The Journey of Natty Gann
Reviewed by Gordon Kearns
As with other stories about kids on the move, Natty is accompanied by an animal; kids and animals go well together. Gives the kids something to cuddle and cry over; cute animals encourage cuteness in the kids who love them. But Natty's animal companion, while a beautiful specimen, is anything but cute. He's a wolf, a mean-spirited killer wolf. This is one of the many aspects of this story that take it out of the ordinary and into deeper realms. Wolf is not so much a lovable buddy as a mythic guardian god watching over the girl as she makes her odyssey westward. When she reaches her goal, Wolf disappears into the forest, his job done. And Natty is certainly not to be considered as just another cute little girl. She's a fourteen year old, tough as nails street kid. And her westward trek is every bit a mythic odyssey. It plays out as if she's descending into the depths of Hades (the dark isolation cell in the basement of the juvenile detention building); and then gradually making her way back out, along the way meeting, among others, a protective powerful Thor at his anvil, Taurus the bull, and Main-Streeters charging like Valkyries into the tar-paper town, burning and beating as they go.
The story opens in 1935 depression era Chicago. Men loiter about employment offices and grouse about wages and hiring practices. Natty's father is a central agitator in the group. One day he gets the offer of a good steady job in a WPA logging camp in Washington State; however, he has only a few hours before his bus leaves, and he can't find his beloved daughter to tell her he's leaving. He gives her care over to their landlady, who has no interest in bothering about Natty. When she calls authorities to report Natty as an abandoned child, Natty takes off ... and heads west for Washington. Her mode of travel is riding the rails with the mass of other homeless drifters and hoboes ... or treading the roads in between trains. She bounces from town to town, like islands in the Aegean, early on teaming up with Wolf, a runaway fugitive from the inhumane animal fights that took place on the edges of civilization in those days. At one point she ill-advisedly joins a gang of teenage drifters who exist by pilfering from their better-off neighbors. As a result of her participation in one of their forays, she ends up sentenced to the juvenile institution. She escapes, becoming herself a runaway fugitive from justice. The last leg of her venture finds her joining with a young (20+) drifter, Harry. While such words are never spoken between them, love is what happens in that period of close relationship. In the end, they must split, he heading down to California and the promise of a steady job, and Natty into the mountains to find the logging camp she hopes her father is at.
This is a gritty, no pulled punches story of a kid making her way in a mostly unfriendly world. Disney is to be congratulated for sponsoring this anything but typical young woman's odyssey. Jeanne Rosenberg has given us a moving story of a child who asks no quarter. In the end, her achieving her goal isn't as important as that she held to her quest, and managed to survive in the process. It was a hard climb up from the depths of Hades. Jeremy Paul Kagan's direction was tight and true to the characters and story he presented. He brought great dignity to the character of Natty without resorting to fawning. Meredith Salenger was outstanding as Natty, one of the best performances by a youthful actor I've ever seen. John Cusack brought understated grace and intelligence to his reading of the role of Harry. The love between Natty and Harry, as brought to us by Meredith and John, was simple and poignant ... and never cloying.
A great movie.
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Comments: GKEARNS@prodigy.net