- On my day off I had the opportunity to watch News Of The World, the 2020 western starring Tom Hanks and Helena Zengel. Hanks is Jefferson Kidd, a grizzled veteran of the Civil War who now ekes out a living travelling from town to town in Texas, reading the news- from a collection of newspapers he carries- to the people in these remote areas who have no other source of information about the outside world. While on the trail, he comes across a trashed army wagon and the body of a black soldier who has been lynched. Hiding in the bush nearby is a young girl who is white but doesn't seem to speak English. Reading the dead soldier's orders, Kidd finds out that the girl- Johanna- has been living with the Kiowa for years, since they killed her family and took her captive when she was a very young child. She was liberated when the Kiowa were decimated in battle by the US cavalry.
- Taking her to the nearest town where there's an army outpost, Kidd is dismayed to learn that the Indian Affairs Officer, whose job it is to deal with cases like this, won't be back in town for a few months. He intends to leave Johanna with a family he known in town until then, but changes his mind after she tries to run away to rejoin the Kiowa. He decides at this point to take Joanna to her only living relatives- an aunt and uncle who live in another part of Texas- not too far from his hometown of San Antonio. Kidd hasn't been back there in years due to grief and guilt: his wife died there alone while he was off fighting for the Confederacy during the Civil War. The rest of the movie, for the most part, is their trip across Texas to find Johanna's family and reconcile Jefferson Kidd with his past.
Essentially this is a road trip movie, though not of the silly comedic type the term generally calls to mind. It's been described as "episodic" and it is; Kidd and Johanna travel somewhere and something happens... they travel some place else and something else happens... and so on. I don't actually mind this structure; a lot of my favourite parts of the film where when the two of them were just on the road, travelling alone and struggling to understand each other. I was often almost sorry when their trip was interrupted by various happenings and crises, because it interfered with watching these two very different people attempt to communicate, often non-verbally. This of course hinges on two strong performances by the lead actors. Tom Hanks is very good as Jefferson Kidd- unsurprisingly, because this is the type of role which he could play in his sleep. No to suggest that he was sleepwalking through his performance; he's just very good at playing fatherly types who exude decency. Hanks' Kidd is world-weary and sad, filled with regrets about the war and the death of his wife. His nomadic existence is the result of his refusal to deal with his losses and move beyond them; he travels from place to place, interacting with people but never putting down roots and becoming one of them. He has become an observer and recounter of life, but not an active participant- no doubt because becoming involved means caring and risking further pain. Becoming responsible for Joanna's welfare forces Jefferson- reluctantly at first- to care about someone else again, and to have an actual objective beyond wandering aimlessly from town to town reading the news for a dime a head.
So those are my thoughts on the two main characters in News of the World. In the second half of this review, I'll discuss the plot of the film, what I thought worked, and what I didn't particularly like.