Tower

In his powerful and beautifully realized documentary, Keith Matiland's ("A Song for You: The Austin City Limits Story") Tower movingly recreates the shock and heartbreak of the random shooting of 49 people at the University of Texas in the summer of 1966. The attack was the first mass shooting at any school in the U.S, but sadly, it was not to be the last. With seven guns and over 700 rounds of ammunition, 25-year-old Charles Whitman, a troubled ex-marine who had already murdered his mother and his wife, opened fire at 11:48 a.m., and kept firing round after round for one hour and 36 minutes before being shot and killed by police officers. When the carnage had stopped, there were 16 dead and 33 injured. It was a tragedy that those involved were never able to forget, though many tried to suppress its awful memories.

Using the technique known as rotoscoping, Maitland interweaves the animated recreations with archival footage, interviews culled from Pamela Colloff's 1996 Texas Monthly article "96 Minutes," and real-life images of the victims both at the time of the tragedy and as they are today, talking about the events 50-years ago. With devastating intensity, we become witness to the tragedy as it unfolds minute–by-minute, hour-by-hour, allowing us to be present to the impact on the victims and those who risked their lives to save them. The film builds up tension from the opening sequence as reporter Neal Spelce (Monty Muir, "Slacker 2011") is seen driving towards the campus, warning everyone to stay away from the University area because a sniper is "firing at will."

The first victims are Claire Wilson James (Violett Beane, "Slash"), a pregnant 18-year-old freshman walking to class with her boyfriend Tom Eckman (Cole Bee Wilson) after a coffee break. As the horrific sounds of the shots ring out, both are hit and fall to the ground, depicted in almost dreamlike fashion as white silhouettes falling against a background of bright red. The camera stays with the pregnant Claire who remains conscious while lying on the concrete in 100 degree heat, the unmoving body of her boyfriend lying next to her. Miraculously, another student Rita Starpattern (Josephine McAdam, "The Honor Farm") risks her life to keep Claire alive by lying next to her and engaging her in conversation. Rita's heroic efforts continue until the wounded girl is rescued by John (Artly) Fox (Seamus Bolivar-Ochoa), a student who, along with a friend, risks gunfire to carry Claire to safety.

The tragedy mercifully comes to an end when officers Ramiro Martinez (Louie Arnette, "Light From the Darkroom"), Houston McCoy (Blair Jackson, "Varsity Blood"), and the deputized Allen Crum (Chris Doubek, "Boyhood"), ascend to the observation desk to subdue Whitman while dodging bullets from well-meaning amateur gun owners on the ground firing up to the tower. Some of the most moving scenes of the film occur near the end when Maitland interweaves actual footage of the survivors as they reflect on the tragedy. In addition to Claire, interviewed are Aleck Hernandez, Jr., a teenager delivering newspapers on his bicycle with his cousin when he was shot, Brenda Bell, a student who observed the shootings from afar, and Allen Crum, the bookstore manager who helped subdue the shooter.

Crum, Martinez, and McCoy talk about whether or not they could have gone up to the tower sooner and Claire introduces us to the Ethiopian boy she adopted (she also sponsored 26 of his family members to come to the U.S.), though admitting she still dreams about reuniting with the child she lost in the killings. As some witnesses break down in tears, it is clear that the trauma associated with the events of 1966 has not disappeared, though some are talking about them for the first time. Though Tower never becomes overtly political or uses the incident to advocate for gun control, Maitland's reminder of the subsequent mass killings at Columbine, Newtown, Colorado Springs, San Bernardino and too many others say all that needs to be said.

At the onset, it might seem insensitive to tell the story of a deadly mass shooting using rotoscope animation, but after you settle into the style of filmmaker Keith Maitland's "Tower," you realize how useful (and even powerful) a tool animation can be to tell a story that largely exists in fragments of witnesses' memories.

Maitland pieces together the horrifying 90 minutes on a sweltering summer day — August 1, 1966 — when a lone sniper essentially took the University of Texas at Austin campus hostage from the top of the campus clocktower, killing 16 people and wounding more than 40. With only testimonials and scarce video, audio, photos and news media coverage of the event at his disposal, Maitland mostly turns to animation to fill the gaps and relate what actually happened as completely as possible. The finished product is as close to a moment by moment account of the shooting — from the perspective of those who lived through it and were closest to the action — as possible.

Most filmmakers would shy away from a subject like this. There's not much to work with, it could feel too exploitative of people's trauma and live action reenactments of what happened would come across as inauthentic if not comical. But the rotoscoping effect, and Maitland's choice to animate his subjects as they looked in 1966, casting actors to play them in animated reenactments and to read their testimonials with younger voices, addresses all these concerns. It's as if Maitland dips part of the documentary in fiction just so that it can all come together more cohesively. Instead of cutting frequently between the real and the reenacted, he blends to the two.

This also turns "Tower" into a captivating, pulse-pounding retelling of events, almost as if it were a feature film. For those unfamiliar with story, it's all the more engrossing, and kind of jaw-dropping when you consider that it all actually happened. Adults young and old today have no shortage of mass shootings to draw from in their minds, but few lasted 90 terrifying minutes like the UT-Austin tower shooting. That makes it all the more important to create the vivid account we get in "Tower." What the witnesses and survivors experienced doesn't deserve to be reduced.

As has been the case with most media accounts of mass shootings, the focus always turns first to the shooter — who could be so evil and/or disturbed to take human lives this way? This was especially the case in this shooting; the attention was turned to the perpetrator and not the victims (and heroes) by magazines and broadcast media, some of which we see in the film. "Tower" almost entirely ignores who Charles Witman was and instead gives the narrative of events back to these victims and heroes. Maitland wants to honor their experiences and dig deeper into how they remember and process trauma instead of heaping attention on the selfish individual responsible for it all.

Again, it might seem like rotoscoping would work counter to this objective by obscuring the film's subjects in portraying them as "cartoons" with professional actors' voices, yet Maitland navigates that creatively as well and shows us that authenticity doesn't only come from the way someone looks or sounds, but that their "voice" is their story. The rotoscoping actually forces us to focus on their story and only their story. It allows us to live in those moments, rather than the person's recollection of those moments.

"Tower" stands out as a piece of creative, resourceful documentary filmmaking, one that allows the director to tell a complete story from disjointed pieces, and an absolutely gripping story at that. You might argue that this method and style allows Maitland to exert a bit too much of his own influence over the film, but his creative license largely comes in the form of accents that honor rather than exaggerate the stories of his subjects. Regardless, "Tower" raises the bar for how documentary stories can be told.

~Steven C

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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.

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?