News of the world(Movie)

I finally managed to watch the News of the World movie yesterday, renting the DVD from Redbox at a reasonable price. I have already reviewed the book before so I will not go into the details of the plot. My objective here is to compare the movie and the book and conclude which fares better.

To recap, the plot revolves around a 70-year-old retired veteran, Captain Jeffrey Kidd who earns his living travelling from place-to-place, reading news to the people in small towns in North Texas. In one of the towns, he meets a young German girl, who was captured by the Kiowa tribe, and raised as one of their own. The girl, who has lost touch with the civilization, has to be now returned back to her original family, her German uncle and aunt, and the job to escort her, falls on Captain Kidd.

Together they travel four hundred miles down south to the hill country during which they make several escapades. Their journey to the destination and the bond they forge enroute is a feast to watch.

The movie is very well crafted and the visuals are splendid. The aerial shots of the vast Texas Prairies are breathtaking. The unruly terrain, the rolling hills and the hardships of the locals are beautifully captured. I especially loved the enigmatic aura in which the Kiowa tribe is presented in the movie. The lead pair did an incredible job, Tom Hanks and Helena Zengel excel in their roles and get into the skin of their characters.

The movie captures the political atmosphere of Texas in 1870s very accurately. Texas was part of the Confederates during the Civil War, so some of the views presented in the movie may not be to the popular liking. But the screenplay is crisp, the arguments are stated and noted. The political opinions are just presented, they are neither advocated nor ridiculed.

The movie does deviate from the book at many instances. To start with, in the book, Captain Kidd agrees to escort Johanna because he is given a good coveted 50 dollars to do the job, Whereas in the movie, he is shown to be a kindhearted man who is doing the job to answer to his own clear conscience. In the book, Captain Kidd does not read the local news as he believes that information could be obtained easily to the local public. Instead, he entices the audiences with the news from lands, far far away across the globe. In the movie, though there is a glimpse of “The Times of India”, Captain Kidd is seen reading primarily from the Texas newspapers and the federal newspapers. Most of the supporting cast is given little screen time, and they disappear into oblivion once the Captain and Johanna leave the place and continue their journey. Whereas in the book, we learn about the lives of each of these characters in great detail. The captain’s children are not even mentioned in the movie, the chronological events summing up the life of the captain in the movie seems to be different from the book.

Albeit the glaring differences, my observation is that this is one of the rare instances where it is difficult to choose between the movie and the book. I loved them both equally. The movie excels on its own, but if you want to dig deeper, go for the book. The history of Texas is intriguing and indeed worth your time.

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