It’s a hot summer day in Austin, Texas. The students of the town are milling around and the tower at the University of Austin forebodingly stands. For the next few hours, the persistent sound of thundering gunfire pierces the sky. The result will be 16 deaths, multiple injuries and a terrifying true tale playing out in one-hundred degree heat. Tower starts quietly, much like the day. The players, each beautifully recreated by rotoscope, don’t know what to make of the moment. Some are viciously forced into it, others come at their own accordance having heard something about an air-rifle. But it was all too real. Tower works best when it is showing these quiet moments of contemplation that the characters are placed under. When things really start going the ever beautiful technology at the center adds an almost dreamlike nature to the ferocity of the story. While to some that might seem insensitive, the animation only makes it more jarring when the through harrowing grainy black and white footage of the still motionless students. The horribleness of all of it is almost too much to fathom that it almost becomes detaching, but the sudden shifts between sobering look of the animation and the reality that slams us back to earth. The events proceed as you’d expect, but with each person bringing their own meaning to it. Some only remember it as a blisteringly scary day, others remember it with an idea that the man who did these things had problems. While overall the documentary seems to play pretty conventionally, besides stylistically, the moments when it’s not just giving an eye-opening history lesson make Tower the gem it is. The scary image of the large tower stretching into the sky. The musings of an old woman simply trying to forgive, and quietness of all the sadness that a few hours on a hot day in Austin, Texas left behind. Tower is a documentary that scares in it’s ever persistent cacophony of the repeating gunshot that rings out over its score but truly lives in the soulful eyes of the people that experienced those hours. This is a small film, but it is one to see. Reviewing it, viewing it even, feels a bit unjust. These are a stressful yet calming 82 minutes, one that only those present could accurately describe. For now, Tower does a consistently fear inducing job of giving us what it must have been to witness this tragedy and what it is to hold onto it. The film ends with images of more recent school shootings, reminding us that this doesn’t only happen once. One day, a new generation of wounded souls will have to take on the burden of their own tragedy.
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December 2017
CategoriesAuthorHello welcome to FilmAnalyst. My name is Stephen Tronicek, and I really like movies. This is a way to get my opinions out to people. Thank you for visiting. |