The Postman

پستچی

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Circulation and Infrastructure •
Warner Bros. • May 11, 2009 • (0) Comments •
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Critics panned this movie, and it bombed at the box office. It is, in fact, an hour too long, and pretty self-indulgent.

It has a brilliant premise, however. And if you're a planner, it can't help but make you sentimental. You may be ashamed to be moved by such a cheesy movie. Especially when you have to sit through long boring stretches of self-indulgence. But the highlights are worth it.

The setting is a post-apocalyptic America. Chaos has torn America apart into city-states with no communication between them. Feudal lords roam the land and extract tribute from these city states and hold them in terror. Strangers are shot on site.

One man, who has escaped conscription from one of these feudal lords, seeks shelter in a well-fortified town. Having spent the night in an abandoned mail truck (it had fallen off the road), he assumes the mail carriers coat and hat, and sack of mail, and seeks entry into the town by saying he's delivering mail. When one of the letters he reads about is addressed to a resident of the town, they open the gates for him.

He continues his impersonation of a mail carrier, spins a tall tale about how the United States is re-forming and "stuff's getting better." A teenager asks him how he can become a postman. He begs to become a postman. They are standing in an old post office with the inscription "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds" on the wall. So Kevin has the boy sworn in by repeating the inscription.

Up to this point, the movie is utterly charming. Tears came to my eyes with the swearing in ceremony.

Before you know it, the postal service has spontaneously regenerated itself, run by kids, and everyone is so happy to get their mail. It sets off a shift in perception about the unity of the country, and the possibilities. It's a really good lesson in the importance of communication networks for helping people form better communities and thrive.

But then, the movie degenerates into a show down between two strong guys, Kevin Costner singlehandedly battling the evil General dude. The focus is on two men's egos and not community rebuilding through the dedication of many people in service of simply delivering communications and supporting networking.

It would be great if they re-edited this film, cut out an hour of self-indulgence, and focused on the teenagers and the risks they take to restore the postal service.

The movie is also about faith. When Kevin first approaches the town, the sheriff holds him off at the gates with a shot gun. He threatens to kill him, but spares him after he finally reads off the name of someone in the town. Begrudgingly, he lets the townspeople open the gates. But he makes it clear to Kevin that he thinks he's a con man, thinks it's terrible that he's raised these peoples hopes only to dash them, and that he better be moving along by the next day. That night, everyone in town brings mail for the postman to deliver - to towns far and wide, to relatives that these folks haven't seen or spoken to in decades. The next day as they're seeing Kevin off, the sherriff escorts him away, and asks him one more time if what he says is true. And then he gives him a letter to deliver as well. A great struggle of faith. You can see that he doesn't believe for a second that Kevin is what he says he is. And he is, in fact, right. Kevin is lying. But he wants to believe, and his struggle with faith is very moving. And ultimately, when you believe, what you believe comes to pass.

A final factoid about the postal service oath that they use throughout the movie. It has Iranian origins. Wikipedia notes that:

The United States Postal Service has no official creed or motto. Often falsely cited as such, "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds" is an inscription on the James Farley Post Office in New York City, derived from a quote from Herodotus' Histories (8.98), referring to the ancient courier service of the Persian Empire:

It is said that as many days as there are in the whole journey, so many are the men and horses that stand along the road, each horse and man at the interval of a day’s journey; and these are stayed neither by snow nor rain nor heat nor darkness from accomplishing their appointed course with all speed. (trans. A.D. Godley 1924)

Find out more about the history of the US Postal Service.