The movie "News of the World" was recently shown in theaters and Netflix simultaneously, starring the most famous star Tom Hanks with the child Helena Zingel and directed by Paul Grainger, and it is adapted from the novel of the same name written by Paulette Gillies published in 2016, and like any other movie For Hanks the movie quickly became a hit.
The events of the movie take place in the United States after the Civil War, where we get to know Captain Kidd, a former warrior, who works as a newspaper reader who moves from one village to another to practice his work in the evenings for 10 cents per person, but his paths intersect by chance with a young girl who lived a tragic life, where Her parents were killed and kidnapped by the Native Americans to raise her as their daughter, then the family that adopted her was killed and wandered on her face in the woods, so Captain Kidd takes the responsibility of returning her to distant relatives, and together they embark on a journey full of dangers at a time when they lack even the ability to communicate to speak the little girl in the language of the indigenous tribes Just.
The film belongs to the American western films - or "Western" - which became very famous in the early twentieth century, and moved from silent cinema to speaking, and flourished until its star faded in the late sixties, with the beginning of the new era in Hollywood and the end of other cinematic genres and the emergence of others.
Recently, these films reappear now and then, as a kind of nostalgia for a past cinematic era, at the hands of new directors such as the Coen brothers and Quentin Tarantino, but despite this Tom Hanks in his cinematic history spanning more than 40 years has not presented any Western movie Absolutely the experience of "World News" was very fresh and interesting indeed.
Despite Hanks' cinematic stability, and his access to a large number of awards and honors, he still resorts to cinematic experimentation and the movement between different genres with the utmost technical fitness.
In this film, he introduces the character of Captain Kidd, the old man suffering from a psychological crisis as a result of the death of his wife while he was in the war, and who tries to get rid of the burden of the little girl whose fate stuck by accident, but this common fate is what enters him on a journey that allows him to reconcile with himself again .
In front of Hanks, she played the lead role of the child Helena Zingel in her first movie role, who did not possess the tools of representative expression except for her face and her body movements, where most of the scenes of the film appeared silent, but her eyes spoke and expressed her conflicting feelings between fear, anxiety, horror, the desire for love and safety that she found in The old man's confusion.
The Two Heroes' Journey
The "World News" scenario follows the scriptwriting method that relies on the "Hero's Journey" method, whereby the protagonist in this case has to take a trip to explore himself and the world and return with a magic elixir that takes a symbolic form, whether by winning a beloved or a contest, or defeating a mythical monster And in the case of this movie that we are talking about, finding psychological peace for Captain Kidd, and safety for the girl, Johanna.
But we are facing a slightly different hero's journey, a double journey that each of the two heroes goes through after they are united by one way, while Captain Kidd must go through the experience of merging into a relationship that makes him emotionally weak after losing his wife and closing his heart in front of feelings, the little girl must restore her confidence in the world that she lost after She was orphaned twice and experienced the death of both the real and the adopted parents.
But this journey was not complete with this distinctive picture that we saw except with excellent cinematography and music, so we find that the film used the common colors in old Western films, which tend to yellow and brown, which are appropriate colors with the cinematic genre that takes place most of its events in the American desert, but in "World News" Darker shades were used more than these colors, in order to match the sad theme of the film and the post-civil war period that left the United States fragmented as its people tried to gather their diaspora.
The same applies to the soundtrack, which helped clarify the emotional weight of the events taking place on the screen, and compensated for the dialogue that cannot take place naturally between two heroes who do not speak the same language.
The film used the characteristics of the cinematic genre and at the same time modified and modified them to be more appropriate, whether for the era in which the events are taking place or the cinema at the present time, but at the same time the work does not leave a negative impact on the scenes, but rather leaves it like most Hanks films feeling warm, comfortable and a little happy. Hope for tomorrow.