News of the World

The west­ern genre is dot­ted with match­ing sets of adult men and their young charges, a dynam­ic lend­ing itself read­i­ly to fron­tier-set­tle­ment nar­ra­tives. The old­er guardian is always griz­zled, hardy, har­bour­ing some painful mem­o­ries about his own past; the indi­vid­ual in his care has to be soft­er, defence­less to the many per­ils of the untamed land, tra­di­tion­al­ly a child or woman.

The par­tic­u­lars may change, but the sub­text sug­gest­ing that the hope for civil­i­ty and com­pas­sion can only be defend­ed by the sort of coarse per­son­al­i­ty that must be left behind for cul­ture to fol­low remains the same.

Paul Green­grass places his lat­est film News of the World in this clas­si­cal her­itage, pair­ing a wid­ow­er vet­er­an with an orphaned girl so that they may fill the vac­u­ums in each other’s hearts and ges­ture toward a bright new direc­tion for a still-nascent Amer­i­ca. Except that as the well-man­nered and peace­able Jef­fer­son Kyle Kidd, Tom Han­ks is a far cry from the spit­tin’, cussin’, rough-ridin’ cow­pokes of oaters past.

More wound­ed lover than fight­er, he’s a news­read­er by pro­fes­sion, bring­ing reports of major devel­op­ments on the nation­al and glob­al stages to the iso­lat­ed vil­lages beyond the divid­ing line of the Mis­sis­sip­pi. This polite choice of voca­tion is of a piece with Green­grass’ over­all aspi­ra­tion to a more but­toned-up take on the For­dian mode, a dig­ni­fied tone that makes for a hand­some­ly mount­ed piece of work, if lack­ing in the grit one expects from the kill-or-be-killed milieu.

Kidd’s gen­tle demeanour makes him an ide­al cus­to­di­an for the way­ward Johan­na (the then-eleven-year-old Hele­na Zen­gel, a mag­nif­i­cent find), tak­en from her Ger­man fam­i­ly by the Kiowa peo­ple and then left alone after her reluc­tant­ly adopt­ed tribe was mas­sa­cred. He agrees to chap­er­one the large­ly tac­i­turn young­ster to her more dis­tant rel­a­tives’ encamp­ment across hun­dreds of treach­er­ous miles on a noble mis­sion befit­ting Kidd’s good-guy bona fides.

He’s kind and patient with her, slow­ly break­ing down the lan­guage bar­ri­er as the hours spent on the road and the dan­gers skirt­ed along the way bring them clos­er togeth­er. Here’s where Han­ks’ cast­ing comes in handy, as the pater­nal, reas­sur­ing aura he’s built up over years of play­ing author­i­ty fig­ures and moral cham­pi­ons adds the impres­sion of fin­er shad­ing to his char­ac­ter. His approach­able ease also makes him a valu­able foil to the deep well of non­ver­bal solem­ni­ty inside Johan­na, the voice to break the silence as they ramble.

Han­ks’ right­eous­ness informs his character’s work, too; the film picks up in 1870, with the divi­sions opened by the Civ­il War far from healed though the fight­ing has ceased, as Kidd attempts to unite a bro­ken nation. He urges togeth­er­ness and under­stand­ing despite These Des­per­ate and Unprece­dent­ed Times, in a clear clar­i­on call to an Amer­i­ca more entrenched in par­ti­san con­flict than ever. A decent­ly intend­ed effort, to be sure, but it’s a mil­que­toast notion all the same that the pow­er of sto­ry­telling could be suf­fi­cient to bridge oppo­site sides of the polit­i­cal aisle.

Aside from his fre­quent returns to the Bourne fran­chise, Green­grass spe­cialis­es in recre­ations of vio­lent tragedy so real­is­tic that they ignite philo­soph­i­cal argu­ments about exploita­tion in art. In com­par­i­son, his detour to parts West lands as lit­tle more than a safe choice, mod­est even as sweep­ing cat­tle dri­ves and tem­pes­tu­ous dust storms inflate the sense of scale. This is one of those movies that invites the short­hand crit­i­cism of being ​“for dads,” not so much in its stol­id mas­culin­i­ty, but more in how it pack­ages the wilds of his­to­ry for com­fort­able view­ing after din­ner and before falling asleep on the couch.

News of the World is avail­able on Net­flix from 10 February.