Lost and Found
Tom Hanks and Carey Mulligan are back on their bullshit, not that I'm complaining
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Here’s how you know News of the World isn’t set in the present: it’s about people reading the news to distract themselves from the stress of daily life. Tom Hanks plays a Civil War veteran who travels from town to town telling folks of the latest goings on — no push alerts, no clickbait, no 24/7 news cycle. If that sounds blissful, that’s because it is: Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd is a performer of sorts, not just reading the news but also calming down his audience when they react angrily to it (which, given how much of it concerns the war’s aftermath, is often). As much as anything else, Paul Greengrass’ adaptation of the novel by Paulette Jiles is an ode to storytelling — and a reminder that its importance hasn’t diminished since the 19th century.
Which makes it only fitting that the film has a storybook quality of its own. While making his way to the next town one day, Captain Kidd comes across a child who doesn’t speak a word of English — she’d been living with the Kiowa raiders who kidnapped her after killing her family years earlier and was being returned to distant relatives when her escort was killed along the way. You can guess what happens next: it falls on Kidd to finish the journey. He’s initially reluctant to shoulder this burden, as all such characters are, but he wouldn’t be played by Tom Hanks if he didn’t have a good heart. The girl, meanwhile, is played by newcomer Helena Zengel, a 12-year-old who more than holds her own alongside her seasoned co-star — she says little but expresses a great deal.
If you’re wondering what could possibly go wrong on their journey, the answer is, of course, everything. Even so, News of the World never feels contrived: Greengrass is a master of the vérité action sequence, as demonstrated most famously in his contributions to the Bourne franchise, and the shootouts and horse chases that inevitably ensue are more than gripping enough to distract you from how familiar these set-pieces are.
But the real draw is Hanks, as it usually is. We all feel like we know him on some level, and his presence isn’t just a comfort to the child now in his care — in addition to being more timely than it was probably intended to be, News of the World has the feel of a warm blanket on a cold winter night.
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The past only stays buried if you let it. In The Dig, it’s carefully excavated at the behest of a wealthy widow whose rural estate is home to several large burial mounds — at least that’s what the man hired to unearth them thinks they are. Carey Mulligan and Ralph Fiennes play the two leads, who played pivotal roles in the 1939 excavation of Sutton Hoo; Simon Stone’s historical drama is as concerned with correcting the record as News of the World is with creating one of its own.
When the contents of those mounds turn out to be of far more historical significance than anyone expected, the project is of course taken over by outside forces — namely the nearby Ipswich Museum, whose villainy apparently knows no bounds. Basil Brown (Fiennes), the one who’s actually been getting his hands dirty, finds himself on the verge of being a footnote in his own story. Adding urgency to the endeavor is the fact that it’s happening in the lead-up to World War II, meaning that every well-preserved cultural artifact is at risk of being destroyed and the ones still in the ground may be fated to remain there.
“We’re digging down to meet the dead,” Mrs. Pretty (Mulligan) says with a touch of excitement in her voice as she imagines who or what might be buried on her property — not only a widow but also in poor health, she isn’t one to look ahead to the future with a sense of hope, much less live in the moment. She’s utterly fixated on her own mortality, and when she tearfully says that “we die and we decay” the film’s true meaning comes into focus. Stone handles this thematic bedrock with all the care of an archaeologist brushing his latest find as it emerges from the dirt.
That careful approach befits the film’s subject matter, if not any real sense of narrative momentum — The Dig is mannered, well acted, and a little too modest for its own good. For all of Mrs. Pretty and Mr. Brown’s insights about history, they’re only dimly aware that they’re making it.
News of the World is now streaming; The Dig arrives on Netflix on January 22.