The Witness from the Balcony of Room 306 (Adam Pertofsky, 2008): USA

Reviewed by William Conlin. Viewed at The Santa Barbara Film Festival.

As with many documentary films, it takes a good storyteller to make the interview aspect of the film more interesting. Ken Burns uses interviews with historians as a way of weaving together his epic storylines, while Errol Morris lets the story come directly from those who witnessed the events being told. In Adam Pertofsky’s gripping documentary The Witness from The Balcony of Room 306 the viewer is treated to both a historian and a witness in one man.

Reverend Samuel “Billy” Kyles was 32 years old when he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, clutching the wounded body of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and yelling for an ambulance. Today, Rev. Kyles is the last living person to have stood on that balcony when the fatal shot was fired at Dr. King. When Rev. Kyles speaks of the assassination, a fiery oration begins and it doesn’t take long for a viewer to feel as though he is channeling Dr. King himself. Having been with Dr. King quite a bit during his last days alive, Rev. Kyles is able to speak with indisputable authority about how one of this country’s greatest heroes fought and gave his life for the cause he so believed in.

This film was recently nominated for an Academy Award in the Documentary Short category and as far as I’m concerned, it should win. The power of filmmaking is so present in every frame of this film that it left me spellbound in my seat. When the film ended and the thunderous applause died down I realized I was crying my eyes out. I turned and looked around only to find that everyone else around me was also as moved.

The brilliance of this film is in the storytelling. The filmmakers captured Rev. Kyles telling his story not only in an interview form, but also while speaking to a packed church in Memphis and while doing a walkthrough of the Lorraine Motel (Now the National Civil Rights Museum). By quickly cutting between all of these variations of the same story, the viewer is given a complete sensory experience of what happened on that tragic day.

Another exquisite choice on the filmmaker’s part was the use of Dr. King himself in the film. Though his assassination is the central plot of the documentary, Dr. King doesn’t appear on screen until nearly half way into the film. During the first half, we hear his speeches and as his passionate voice grows fiercer the viewer feels desperate to see him. We want to see him give these speeches and when we do, it unleashes a wave of pure emotion.

During a panel after the screening I attended, Director Adam Pertofsky stated that the film was shot over the course of only four days. To create such an amazing documentation in such a short amount of time truly shocked me. In my opinion Pertofsky, who has only directed one other film to date, will undoubtedly come home from the Oscar’s with a statuette, and I think it is well deserved. He certainly made a good use of those four days.