It's rare for us to enjoy a back-to-back experience of reading a wonderful book and then immediately viewing an equally wonderful film that somehow manages to improve on its source material.
That neatly describes our experience with this book and the recent film adapted from it.
News Of The World by Paulette Jiles (2016) evokes the brutal, dangerous landscapes of post Civil War Texas. Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, a weary Confederate veteran of blood soaked battles, travels this turbulent territory making a sparse living by reading newspaper articles to assembled crowds.......(cost of admission: one dime).
Against his own better judgement, he takes on a herculean 400 mile quest - transporting a 10 year old girl rescued from Kiowa captivity back to an aunt and uncle, her only surviving relatives.
The child, Johanna, is a now a wild, broken lost soul, speaking no English and an outcast in both white and Native American cultures. Her journey with Captain Kidd to find a home for herself, fraught with dangers and leavened with human connection, makes this odyssey of the two unlikely travelling companions thrilling, perceptive and ultimately heartrending.
Steeped in Texas lore and evocative of the era, we can't recommend this book highly enough. We practically read it in one sitting and it left us shaken and riveted from beginning to end. As a reading experience, it's a 5 star (*****) FIND OF FINDS.
As soon we finished this book, we jumped right into......
News Of The World (2020) We at first worried upon hearing that the film version would fall into the hands of director Paul Greengrass........whose shaky-cam cinematics aggravate us.
Greengrass's over-reliance on hand held camerawork ("The Green Zone", the Bourne series) reduced, we thought, much of his films to unwatchable visual gibberish........the kind of junky filmmaking we'd hate to see inflicted on such a stark, primal book like "News Of The World".
To our everlasting relief, Greengrass discarded his signature style and with the gifted help of cinematographer Dariusz Wolski, creates a visually stunning film that evokes classic westerns like John Ford's "The Searchers" (which the book somewhat resembles in structure and storyline along with "True Grit").
The simple, beautiful visuals leave Greengrass to concentrate on what's most important to tell this story.....on the two actors who take the lead roles of Captain Kidd and Johanna.
Tom Hanks, that national acting treasure who's managed to combine the steely reserve of Henry Fonda with the warm all-American empathy of James Stewart, embodies the Captain like no other actor could. His performance here functions as close to a summing up of his all his previous Americana roles in "Sully", "Captain Phillips", "Saving Private Ryan" and "A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood".
The revelation here is 12 year old Helena Zengel as Johanna. In what must be one of the most demanding roles ever given to a child actress, she astounds in every scene she's in, whether making you laugh or breaking your heart. All her scenes with Hanks are gems and you can't take your eyes off either of them.
What surprised and impressed us were all the ways that Greengrass, co-scripting the film with Luke Davies, expanded, embellished and even improved upon book, fleshing out its story with additional emotional power.
We couldn't have asked for a better film version of "News Of The World" and just like the book, it's a 5 star (*****) FIND OF FINDS. BQ says dive into the book first, then by all means don't miss the movie.
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