What does Annie see, I wonder, as she watches the movie trial and thinks about her grandfather? Does she see how much the world has changed since 1960? Or does it look essentially the same to her, with the colors of the accused and accuser inverted? In the film, a black man is unjustly imprisoned by whites. In Annie’s world, her white grandfather has been unjustly imprisoned by a black district attorney. Does she see race behind my father’s indictment? Annie attends private school with quite a few black children—the offspring of black physicians and attorneys (plus a few exceptional athletes)—but the public schools are almost entirely black. More telling still, we could dine out in restaurants every night for a year and not see a mixed-race couple. We see them other places now and then—at Walmart or the baseball field, for example—but in what passes for “society,” such things remain unseen, if not unknown.

Something else struck me at the beginning of the film: the first time we see Atticus—always remembered as a man who regards violence as the desperate tactic of lesser men—he’s revealed to be the “best shot in Maycomb County,” and he actually kills a rabid dog before his children’s eyes. What could more firmly establish the credibility of an action hero than this? And if we didn’t know that Atticus was willing to be ruthless when necessary, would we so readily listen to his homilies about honor and fairness?

I also wonder what Atticus Finch would have done if the woman he loved had been murdered on the order of a man beyond the reach of any court. Surely the “best shot in Maycomb County” might be tempted to use his rifle to eliminate Forrest or Snake Knox? At the end of the film, Sheriff Heck Tate leaves us in no doubt that if rough justice happens to strike down a monster like Bob Ewell—who tried to kill the Finch children—it’s best to simply look the other way. In the spirit of Sheriff Tate, Rusty Duncan today mourned the fact that Ray Presley or Daniel Kelly isn’t around to neutralize the Knoxes by whatever means necessary. Would that moral trade-off buy us freedom from fear? If Snake Knox turned up dead tomorrow morning, would my father still sit silent in court while Shad Johnson ushers him toward Parchman Farm?

“Daddy?” Annie says as she watches the credits roll.

“Mm-hm.”

“Is Mr. Quentin Avery like Atticus?”

“Ahh . . . yes and no.”