Deftly combining archive footage, interviews and handsome rotoscoped animation, Tower is an innovative documentary account of the mass shootings on the University of Texas campus on 1 August 1966. A sniper armed with a cache of assault rifles opened fire from the observation platform of the clock tower. Sixteen people were killed and many more injured before the gunman was finally killed by two police officers and one civilian. Using actors (subsequently animated) reading the real-life accounts of the victims and witnesses, the film is as taut as a thriller but also creative in a way that a straight-up reconstruction could never be. The animation technique gives the film a similar look to Richard Linklater’s Waking Life or Ari Folman’s Waltz With Bashir, though with the emphasis on factual re-creation rather than the impressionistic account of Folman’s memoir.
