I get the feeling that if I keep actively seeking out Westerns like this, my reputation is going to shift from “guy who won’t stop bitching about movies with talking animals in them” to “if even this guy likes this Western, it’s gotta be good”. I guess I’m just trying to break the barrier of this not being my cup of tea as far as genre settings go, and still being able to dissect them efficiently as I (at least try to) do with any other kind of film on here. Well, banking on Tom Hanks in another warm and comforting lead role certainly helps with that, but honestly, this is easily one of the best Westerns I’ve seen all year. And it’s not as if this is all that fresh or creative with its setting either.
The story involves Hanks’ Captain Kidd, a former Confederate soldier who travels the American South reading newspapers from across the Frontier to packed audiences, finding young Johanna/Cicada (Helena Zengel), a white girl who had been adopted by a Kiowa tribe years earlier… who are now all dead. The film mainly hangs on the surrogate father-daughter relationship between these two, as they make the trek to find Johanna’s last living relatives, and they make for a very compelling duo. Zengel makes one hell of a debut on the international stage after spending her career in her native Germany up to this point, playing an innocent stuck between her blood heritage and her adopted heritage, one of many examples of characters struggling with the divides in their lives.
Director/co-writer Paul Greengrass is better known for his handheld-camera aesthetic with films like the Bourne sequels and Captain Phillips, and while he’s tackling a decidedly more grounded production this time around, he still brings those techniques to this feature where they make the most sense. This isn’t all that action-heavy, but when the guns do get pulled out, the cinematography combined with James Newton Howard’s soundtrack work make for some damn tense moments.
For the rest of it though, it’s a much more sombre look at characters trying to run away from their own pasts… which takes on some interesting thematic ideas in conjunction with the Reconstruction setting. While the film doesn’t seem as comfortable with really getting into the nitty gritty of Kidd’s involvement with the Civil War (almost as if the filmmakers are in the same position as Kidd as far as reconciling the past), his place within the larger story as well as his position as a roaming news reporter give this a particularly timely feel. He’s basically a champion for local news journalism, spreading the title’s namesake to places that have become so insular that all their news only serves to further the agenda of the guy who owns/publishes it. As an Australian, I can most definitely relate to how that feels.
And in that dichotomy of post-Civil War tensions and The Post levels of gratitude towards the journalistic trade, its main message of “to move forward, you must first remember” makes for some stirring emotional engagement. As it applies to the characters, their setting, and how a lot of these ideas reverberate today (I particularly appreciate the irony that Confederacy nostalgia nowadays comes from the same people who whine about everyone wanting participation trophies), the film is vehemently against historical revisionism, whether on a cultural or personal level, which makes for a quite compelling look at the Wild West. I gotta be honest, looking at the journalism side of things makes for one of the better uses of this setting I’ve seen in quite some time, as it really did get me thinking about just how much has changed since then… as well as how much really hasn’t changed.
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