Many folks would pay good money to hear Tom Hanks read the phonebook in his compelling, cozy, and comforting timbre. On a superficial level, his work in NEWS OF THE WORLD is as close as we’ll get to that, seeing him play a traveling newsman who reads to townsfolk for a meager wage. While director Paul Greengrass’ film, an adaptation of Paulette Jiles’ novel of the same name, contains deeply layered, stirring themes and resonant character dynamics, it’s the affable actor’s poignant, refined performance that delivers new colors to their complex shading. It also doubles as a return to the sharp, incisive Westerns of classic Hollywood. Greengrass and company have given us all the news that’s fit to film.
Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Hanks) has a few scars on his body that tell a story of fighting and warfare. The Civil War veteran is now a peaceful man who travels from town to town, reading the news to those who need to hear it the most. With his papers stacked neatly in front of him on a makeshift podium, he holds court nightly for a dime, acting as a captivating emcee, capturing the townsfolk’s attention with true tales of escapism and enlightenment. Kidd is seeking to deliver inspiration to those who need it and looking for hope in world that’s granted him none. He’s chosen this lonely life of isolation as a makeshift drifter, whose career gives him purpose as he tries to escape the curse of a past trauma.
However, Kidd’s world shifts once he discovers a young girl hiding in the wild while headed to his next reading engagement. Johanna (Helena Zengel), a fair-skinned, tow-headed spitfire clad in buckskin dress and hollering in Kiowa, was en route to find home when she encountered folks who lynched her companion and left her stranded. She doesn’t speak English, so her papers tell Kidd of her backstory: she’s an orphan who was kidnapped by the Kiowa when she was younger and raised as one of their own. He’s told by cavalry to take her to the closest town, but once he’s there, he discovers the agent who would take Johanna to her last living relatives won’t return for 3 months. He tries to leave with local friends, but the almost-feral child rebels against assimilation. Kidd is compelled to take her himself, across 400 miles of treacherous territory.
Tom Hanks in NEWS OF THE WORLD. Courtesy of Universal Pictures.
Greengrass and co-screenwriter Luke Davies do a great job establishing both characters in essentially a two-hander. Kidd’s nightly routine shows how he enraptures the crowd, capturing their attention with the selected stories. This also serves as meta-commentary on the power of storytelling. He quells tempers, putting angry folks on common ground with their alleged enemies. Later, when he’s threatened and ordered to read propaganda, we see how he can carefully pivot the conversation and galvanize its participants. Johanna is a girl caught between two worlds – one where she presents as Caucasian (representing colonialism), and the other where she was raised as an Indigenous person. She’s grief-stricken over the abandonment she’s faced in her past, a quality Kidd recognizes and responds to immediately given his own previous travails. Their relationship feels earned and packs a wallop, particularly in the clarifying, crystalizing crescendo of the third act.
Other friends and foes make appearances throughout, but those serve to brilliantly complement Kidd and Johanna’s arcs. Kind-hearted deeds mirror the beauty set amongst the cruel realities, from the Boudlins (Ray McKinnon and Mare Winningham), who help set them up with supplies for travel by wagon, to Mrs. Gannett ( Elizabeth Marvel), who also has suffered loss and helps translate between the two travelers. Adversaries provide the intense conflicts that arise, like local lothario Almay (Michael Angelo Covino) and his gang of ne’er do wells, who want to buy Johanna for nefarious purposes, and Merritt Farley (Thomas Francis Murphy), the tyrannical, sadistic leader of an unincorporated county. They also provide the avenues by which we see the two work together to extricate themselves from danger.
Pacing is never an issue. Though it takes its time steeping us in the wild west’s gorgeous, sweeping vistas (with New Mexico as the stand-in for Texas), the film moves briskly. Those landscapes reflect the expansive emotional spectrum Kidd and Johanna must cross to reach their own personal fulfillment. Dariusz Wolski’s cinematography soars in the relaxed, contemplative corners of this picture. Action sequences, like the pursuit into the rocky hillside, the skedaddle from Erath County, and the wagon’s inevitable final demise, are all capably shot and assembled. As with many a film in Greengrass’ oeuvre, the camera is handheld, but it’s less shaky-cam than normal. This technique emphasizes the characters’ steadied hands and focused aims. James Newton Howard’s sonically poetic score fills in the cracks in a non-intrusive manner when dialogue is sparse.
Hanks is the draw, with his pathos and gravitas on full display. He’s also not afraid to portray a hero who gets his hands dirty, exploring all the intricate facets of Kidd’s deep-rooted pain. Yet it’s Zengel who’s a revelation. She nails Johanna’s stunted growth, spirit, and suffering with a wise sense of depth and dimension. She has a lot to shoulder in carrying the narrative, and she does so astutely.
Grade: A
NEWS OF THE WORLD opens in theaters on December 25.
If you’ve followed my writing long enough, you may have recognized a pattern: my love for movies about parenting. I truly believe the greatest joy of my life is being a father. The day my son was born, there was this dramatic shift. It’s no longer me, I, or myself, but you, him, and his. My whole perspective of life changed.
So, I never grow tired of films that explore that arena.
Writer-director Julia Hart is no stranger to the subject matter. Her wonderfully warmhearted 2018 dramatic thriller Fast Color is all about parenting and women’s ultimate power of creation. Hart’s next project, I’m Your Woman, carries the same themes, but takes them down a different path.
Starring The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel‘s Rachel Brosnahan in a career-best performance, I’m Your Woman is a 1970s-set story centered on motherhood, betrayal, family, and courage. It flips the script on mob dramas. Rather than focus on a career criminal’s happenings, it revolves around Brosnahan’s character, Jean, who must go on the run with her child as a result of her husband’s wrongdoings. The family’s life becomes intertwined with an assigned bodyguard (Arinzé Kene) and a young woman (Orange is the New Black’s Marsha Stephanie Blake) for a journey of survival and uncoverings.
How often do we get films about the in-between moments or the surrounding ones in the crime genre? Hart and her filmmaking partner (and life partner), Jordan Horowitz (La La Land), are not concerned with the typical action featured in crime capers.
PICTURE 1: MARSHA STEPHANIE BLAKE and RACHEL BROSNAHAN star in ‘I’M YOUR WOMAN.’ PICTURE 2: RACHEL BROSNAHAN. Photos courtesy of Wilson Webb / Amazon Studios.
“I was watching a bunch of seventies crime dramas, and they have all of these incredible female actors in them playing these very small parts. Their role was only really in service of the main male character who is the criminal,” Hart said during a recent phone call with Fresh Fiction.
Hart found herself unable to stop thinking about what happens to women in those films. It caused her to have many questions — questions she wanted to explore herself.
“What are they thinking? What do they feel when they get shepherded off to safety? Do they stay safe? What happens to them? How do they feel about all of this that’s happening to them? What do they know? What do they not? The questions of wondering piled on so high that I had to answer them,” Hart said.
I’m Your Woman positions a thrilling scenario that doesn’t filter these questions through a spoon-fed plot. Hart’s film challenges the audience by keeping viewers in the dark just as much as the central character. Similar to Fast Color, the full story is revealed until about halfway through — a tactic that Hart employs to keep the narrative fresh and authentic.
“I always get frustrated when I watch a movie and get everything upfront as if someone didn’t trust that I could be patient and could trust the storytelling and discover things over time,” Hart said. “So, it’s tricky because, for some audiences, it makes them uncomfortable. People are comfortable with being given all of the information they need right away, and then they get to lean back and watch what they’re watching.”
Rachel Brosnahan and Arinzé Kene star in ‘I’M YOUR WOMAN.’ Photo Courtesy of Amazon Studios
Hart accepts the risk and prefers to force the audience to lean in and be curious. Patience, in particular with I’m Your Woman, can sometimes lead to a more sterling and rewarding experience.
“People don’t always sit down and tell you their life story [like movies often portray]. I wanted to stay with Jean’s perspective for the whole film. She’s in every frame of the movie, and you’re learning everything right alongside her. It really puts you in her shoes, which I think is an integral part of the film,” Hart said.
Although I’m Your Woman features incredibly intense scenes involving bullets flying and bodies hitting the floor, it isn’t an action vehicle built for popcorn consumption. It’s a meditative, character-driven piece filled with thoughtful and genuine moments. Whether it showcases a parent in a delirious state, trying to calm a crying baby, or struggling to prepare a good meal, universality permeates the film. Many of the story beats are, naturally, plucked from Hart’s life, to which one wonders: Can a storyteller stay present in their own life when it comes to inspiration?
“There’s this amazing line [from Boris Trigorin in Anton Chekhov’s play The Seagull], where he talks about how you can never shut off the creative brain. It’s something that I very much relate to as a writer. I hate myself a little bit sometimes,” Hart admitted. “I’ll be in a situation where I just want to be in the moment, and then, all of a sudden, I’ll be like, “Ah, this would be a great scene in a movie.” So, it’s a blessing and a curse because it allows your life to be your inspiration, but it sometimes takes your life away from you.”
L-R: FRANKIE FAISON, DE’MAURI PARKS, and MARSHA STEPHANIE BLAKE star in ‘I’M YOUR WOMAN.’ Photo courtesy of Wilson Webb / Amazon Studios.
Through Hart’s sacrifice as an artist and her filmmaking craftsmanship, the audience is able to latch onto different lessons and walk away with different feelings. This is an aspect of storytelling that Hart was aware of due to her own film-watching experiences.
“It’s amazing the movies that I could watch before I became a parent and the movies that I can’t watch once I became a parent. I didn’t direct my first film until my older son was almost one. All of my movies are either about mothers or relationships between children and their mothers. It’s definitely something that I’m really interested in,” Hart said. “Obviously, in I’m Your Woman, there are two children, and they’re put in dangerous situations. But as a storyteller, I can never have anything actually bad ever happen to the young characters.”
Rest easy, parents.
Both highly suspenseful and deeply emotional, I’m Your Woman is a touching exploration of the boundless love between a mother and her child as well as a grand story of survival. I remain struck by both the simplicity and tenderness in Hart’s film. Anchored by exceptional performances from its wonderfully diverse cast, it’s 100 percent a work that trusts its audience and takes its time letting you in on the particulars.
Seek I’m Your Woman out this weekend on Amazon Prime Video and allow this indie jewel to shine for you and give you more to ponder and appreciate about life.
