Tower

[weekender]

As those of you who religiously read my occasional Sunday film reviews will know, on some Sundays I like to seek out highly rated films that I know nothing about and watch them[nb]I do also check whether or not a thread has been made about them before, and if I can't find one then I'll post about it if I think it's worth my time.  Seriously, you wouldn't believe the amount of shit that I've watched and just not posted about.  I look forward to seeing this approach documented in a film magazine in the near future, you thieving bastard of my ideas.[/nb].

Anyway, today's film was "Tower", a film ostensibly about

Spoiler alert

a man who went to the top of a tower and started shooting at people

[close]

.

It's a true story, but somewhat unusually it's done in a sort of interview/documentary style, using actual footage of the Tower interspersed with animation to recreate both what actually happened and also the interviews.

If you can cope with the shift in styles all the time - I can, because I'm used to certain animations of a popular science-fiction show and I also have a brain, for example - then it works really well.  Even the contrasts between black-and-white and colour animation mean something.

It portrays the sheer confusion about the event brilliantly well - what would you do in this situation, were you one of the characters? 

Overall though, I think this film just explains what it's like to be a human in a panic situation, from multiple perspectives, and it does it well.  I've been engrossed.

What's missing for me though, is any sort of narrative about

Spoiler alert

the gunman

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.

Not my best film review, fuckitpost.

[Sal Vicuso]

Sounds interesting, about the Charles Whitman thing in Texas I assume?

[weekender]

Sounds interesting, about the Charles Whitman thing in Texas I assume?

Yes, it's about that.

The film just deals with a load of people who were there, and I did enjoy it, but there's this kind of question still lingering at me.

Spoiler alert

"What about the madman on the roof?  Why did he do it?"

[close]

I felt I needed to understand more there.  I would genuinely like to understand why people go "crazy".  Why did Whitman do what he did?

Too many unanswered questions.

[Sal Vicuso]

He was worried for months about his deteriorating mental condition. At the autopsy afterwards they found a small brain tumour that potentially could have affected his thinking. I always thought Whitman was a bit of a sympathetic character, as far as cold-blooded murderers go. He was trying to get help for some time and just seems to have eventually snapped when none was forthcoming

[weekender]

Oh, like a lot of the subjects of MK Ultra?

[BlodwynPig]

Enjoyed the film....something I wouldn't have sought out. But it was good then to read the backstory and see the more sympathetic side of the gunman. Not some cold-blooded madman, just someone suffering from a mental disorder of some type.