Steven Spielberg’s The Post is much like those movies. Relating the 1971 exposure of the Pentagon Papers by the Washington Post, it’s really a movie all about the modern political climate in America, particularly as it pertains to government corruption and the stifling of free speech. And with both the movie and the context it was made in still very recent and relevant, it’s impossible and irresponsible to divorce the film from its message. That means, this review is going to get political.
The film portrays the disillusioned Daniel Ellsberg (Matthew Rhys) leaking hundreds of classified reports to the New York Times and subsequently the Washington Post that would come to be known as the Pentagon Papers, a series of documents exposing decades’ worth of government deception about the Vietnam War. As pertains to the Post, there are two converging stories. One follows Katharine “Kay” Graham (Meryl Streep), the newspapers’ heavily manipulated owner and socialite, who’s conflicted over the scandalous matter due to her friendships with prominent political figures, including Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara (Bruce Greenwood). The other concerns the staff of the Post itself, headed by Editor-in-Chief Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks), their investigating and ultimately their determination to publish the papers despite the potential legal ramifications.
Without diminishing the necessity and significance of Kay’s story and character, the goings-on at the Post is by far the more interesting aspect of the movie. It’s much more relatable, much more dramatic, and even though few of the reporters are well-defined characters apart from Bradlee and Ben Bagdikian (Bob Odenkirk), they’re cast so well, they make for an engaging and charismatic team. Not only does most of the action take place from their vantage point, but they’re the ones doing the hard work to uncover and make sense of the classified information the story is built around. The story threads of Bradlee, Bagdikian, et al therefore give the plot a lot more momentum, and they’re just enough of an underdog team to earn your investment. My favourite scene in fact is when the whole group of them at Bradlee’s house pour over the hundreds of papers of documents to try and connect points, organize the information, and write the stories. It’s certainly meant to evoke an old school, pure kind of journalism and it works, with everyone committed yet exhausted as personalities and remarks bounce off each other. Conversely the pace slows and becomes less urgent in the sequences devoted to Kay, with hers being a more personal and professional struggle. On it’s own it works fine, but it leaves the film as a whole feeling slightly uneven.
The Post takes a lot of its cues from All the Presidents Men. Most modern investigative journalism movies do, but this movie really wants to draw those direct comparisons with its focus on the secrecy of the work, the heavy political and legal repercussions , and of course the very premise being set against the Nixon administration and at the Washington Post with some of the same figures playing key roles. In fact it wants to exist in the same universe as All the Presidents Men, as evidenced by its ending on a cliffhanger that leads directly into the events depicted in that film. Perhaps in doing this, Spielberg and writers Liz Hannah and Josh Singer are trying to equate the scandal they’re discussing (both the literal and metaphorical one) with Watergate in terms of its gravity. Or perhaps it’s just to remind audiences, some of whom may even be legislators, of what ultimately happened to Nixon, a figure portrayed throughout the film as a conniving, dictatorial loose canon trying to circumvent the U.S. constitution. Hmm…
It’s impossible to deny The Post is rather clearly a direct response to Donald Trump’s blatant disregard and disrespect of the press, and his administrations’ attempts to if not outright censor the press than to discredit it at every opportunity. The film intentionally illustrates the governments’ suppression of both the New York Times and the Washington Post in a context and terminology very familiar to American audiences in 2017. And even though the level of political corruption and unscrupulous behaviour in the administration as portrayed in the film is dwarfed by the current state of U.S. politics, the self-serving attitude of McNamara and the outrage of Nixon (who only appears at a looming distance and via telephone recordings) is easily comparable to numerous figures in Trump’s inner circle and the GOP –in fact it’s increasingly so now over a year after the film came out.
Even more than criticizing the Trump regime though, the film is very keen to assert the importance of honest professional journalism in American society. There is no question the Post did the right thing publishing the Pentagon Papers; the movie regularly stresses the right of the public to know they’d been engaged in a pointless war for years that the government deliberately hid from them. At one point Bradlee says “if we don’t hold them accountable who will?”, again tapping into a buzzword commonly associated with Trump these days. The press is presented as a bastion of truth with a duty to expose the deceits of the powerful, and the journalists of the Post have the utmost integrity to that purpose. Once again, this is Spielberg’s American idealism raising its head, and its included less out of being true to history as much as getting its message across. Spielberg couldn’t help but include that scene at the end of Meg Greenfield (Carrie Coon) relaying the Supreme Courts’ decision to the rest of the staff, complete with constitutional quote about the freedom of the press and holding governments’ responsible for their discretions (and of course on the ruling in their favour, there’s much over-the-top jubilation, embracing and even crying from the assembled heroes). These liberties are okay, if incredibly clichéd, because the story and drama underneath the patriotic grandstanding is mostly authentic. Except where the New York Times is concerned.
Apparently, much like the Canadian government in Argo, the role of the New York Times in unravelling this scandal is heavily downplayed. In the film, the Times is essentially depicted as the Posts’ rival, publishing the leaked reports first, but being stopped by a court injunction. We get a few scenes with Times editor A.M. Rosenthal (Michael Stuhlbarg), but it’s the Post that’s portrayed as the greater paper in the end; the one that bravely procured the documents, the staff of which sifted through for hours to organize, that defied court injunction to continue publishing, and inspired newspapers nation-wide to follow suit. And watching the film you can even see how the Times’ story would be a little more interesting, given they got to the Papers first and had to deal more closely with the legal battle ahead of the movies’ climax. However, it’s arguable the Times would have had as promising characters to place at the centre of its story.
Liz Hannah has stated that what particularly drew her to the movie was the story of Kay Graham, who is a pretty significant figure in the history of the American newspaper business. Having inherited the Washington Post from her father and her husband, she was the first woman owner of a major paper, and because of that was frequently underestimated by the men around her. And Meryl Streep is quite good at playing the insecurity and timidity that would come about through a life of constantly struggling to prove oneself. However what detracts perhaps from this story’s potency and learning of Kay’s life in greater detail without having to have it explained to us by Tony Bradlee (Sarah Paulson), is the equal prominence of Ben Bradlee. Again, the story that concerns him more directly is the more engaging one, but Bradlee himself is only interesting by virtue of being played by Tom Hanks. It’s the newsroom as a whole that makes it work, with Bradlee merely their fierce and principled leader, representing that ideal of the American journalist. Hanks does a good job of course, but his character, likeable though he may be, is relatively flat. The scene-stealer of the movie is Bob Odenkirk, playing Bagdikian with relatively the same kind of comically disgruntled personality he’s known for. He, more than just about anyone else at the Post, feels like a true working-man kind of reporter. Odenkirk’s old comedy partner David Cross is there too, who along with the likes of Carrie Coon and Tracy Letts, give solid performances as the various Post staffers. Once again Spielberg employs a large cast of talent, as in addition to good performances from the aforementioned Greenwood, Rhys, Stuhlbarg, and Paulson, Bradley Whitford plays the chair of the publishing board, and the chief figure with whom Kay butts heads, Jesse Plemons is good as the lawyer advising the team, and Alison Brie is okay as Kay’s daughter despite a strange accent she’s affecting.
As far as a cinematic retaliation against a despots’ attack on the free press goes, The Post is pretty good. It’s not as sharp as it could be and a little too self-congratulatory, but its transparency can be forgiven in lieu of the times we live in. As for the story about the Pentagon Papers beneath that allegory, it’s done serviceably. The stakes and drama come through aptly and Spielberg’s direction is solid and smart, if not particularly noteworthy. Yet what might have been a fascinating character study of a great woman isn’t allowed to come into its own because, by design of the plot, the Pentagon Papers have to take centre stage. And the resulting attempt to work it in feels both a tad intrusive and a glimpse of untapped potential.
The Post was in production at the same time as Spielberg’s next film; each wildly different movies, but both tackling distinctly modern and relevant subject matter to varying degrees of success. At long last it’s time to talk about the movie that prompted this series, Ready Player One.
Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jordan_D_Bosch
Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/jbosch/
Comments
Post a Comment