The Indian National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation praises the actors
entertainment1 hour ago
When Netflix made itself available last week, I was quite pleased to see To Kill A Mockingbird on the list. I had read the book way back, but hadn't seen the movie. And since I'd just finished the sequel, Go Set A Watchman, figured I might as well hit play.
Watching the movie of a book after you've just read the sequel puts you in the peculiar position of retrospectively (but also prematurely) feeling bad for the doom up ahead. Not doom-doom, but wistfulness about the trajectory of certain characters, since you've just found out what happens to them.
The little girl, Scout grows up, and is called Jean Louise more often than Scout. She's no longer bashing up boys in schoolyards and playing with her brother, Jem. Her father-adoration has turned sour as midway through Watchman, she hears and sees something that lets her believe that Atticus is not the man she thought he was.
To the Mockingbird loyalists who refuse to even look at Watchman: I get it. I get the not wanting to ruin a classic with a patchy, inchoate sequel - or whatever the allegations are. But speaking for myself, nothing was ruined. Of course the book doesn't trump the classic - there, I said it. But it's at least an answer to the readers who wondered what happened to Atticus and Jem, and Calpurnia, and wanted to be shown and told. In defence of a book doomed to eternal comparisons with its elder sibling, I breezed through Watchman just fine. I loved the slight déjà vu of how close and unsentimental daughter and father, Scout/Jean Louise) and Atticus still are, how she's still calling him Atticus, and how natural, instinctive and effortless their banter is.
The first half of the book coasts along on nostalgia more than plot - the setting, the language, all the "yonder" and "yessum" is all very nice. But the plot, kind of diaphanous, takes its time to appear, and then all the NAACP and congress and agricultural history bits are not riveting. Still, good solid lines are very much in there.
"When his daughter was miserable, she prowled. And Atticus liked his women relaxed, not constantly emptying ashtrays".
Midway though, some choppy waters are hit when Jean Louise's too dramatic, seemingly irrational, and out-of-character hatred of Atticus begins. Is Atticus a Negro hater or is he not? Daughter has issues with daddy's iffy, bendy principles, his presumed feet of clay. That she begins to hate him just because he's not as heroic as she held him up to be seems a bit stretched. The man's not perfect. So what? You're an adult! I found myself saying to her. Did that make it a lesser book than the classic? Yes, also for other reasons. Is it right though to compare Watchman with Mockingbird? Probably not. But as flawed and mundane -similar then to Atticus Finch - as we are, those comparisons are inevitable.
The Indian National Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation praises the actors
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