The Post
In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors.
Director Steven Spielberg had the opportunity to tell a story and knew that now was the time, with history repeating itself almost hourly. He delivered a finished film in six months. There was what I'm sure was a certain guerrilla aspect to such filmmaking, at least compared to a usual Spielberg production (including the upcoming READY PLAYER ONE). This method seems appropriate, as during the story a group of Washington Post reporters find themselves with barely eight hours to sift through piles of documents that implicate several Presidential administrations in their assessment of the situation in Vietnam. Highly damning stuff that dates back to the Harry Truman days.
THE POST recalls those tense times in the early 1970s, when Post editor in chief Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) and publisher/owner Katharine Graham (Meryl Streep) had to decide whether to run headlines based on those documents, originally leaked to the New York Times but gutted by court injunctions. The timing was less than optimal. The Post was about to go public in the stock market to assure solvency. Everyone at the paper could've gone to jail if White House retaliation had proven that the source for the Times was the same as that for the endless piles of documents those reporters were rifling for a story. Houston, we have a problem.
Liz Hannah and Josh Singer's script does play like a thriller, in a similar vein to 1976's ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, which of course dealt with another Post controversy. And like the earlier film it is heavy with dialogue and concerned faces in offices and private homes hashing out options. There is some time given to Graham's personal life: her daughter and granddaughter, her friendship with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (Bruce Greenwood). Bradlee's daughter too, who makes a killing at her lemonade stand during the reporters' marathon paper shuffling. Most of the film is so, quiet (aside from a few manipulative bits of scoring cues by John Williams). I imagine some viewers will be bored, especially younger ones who don't give a flip about history.
Too bad for them. Spielberg has created an admirable, somewhat austere (or would "no frills" be a better description?), and even rousing movie that should matter to every American. Nothing less than the First Amendment was at stake. Bradlee even joined his Times rivals at the Supreme Court to plead the cause. Former Times vice president and general counsel James Goodale may be disgruntled over how THE POST allegedly glosses over his paper's involvement in this story (which he calls "a good movie but bad history"), but what remains is an important cinematic rendering of a critical time in journalistic history. Parts of the screenplay may somewhat heavy handedly drive home points that accentuate the follies of our current Administration, but they are actually quite salient. Perhaps moreso than ever.
P.S. - THE POST would make a perfect double feature with ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, and even concludes with a nice set-up for the earlier film.
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