Since the 2015 publication of Harper Lee’s second novel, Go Set a Watchman, it has become impossible to regard her first, feted book with the same innocence. Before then, To Kill a Mockingbird offered a beguiling child’s-eye view of a father’s stand against racial injustice in the deep south of the mid-1930s. Atticus Finch was the palatable white saviour who defended a black man in a hostile Alabama courtroom. But the second book’s indictment of Atticus as a racist, many years on from the doomed rape trial of Tom Robinson, irreversibly damaged his status as the story’s moral compass and heroic centre. So how to solve the problem of Atticus in any new telling of the original story?
Aaron Sorkin finds effective ways in his confident adaptation, drawing out the lawyer’s moral inconsistencies without undermining his goodness completely. Rafe Spall’s quietly dignified Atticus is on the side of the law and a firm believer in American justice, rather than on the side of Robinson (Jude Owusu) or an early champion for race equality.
