Tower

TOWER is an important movie for all the right reasons. It is an artistic feast; a cinematic marvel that recreates a tragedy with a simple beauty without falling into the tropes of documentary filmmaking. This is not a documentary, rather it's more of a non-fiction retelling that casts actors to read lines in place of the real people. It recounts a school shooting that happened long before memories of Columbine - on a sprawling Texas campus where a sniper took a town hostage and murdered a total of 17 victims (including an unborn child) and shooting a total of 49 people. In a time when mass shootings have become a standard scroll on the nightly news, this was a new kind of crime. It only seems fitting that the movie uses a new form of craft to tell it.

It was the summer of 1966 on the sweltering campus of the University of Texas at Austin. Summer courses were just beginning, and the college town surrounding the buildings were bustling with excited youth and students. It was just after noon. From nowhere, people recall hearing "pops" and suddenly the air was filled with targeted bullets, first striking down a pregnant woman and her boyfriend in the stone plaza outside the central clock tower. Soon after, a boy on his bike was shot several blocks away. Chaos ensued.

On a day when the top news was going to be little more than the heat, here was suddenly a national emergency that gripped the country. A local news director hopped in his car and broadcast the scene from a portable radio. His voice was heard all over America. From the clock tower, the rumors that a sniper was preying on those below with no regard and no sense. Why don't more people talk about this tragedy today?

The film is designed to be a documentary (although I would argue it doesn't fall into that specific genre for a variety of reasons) with talking heads of students and police officers explaining what happened. We know they are actors, and their accounts strike us as surprisingly modern in expression and tone. The rotoscoped faces keep the past at a safe distance, and it's almost easy for the audience to distance themselves from the horror that actually happened here. Through black and white recreations and grainy archival footage, the film crafts a landscape of southern comfort and familiarity with those living nearby.

There is a moment like a bombshell midway through the film, when we suddenly cut from the illustrated actor to an actual aged woman, continuing her story without a moment's hesitation. This woman (now in her 60's or so) is one of the survivors: the woman who lost her unborn child at the hand of the gunman. It's a revelation - splicing the animation with the real, creating a moment that is all the more impactful by bridging that historical and visual gap. Now we understand that these actors are not reading from a script... They are telling the actual words by those who survived it.

There are beautiful moments that are beyond words - like when a red-headed woman rushed to the aid of this pregnant woman even though she remained completely vulnerable to the shooter. They begin a conversation to keep their minds off the terror and carnage. Another moment when a couple of students act heroically in order to save victims from the slow death that awaited them. They run out in the face of danger and carry victims to safety. This was a time that separated the heroes amongst us, and there were unbelievably brave people that were caught in the midst of it all.

By the end, "Tower" became a movie that commented on the string of recent shootings, the prevalence of violence in our culture, our unwillingness to stop it... There have been several movies made about the ideas of school violence and mass shootings. I recently re-watched "Elephant" which is a great Gus Van Sant film that recreates a Columbine-like shooting and yet does nothing to answer the simple question of "why?" "Tower" is great not because deals with the same question, rather it adds to it: why can't we stop this from happening?

The first time I heard of mass-murderer Charles Whitman was, quite stupidly, via the Vietnam movie "Full Metal Jacket"; - namely when R. Lee Emrey's drill-instructor character asks his recruits if anyone knows he was. "He's the guy who shot all those people from in a tower", was the answer. Strangely enough, it got me fascinated and I wanted to learn more about the dramatic shooting, as it is undoubtedly one of the darkest and most depressing pages in recent American history.

Two great films were previously based on or inspired by the shooting, namely "Targets" (1968) and "The Deadly Tower" (1975), but they simply cannot be compared to this "Tower". First, the films focus on the sniper - Whitman - whereas the documentary revolves exclusively around the victims, bystanders and heroes of the tragedy. And then, of course, this is a genuine documentary with archive footage and recordings, interviews with actual survivors, and careful reconstructions of the facts.

The obvious aspect to be astonished about in Keith Maitland's film is the original, refreshing and meticulously detailed animation. It's clever and professional, and it makes the already very impactful tragedy even more powerful and intense. Furthermore, it's featuring magnificent contemporary music. The parts revolving around poor Claire Wilson are the most harrowing, evidently, as she's 8 months pregnant, shot, and lying on burning hot concrete with her dead boyfriend next to her. But there are also hopeful messages, like of people overcoming their fear just to help other human beings in peril, even if they are complete strangers. A uniquely beautiful film about a sad and ugly event.

On August 1, 1966, a sniper climbed to the observation deck of the clock tower at the University of Texas - Austin. From there, he randomly shot and killed fourteen people and injured thirty-two others. The story is retold in this film which is mostly a documentary but also a drama where some events are re-enacted in rotoscopic animation.

The shooting spree lasted about an hour and a half which is close to the length of this movie. As events seem to be happening in real time, this film succeeds in having the effect of a thriller - at least to those of us who did not know the final outcome of the tragedy.

Director Keith Maitland has made some unique choices that pay off fabulously. The available footage is compelling; the use of animation to continue the story (where footage is not available) is also very effective.

This movie is more powerful than most documentaries in that it places viewers in the moral dilemma of some of the bystanders: what does one do upon seeing someone wounded who is in clear view from the tower? While helping is the right thing to do, how does one do so without risking getting shot?

Once the main narrative of the event is complete, the post-script takes on a life of its own. It includes interviews with some of the survivors, police officers, and observers including archived interviews of those who have died since the event. This satisfies a curiosity especially when they speak openly of the traumatic memories followed by a healing process.

Maitland has deliberately excluded much information about the assassin with an exception being a photo which generates many mixed feelings. The inclusion of a commentary by the revered Walter Cronkite is also very well chosen especially considering the many mass shootings that have happened in the half-century since. This is a superior documentary. - dbamateurcritic

...other than I lived in Austin for 25 years.. but starting in the 90s. I've been on that mall on a hot August day, heard the locust, felt the heat coming off the pave, and recognized every bit of scenery. I've heard the story time and time again, and watching Tower I cried about 5 min in, and continued to do so until the credits rolled. The animation brought the bits and pieces of a splintered story into a very cohesive and powerful movie.

I cried three or four times, maybe five times while watching Tower.

Told with a combination of still photos, grainy 8mm film footage from the incident itself, and rotoscopic animation, it begins in the middle, with the radio announcement some tens of minutes into the incident, lingering only briefly to set the mood.

Then it switches to Claire talking about just before things started happening. The actress playing Claire is rotoscoped, which is an animation technique that looks both real and animated at the same time, because it's like tracing over the actual images. It's a good technique for this type of documentary, because at once it distances you from the actor, yet brings you closer to the person the actor is portraying, and of the age they were when the events took place.

In this way the actors explain things using the words of the real person who was being interviewed, and they also appear as characters in the re-enactment of the events. Because it's rotoscopy, the emotions of the actors carry over and you're able to relate to their feelings. The rotoscopy also enables the director to place people in the Mall without them actually being there, so there was no need to clear the Mall or to ask for permission to film. And it allows for a special touch when Claire tells of her fiancé.

Claire Wilson is the anchor of the story, having been the first one known shot, and also having been 8 months pregnant at the time. She lay out on the concrete of the Mall in front of the tower for over an hour in the August heat, her dead fiancé beside her, helped only by Rita Starpattern, who ran out to help despite the continued sniping.

Other main stories are of the two policemen who killed the sniper, a citizen who helped them, another policeman who went to help at the top of the tower, a freshman with his own story of heroism, a paperboy who was shot, the radio announcer who narrated and warned of the events, and a young woman who only watched.

Rita Starpattern appears only through Claire's narrative, because she died of cancer before anyone interviewed her. Some of the others had been interviewed before they died, and a few more, including Claire, were interviewed for the documentary.

The last part of the film is inter cut with the interviews of the real people whose avatars have been narrating the action. By saying Claire is the anchor, I don't mean to discount the contributions of the others, most of whom performed heroically in a desperate situation.

The sound of the movie is evocative, with music from the time, announcements on the radio, the cicadas of Summer, and of course the incessant gunfire.

I saw the film at the Dallas International Film Festival, so the director was there to answer questions at the end. Answers I recall were that the sniper, who does not appear in the film, made a midnight call on his music teacher, saying that he was very upset and needed to talk. He sat down at the piano and played Claire de Lune, and then said that was what he needed, and left.

Another was that Rita Starpattern never spoke of her actions that day. He said many people in Austin, where she had lived, gasped when they saw her name.

One man in the audience said he knew the sniper's CO in the Marines, who said that the sniper was very much into his role as a killer, and looked forward to being able to kill people legally.

It's odd to think of something that happened in one's own lifetime as a period piece, but younger viewers will understand more of what life was like before ubiquitous global communication. After the shooting, everyone involved lost contact with each other, something unimaginable today. A local radio announcer was the sole contact for news, and also served to warn people about what was going on. At least there were home phones, radio, TV, and 8mm cameras, so I guess it wasn't that primitive.