Watching the review from John Green's Crash Course literature, only then I knew that To Kill a Mockingbird was adapted into film, and it was an award-winning film too! It was one of the top contender for Oscar year 1963, together with Lawrence of Arabia. I watched it and it was indeed very good.
Still a black and white film, as a modern day audience, I was expecting it to be a slow film. Surprisingly, it isn't. It is very well-paced. The cast is great, all the characters are portrayed just like what I imagine, except may be Bob Ewell. I imagine him to be more ugly, more drunk, and more filthy.
It is very faithful to the book. Some scenes from the book are cut off but they don't bother me that much. I even think those cut-off scenes are very well selected, making the storyline more compact and more focus on Tom Robinson's case. Don't get me wrong, those cut-off scenes such as Cal bringing Jem and Scott to nigger church and the story of Mrs Dubose are very interesting. But choices have to be made in a 2 hour film, and choosing to focus on Tom Robinson's case is the right call.
One interesting thing I notice is the setting. Maycomb seems larger in my imagination than in the film. The true size of Maycomb could be just like the one in the film. But in the book, reading from the point of view of a little girl, and I guess everything always seems larger when we were little. At least it is true from what I remember. When I was little, I felt like my home was my whole world, and Malaysia was as huge as the universe. Only when I opened the Atlas world map that I realized my tininess.
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