News of the World

“That’s the power of love”, sang Huey Lewis, which is what came to mind when watching News of the World this weekend. Reviewers comment on the genre (e.g., is it a good cowboy movie?), politics, race etc., which may all be relevant, but the theme that resonated with me is the transformative power of love and purpose. 

Tom Hanks plays Captain Jefferson Kidd, a printer by trade, who gets drawn into the Civil War. He emerges traumatized by the violence and bloodshed but unwilling to return home and face the death of his wife to cholera whilst he was away, leaving him in a guilt-ridden existential crisis. Instead, with no great love to fulfill him and no significant purpose to drive him, he travels/drifts from town to town making a living reading the news from a variety of newspapers, part newsreader and part entertainer. He is alive, but not living.

It is clear that he would rather continue in this fugue when he reluctantly takes responsibility for Johanna, the 10-year-old daughter of an immigrant family, who is being returned to distant relatives after the death of the Native American people she was living with, who in turn had taken her captive after her parents were killed. As a double orphan, having suffered the murder of her original family as well as her Native American family (and even those who were transporting her back to her distant relatives), she is even more dislocated from life than Kidd is, albeit at a very different life stage. She is equally reluctant to trust him, a stranger, but does not really have a choice. Compounding this is the fact that she cannot speak English, inhibiting any form of real engagement or connection between them.

Kidd’s reluctance to get involved is further demonstrated when he leaves the girl with a couple to await the official “agent” who deals with such matters. However, as he comes to say goodbye the next morning, he finds Johanna violently hysterical, which requires him to step out of his existential crisis to decide whether he will just coldly leave her behind to face her fate, or continue to accept responsibility for her, which he again reluctantly does. Here we see the first glimmer of Captain Kidd taking a step back into life, the one that he has been trying to avoid.

Thus starts a journey of adventures and somewhat violent challenges that threaten their lives, and a bond is formed between them, finding ways to communicate through a few common words they can both connect to and mostly through symbols and using their imagination.  

By the time they finally reach Johanna’s distant relatives it is clear that the bond between them has called to something deeper within him, and he reluctantly leaves her with her ‘family’, even though they have made it clear that she is going to live a life of servitude, believing that it is the right thing to do. 

He finally returns home to face the loss of his wife, and bumps into a childhood friend who graciously reassures him that the death of his wife was not a curse because of all the violence and bloodshed that he had perpetrated in the Civil War, but that she, like many others, died in a cholera plague. 

After finding closure at his wife’s graveside, he comes to the realization that the only worthwhile purpose in his life has been to protect and care for Johanna, which unleashes him to return at great speed to Johanna’s relatives, where he finds her tied to a pole as she rebels against her relatives. In a poignant moment he says to her “You belong with me”. With a wordless approval from the relatives, Kidd and Johanna leave, and in the final scene you see Kidd in a town reading news of the world, with a smiling Johanna with him, supporting him with sound effects to reinforce his stories (suggests that she has learned to speak English).

Although this sounds like a “they lived happily ever after” ending, I am sure that Captain Kidd and Johanna Kidd (clearly he adopted her as his daughter) would still have to face many bumps in the road, but no doubt he was a man who was transformed by the redeeming power of love and with a purpose to live for. News of the World is not a perfect movie, but then again, neither is life. However, what it does perfectly is show how transformative love and purpose can be, and I highly recommend it. 

In closing, I love the comment by Paulette Giles, the author of News of the World, in an illuminating interview, when she says 

“I think in the contemporary world, we’re missing a really vital element, which is the world of the imagination”.  

May News of the World inspire your heart and your imagination. We increasingly find ourselves in a world of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, much like the world Captain Kidd faced, and only by accessing our deepest hearts can we tap into the humanity that unleashes us to truly live and to lead others in a loving and empowering way.

If you have watched News of the World, please feel free to share your thoughts and impressions.