mockingbird?

I spent last night watching To Kill a Mockingbird with my children. I’m glad I did, because it felt very profound.

Fiona (11) admitted about halfway through that before we started, she’d thought that because it was a black and white movie, she expected to get bored and leave in the middle. Instead, she told me how good it was and how she was surprised that an old movie could be this interesting. My son—a movie buff who gets distracted by his iPhone—said that he was paying more attention to it than his phone. A major accomplishment. I think he liked it, even though in this thirteen-year-old way he told me he doesn’t rate movies and when I pressed him, he told me “on the scale of ‘meh’, it’s a ‘meh.’” Great. (Sarcasm.) (Parenting a teenager is a constant reminder that I can’t force my will on him and that he needs to rebel and make his own decisions. Still, I think he got it, because he stayed. So, much like the movie, I need to read between the lines. I’m heartened by the fact that he is deeply concerned about racism, asking questions about George Floyd and black lives matter. I’m doing my best to answer them, and I thought watching a few movies might help—especially one that was made right smack dab in the middle of another hotbed time of racial injustice and upheaval.)

Anyway, back to last night. I was reminded of how unique that film is, portraying a white single dad in the 1930s who defends a black man from being thrown in jail for a crime he didn’t commit. Just that simple family dynamic is unusual—a loving father reading to his children, but letting them run around all day long barely supervised. He’s no helicopter parent. Calpurnia is more of a disciplinarian than he is.

That film is also fascinating because it’s told from the perspective of the kids, so important events are implied or happen off camera. When my children asked questions, I answered them. Sometimes, too, I’d also pause the movie to point out something important. For some stretches of the movie, I ended up pausing it about every five minutes to explain or ask questions of my children. Like, did Tom Robinson really end up running away at the end? Or was he murdered? My kids readily concluded that he was murdered and that the story being fed to Atticus wasn’t the truth, but the way grownups lie to cover up the truth so they don’t get into trouble.

There are few movies out there that I think rival the books, but this one comes close. It feels like the book in spirit, and the performances are so, so good. Not just the leads of Atticus, Scout, and Jem, but especially the powerful performance of Brock Peters as Tom Robinson.

I cried at the end of the courtroom scene like I’ve cried every time I watch it. And I cry even though I know how ridiculously unrealistic the scene is from a technical, procedural, legal point of view. I cry even though I know what’s going to happen. I cry even though feel stupid and like I should harden my heart. But I don’t. I just let the tears run down my face.

Somewhere between Gregory Peck’s rational and elegant and impassioned closing argument, the guilty verdict of the all-white, all-male jury, and then the long, quiet scene where he packs up the courtroom while all of the black peers of Tom Robinson remain up top, segregated and waiting to show their respect for Atticus Finch, I lost it, just like I always lose it. And why is that?

Is it because the racial tensions are depicted right there on the screen, black and white in a black and white movie? Is it because Atticus does the right thing, but it doesn’t turn out right, and that’s the tragedy—or one of the tragedies? Is it because it depicts the unfairness of being judged by the color of your skin in a brutal way, softened only by the fact that Scout, a six-year-old, is the one telling the story so she misses some things, and as an adult you have to fill in the blanks?

The movie really is a master class in showing rather than telling. In not flinching from the topic or the harsh truths it tells, even if it’s ugly. The black community, segregated to the balcony in a stiflingly hot courtroom is so much more dignified than the ugly racists down below. And a tall lawyer in a seersucker suit and glasses does his best and fails—and gets spit on and his family attacked.

If you haven’t watched it lately, do so.