Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun?

Travis Wilkerson's Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun? is a first person documentary investigating the murder of an Afro-American man by Mr. Wilkerson's great-grandfather in Alabama in 1946. Wilkerson utilizes home movies, interviews with relatives and civil rights advocates, still photos and clips from the dreaded To Kill a Mockingbird to illustrate what he says is an experimental and fragmented film about racism. The soundtrack is similarly sliced and diced, so that Negro work songs, hip-hop and folk are used to bracing effect. Wilkerson foregrounds his postmodernism and white privilege. This allows him to explore his subject in a digressive fashion, flaunting avant-garde effects. I was most impressed with his daring when he layered a clip of Billie Holiday singing "Strange Fruit" (backwards!) over an image of trees swaying in the wind. A send of bold adventurousness not usually found in documentaries of the PBS ilk. The film is never boring.

However, it is somewhat dry and bloodless for a film about family. Wilkerson's method is that of a dialectician, hoping that an interesting juxtaposition of images and sound will achieve a synthesis. The results are neutered by his aestheticism. Everything is shot beautifully, even a dead deer being devoured by insects. Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun? suffers from the finger pointing syndrome embodied in its use of Phil Ochs' "William Moore" at its climax. Ochs' song, just like Dylan's one about Hattie Carroll, serves as a worthy protest and remembrance, but is limited by its sense of moral superiority. Wilkerson is willing to implicate himself in his family's dark heritage, but cannot show more than simulacrum of evil and intolerance. He is able to manipulate outrage at horrific events, but not evoke the horror of the everyday. The world of Did You Wonder Who Fired the Gun?, worthy film that it is, is more parsed over than lived in.