backwardsiris As timely as ever (tragically so), TOWER recounts stories of a few individuals whose lives were forever changed by the fateful events of August 1st, 1966 on the campus of University of Texas, Austin. Narrated by some of the survivors of the first mass shooting on a U.S. college campus, the recreations are presented in beautifully animated rotoscoping. The animation brings a surreal dream-like quality, similar (I can only imagine) to how the survivors, heroes & bystanders must have felt on such a hot, nightmarish summer's day. Like a thunderclap out of the blue, the crack of the first bullet sent shockwaves through the audience, as it took down a pregnant Claire Wilson. 50 years later, you can still hear the heartache in her voice as she narrates not only being shot (which caused the loss of her unborn child), but also witnessing the death of her fiancé, who was fatally shot as he bent over to help her up. Throughout the movie, we are introduced to a handful of the players in the day's events & we are shown the terror as seen through their eyes. While many of the stories were about brave acts of heroism, there were also honest moments of fear, confusion, hesitation & self-preservation. As the story unfolds, you can't help but wonder how you'd react in a situation like this. Would you stand behind a pillar, waiting for it all to end? Would you run into the shooter's sight to comfort a bleeding pregnant woman, trying to keep her conscious until she can be moved to safety? Would you slink closer to the tower, attempting to remain unseen by the sniper & assist the police? I don't think anyone can know until they've been in this situation (something I hope none of us experience), so we certainly cannot judge the many who chose security over bravery that day. However, the truly brave are to be admired for their boldness, selflessness & quick-thinking. The movie does a good job focusing on the victims, survivors & heroes, instead of the story gravitating around the shooter, as is often played out in the media. This was a very deliberate choice on the part of director Keith Maitland, who said in the Q&A that there are plenty of websites, movies & articles devoted to the shooter, so he didn't feel that perspective was warranted in this film. Once the final stand-off comes to an end, the interviews shift from rotoscoped reenactments to live footage of the survivors, who still carry the weight of this heavy day on their countenances. Maitland said he couldn't speak directly on gun-control policy, and would leave that to those "smarter than him" who are expert in the area of policy-making, but he hoped it would spark important conversations with all who watch this film. A truly poignant & unique piece of documentary cinema.

jc-osms This unusual film demonstrated an innovative way to fill in the gaps of a major news event where there are still survivors alive to share their memories but where there's a lack of available archive footage to fully tell the story. The event here was as I understand it, the first, but as we now know, far from last occasion when a warped individual exercised their constitutional right to bear arms by massacring innocent civilians in cold blood. On this occasion, ex-Marine Charles Whitman killed his mother and pregnant wife before taking to the tower at Texas University to rain down murder and mayhem onto whoever came into his eye-line.I can recall the excellent debut feature of Peter Bogdanovich "Targets" made in 1968 which made this then very recent story its backdrop, albeit with different names for the principal characters. The ambition of this feature however was to take us through the actual 96 minutes of the onslaught almost in real time by recreating the memories of the survivors, some since deceased, in vivid animation sequences. I doubt it's coincidence that the film's running time is the selfsame 96 minutes. Actors resembling the real life characters play the latter's younger selves in both telling the story as it occurred in pieces-to-camera as well as in physical recreations of the events of the day as it unfolded. There is no third party commentary at all and at the end we get to see the witnesses in the present day, to give the film, as well as themselves perhaps, a sense of closure.The animation takes a little getting used to initially but is skilfully done in a near-lifelike manner which gradually draws the viewer into the action. Again I applaud the modern trend of giving next to nothing by way of background or motive and therefore importance far less justification to the perpetrator of these awful killings. Instead the focus is, as it should be, on the remarkable courage of everyday individuals, from the young cop who goes to the crime scene even when off-duty, the shopkeeper who ends up on the tower with the policeman, rifle-in-hand, to the young students who run in full view of the shooter, one young girl to comfort a wounded pregnant young woman, lying prone next to her fatally shot boyfriend and a couple of boys who actually lift her out of harm's way.One wonders if the filmmakers here will go on to use a similar technique on other in-living-memory calamitous events but one suspects it will more likely prove a one-off exercise. I do believe though that the director's primary motivation was to re-tell a remarkable, if tragic, story rather than demonstrate flashy technique. If occasionally there are mistakes in the pacing as sequences are unnecessarily run and re-run for no apparent reason and also no real political point is made about gun-control itself, still the narrative is compelling as only a true-life disaster can be.

DavidRcv1 I went into this movie blind, not knowing what to expect. I love the fact that this movie gets straight into the action.It doesn't even take time to present you with the characters. Then, of course, the film is animated.Amazing choice I think.The animation was gorgeous.It was like a stop motion, but not a stop motion.The editing, especially in the first 50 minutes or so, the editing is flawless.Also, the movie is very emotional, and can make you cry and laugh in the same moment.The pacing of the film is also almost perfect.Also, it didn't focus on the killer what so ever.The whole movie was about the victims and the heroes.It is one of the most strongly emotional movies I have seen.In my opinion, this is the best documentary of 2016.I strongly recommend it.

Turfseer Keith Maitland's "Tower" is the fascinating and powerful new documentary about the mass shooting which occurred on the University of Texas campus in the city of Austin on August 1, 1966. While such shootings today are commonplace, the University of Texas shooting was perhaps the first mass murder to be covered by the media in real time. Although the story of the "Tower shootings" has been told before on a number of occasions on television, Maitland's take is completely different and original. In addition to utilizing the extensive film footage that was taken at a distance as the events unfolded on that tragic day, Maitland employs rotoscopic animation to illustrate the experience of survivors of the massacre as well law enforcement responders, in an up-close, personal way. Maitland employs actors to play the parts of the participants and paints over their images with his software, which enables him to capture a reasonable reenactment of what went on that day. Interviews of victims and responders in the present day are interspersed with their fictional counterparts, which gives us a more emotional, complete picture of what happened as opposed to a simple, "dry" documentary.The main protagonist here is Claire Wilson, an 18 year old student, who, along with her boyfriend, were the first to be shot by the diabolical shooter, Charles Whitman, who ended up killing 16 people and wounding approximately 30 others, from his perch on top of the University of Texas tower. Wilson's boyfriend was killed instantly and she also lost her unborn child, as she was five months pregnant at the time.The story hardly ends there. For an agonizing hour and half, Wilson was lying on the pavement in 100 degree weather, bleeding from a bullet to her abdomen. Remarkably, another student braved the sniper and joined Wilson in order to comfort her—all the while playing dead as Whitman had her in his sights. Finally, additional heroes--a group of students-- ran out in front of the tower entrance, and dragged Wilson to safety.The shooting is told from the perspective of a number of key eyewitnesses including a TV reporter who drives around in his news car, reporting the events as they transpire. We also follow two police officers and a civilian as they bravely climb up the tower, and eventually take out the gunman, who Maitland wisely hardly mentions.During a recent Q&A with a lead producer, I learned that the University of Texas did not want to talk about the massacre after it happened. In fact, it was only last year that a true and lasting memorial was erected there to commemorate the terrible event. Tower becomes a welcome opportunity for the survivors to express emotions that have been in some cases, bottled up inside them for years.Tower is successful due to its effective use of documentary film footage and modern-day interviews, coupled with the rotoscopic animation which gives it a dream-like quality. Tower is a gripping tale which will leave you speechless after you leave the movie theater.