Paul Greengrass and screenwriting partner Luke Davies may have adapted Paulette Jiles’ 2016 Western novel News of the World at least in partial consideration of how far the United States hasn’t come as a nation-around the time of the book’s publication, such cursed phrases as “fake news” and “alternative facts” were inducted into popular language by fascists and crooks attempting to pull a fast one on the American people. In short, the more things change, the more they stay the same. When broadcasts about the country’s well-being are scarce, folks tend to become desperate for even the most barebones reporting, though not so desperate that they accept those reports, delivered from an impartial source, as fact. Now imagine a hangdog Tom Hanks wandering from town to town in post-Civil War Texas, reading the paper to a paying audience hungry for word from the world beyond their town limits. Imagine “news” being a narrative: A story told as one might tell folk and fairy tales. Imagine living in an era when news was a precious commodity and people didn’t walk around with an information IV drip glued to their hands.
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