With the current state of world affairs, I was in the mood for something less complicated.  Where does one turn for such fare?  Naturally, the likely source is Disney.  The result was not what I anticipated.  On the surface, since the Mouse has bought companies like Hulu and Twentieth Century Fox, their options are not completely of the fairy tale variety.  I cannot say that was exactly what I was looking for, but I wanted something in the spirit of good triumphing over evil.  The Bible tells us that this will ultimately happen, but I longed to see a more immediate story with this kind of treatment.  What this led to was a bit of searching and deciding between a few different titles.  The one I finally chose was The Journey of Natty Gann (1985).  Its abstract on Disney+ simply talks about Natalie “Natty” Gann (Meredith Salenger) traveling across the country to find her father, Sol Gann (Ray Wise).  The brief description is accompanied by a still of her, and occasional traveling companions Harry (John Cusack) and Wolf (Jed).  The latter of those, by the way, is not a nickname.  He is a literal wolf that she befriends in the course of her wanderings.  This is one of many curiosities for a film that gave an unexpectedly solid description of the United States during the Great Depression.

Before we get to The Journey of Natty Gann, we must be more precise about the time and place pertaining to the Great Depression.  Natty resides in Chicago in 1935, a city like many others in the country at the time where workers are plenty but jobs are scarce.  Sol is basically like any other man seeking employment at that time, except that his fellow workers look to him to liaise with management to obtain information on positions.  Being proud of her father, she attends a meeting with him, but sneaks off to get into mischief with her friends.  The mischief turns violent when one of the boys accuses Sol of being a communist, goading Natty into a fight.  The following day, he returns to the employment office while she is left to roam the neighborhood with her friends.  I guess it is summer because I kept wondering why she was not in school, but that is a discussion for another time.  In his search for work, he is offered a lumberjack job in Washington state.  There is one problem, however: he must leave in a couple hours otherwise the position will go to someone else.  Initially, he is going to turn it down, thinking that there is no way he would leave Natty behind since he cannot find her, but the allure of steady money changes his mind.  Thus, he spends the next few hours trying to locate his tomboy daughter, but fails.  As a stopgap measure, he approaches Connie (Lainie Kazan), the manager of the boarding house in which Natty and Sol had been staying.  Sol asks Connie to look after Natty until he can send for his daughter. By the way, in case you are wondering, mom died years ago.  Connie agrees to do so, but she has little patience for the rambunctious Natty, and soon tries to lock the young teenager in her room.  It does not take her long to escape, and her new plan is to jump trains and make her way west.  On her first night in a boxcar, she meets Harry, who proves gruff but nicer than what she had been led to believe about other tramps.  However, their time together is short for they are soon chased off the train by the railroad police, also known as “bulls.”  Distracted by a nearby raucous, she enters a rundown warehouse where she witnesses a crowd betting on dog fights.  One of these is Wolf.  He is terrifying, but she helps him escape.  Later, when trying to get back into a box car, she again encounters Wolf and is scared away by his growling.  She chooses to flee this time, but leaves him a bit of meat she scavenged before departing.  She is able to get into another part of the train, but is ejected when there is a derailment while going through a wooded area.  Alone in the middle of nowhere, she is helped by Wolf, who provides her food and keeps her warm during a rainstorm.  From then on, they are companions, staying with one another through a series of other trying moments.  Meanwhile, Sol calls Connie to check on his daughter, and eventually learns that authorities had found her wallet at the site of the wreck.  Getting some time off work, he travels to Colorado where the derailment happened and is given the recovered effects.  To him, Natty is dead.  She is not, but she is in trouble when she falls in with a group of hobos that try to steal a bull of the bovine variety.  She is the only one caught.  Taken for an orphan, she is put into what can only be described as a prison for children, while Wolf is taken by the local blacksmith, Charlie Linfield (Bruce M. Fischer).  With some help from another inmate, she is able to escape and find Wolf.  Charlie turns out to be sympathetic to her, and gives her some food and money to see her on her way.  Unfortunately, the station agent from who she tries to be a ticket to Seattle tries to turn her in, and so it is once more on the lam.  It is at this point that she once more encounters Harry.  At first, he wants nothing to do with her, but soon their party becomes three on their way to Seattle.  Their bond turns into a bit of a romance by the time they reach their destination, with him wanting her to come with him to California after he gets work with the Works Progress Administration (WPA).  Though tempted, she remains committed to finding Sol, and they part ways with a kiss.  Eventually, she gets to the lumber camp where Sol has been laboring.  Wolf hears the call of the wild, running off into the woods with Natty’s blessing.  Shortly thereafter, there is the long-awaited reunion, and the film ends.

The long-awaited reunion is the point of The Journey of Natty Gann, but I do not wish to suggest it is a drawn-out process.  The film received generally positive reviews from critics, whose main complaint was that the plot tends to drag.  For a historian, it is a satisfying watch, with it getting right many of the details of the era.  Having said that, it is also not the easiest movie to view, and that has nothing to do with its sentimentality, which was the other critique I found.  Such a negative sentiment is puzzling given the desperateness of the era, which is on full display.  The struggles of the people at this time spoke to me, and perhaps more so with the recent passing of Pope Francis.  Though I did not always agree with him, his commitment to lead the Church in walking with the poor and oppressed touched my heart.  Throughout history, God has sent a wide variety of helpers to those in need.  There is the obvious example, Jesus, who came to ransom sinners and open the gates of Heaven to us.  On a more micro level, watching the movie reminded me of St. John Bosco, a nineteenth century Italian saint.  Because of his ministry as a priest to the young, he is the patron saint of schoolchildren.  What made me think of him is Wolf.  One of the stories about St. John Bosco involves a large gray wolfhound that would protect him from assassination attempts, this being the result of his growing popularity.  Named Grigio, it accompanied him whenever he needed, mainly while he walked alone at night.  It has been speculated that it was his guardian angel in canine form.  Whatever the case, it was God providing what he needed.  One can see Wolf in the same light.  He brings Natty food, protects her from her attackers, and provides comfort.  God may not do the same exact thing for you, but I promise that He wants to give you what you need to get through any situation.

You do not need much to get through The Journey of Natty Gann, unless you are impatient with historically based films.  I have to confess that I was hesitant to see it because of Wolf.  One of The Legionnaire’s contributors, Diane Blenke, loves dogs more than any person I know, and she actively avoids such movies.  You are safe with this one, and it gets my recommendation.