Emjay C

So many scenes were not in the book that it was obvious author Paulette Jiles was bypassed in the planning of the screen version. Her book was loosely based on a time period when Black muleskinners were concerned about how their hauling of white human cargo ( Johanna) was going to viewed by volatile Texans right after the end of the Civil War. Hence the transfer of Johanna to the “Keptain.” This movie was a rewrite of the actual story. As an example, the shotgun “dime-has” was a comedic event in the book , but the movie version was tepid and anticlimactic. Further, the movie treats one man’s encounter the Keptain and Johanna had as just one event in their travels and yet in the written text, the young man they encounter has a significant role in the ending of the book as well as in Johanna’s life. Repatriation of captured people was a difficult reality in both book and movie , but the screen version was no where near the version Jiles created. As a movie, the actual story was an entirely new version. The entire movie may have been intended to be “ heartwarming” as one reviewer described it but that would depend upon ignorance of the literary version. I hope Paulette Jiles reconsiders selling to creative screen adaptations any other books she has written because the adaptations are entirely new tales, not the real deals. If you read the book, skip the movie because even the venerable Tom Hanks can’t equal the reality of the written word.