Review of Tower (2016) by Holly S — 03 Oct 2017

I highly recommend "Tower", a documentary that tells the story of the events of August 1st, 1966, when a young man went to the top of the University of Texas Tower and opened fire on the innocent people below. The gunman's identity is barely mentioned, if at all, throughout this film. It's not about Charles Whitman or his demons or even the political pressures of the day that might have impacted him in any way. Only the music and the dress seem to reveal much of that time period. This is all appropriate, because it's about the people who lived through the 96 minutes of terror, as well as those who did not.

The format the documentary uses is called rotoscopic animation, a term I did not know previously. I would have simply called it beautifully-done animation. Archival footage is used, but no live action re-enactments. The effect is wonderful, that's the only way I know to put it. The voice-overs are performed by people of the approximate age of the characters who are experiencing the sniper attacks, but the recollections are of the real-life people. The accents are dead-on Texas, I can vouch for that.

If you can watch this without feeling anxious for these ordinary people, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, you're tougher than I am. Many proved to be extraordinarily brave, risking their lives to save those hurt and bleeding, stranded on the concrete ground of the mall. No high-tech methods for stopping a sniper in a tower existed at the time. The retelling of the steps taken by the two men who accosted the sniper is especially captivating.

Towards the end of the documentary, there are a few interviews of some of these individuals who are living today, or have died only in recent years. Fifty years on, they are still haunted by that day. Their faces are aged, but in their voices there is something like reverence for having lived through the attack. There is unmistakeable gratitude there for those long-ago people who reached out to help a stranger. You can see how much it means to remember the names and the faces.

Kudos to director Keith Maitland who brought this story to life. Don't miss "Tower", it will help you remember that there's no such thing as a faceless, nameless victim of sudden violence. At least, we should not let them become like that.