SummarySteven Spielberg directs Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks in The Post, a thrilling drama about the unlikely partnership between The Washington Post's Katharine Graham (Streep), the first female publisher of a major American newspaper, and editor Ben Bradlee (Hanks), as they race to catch up with The New York Times to expose a massive cover-up ...
SummarySteven Spielberg directs Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks in The Post, a thrilling drama about the unlikely partnership between The Washington Post's Katharine Graham (Streep), the first female publisher of a major American newspaper, and editor Ben Bradlee (Hanks), as they race to catch up with The New York Times to expose a massive cover-up ...
The film is both a gripping and timely celebration of the free press, and, in the remarkable hands of Streep, an exploration of what it meant then (and, perhaps, now) to be a woman thrust into power in an all-male world.
There’s not a wasted moment as The Post packs what could be an overwhelming amount of information into a story that ultimately reveals itself as a Capra-esque morality play with deep roots in recent history and a style that sometimes calls back to the paranoid thrillers of the 1970s.
Democracy Dies In Darkness
I have always been a **** for a good newspaper film, and 'The Post' is one of the best.
Living in the D. C. area since 1987, The Post has been a fixture in my life.
Being a moderate Republican married for 25 years into a family whose business is being elected every two years to the U. S. Congresss, I was privelaged to have a front row seat and sometimes a back stage pass to talk with Congressional leaders and 4 U. S. Presidents.
In addition, I sat in on occasional press conferences, interviews, and off the record discussions.
In my own business, I have been interviewed multiple times by the WP as a SME on business matters.
I haven't always agreed with the Post's political editorial opinions, and I can attest first hand that reporters attempt to get the story right, but don't always quote verbatim when the subject matter is not of national security or similar level of importance.
Newspapers still operate on a journalistic level in fact checking and verification - there are rare exceptions and those are likely discovered at some point, so imo the esssence of newspaper journalism as it's taught in school is still alive and kicking...Television and tabloid journalism on the other hand has for the most part, become an entertainment industry and is devoid of such checks and balances as two source verifications, etc. It has become an opinion editorial broadcast to a great degree. It's what brings in the advertising dollars - big bucks.
PBS News Hour's Judy Woodruff and the late/great Jim Lehrer are perhaps the last TV journalist/news anchors to avoid coloring and opining their broadcasts, leaving the op ed element to panel opinion discussions where it belongs.
That all being said, The Post is a throw back to the days when journalists were still driven by standards and ethics. What they taught in journalism school was to a great degree being manifested in the newspaper rooms.
Katherine Graham inherited the paper and with Ben Bradley (the "pirate") running the operation, has a decision to make on running a story on the Rand Corporation/Pentagon 20-year ongoing research program of the viability of involvement in SE Asia, and U. S. chances of winning the Vietnam War.
Top secret documents are involved and the right for newspapers to report on such leaked documents, showing that every President from Truman to Nixon knew that it would be, and was a war we could never win.
Spielberg does a very good job of bringing the drama of this and the decision Graham must make to publish even at the risk of putting the then barely solvent paper out of business and those involved into jail.
Her place as a woman who inherited this three generation family business that operates in the men's club of newspaper journalism is obviously the back story and Streep plays it totally low key and true to Graham's sense of the moment and transformation evolving by necessity from her insider Washingtonian socialite origins, to the power inherent in being Owner of a publishing center-of-influence that requires "making the tough decisions" (and despite those decisions sometimes being in disagreement with the paper's long-time male executive team and trusted advisors).
As always a great performance by Streep, as was Hanks' and the entire cast - Spielberg's ability to communicate what he envisions and needs from the actor in each scene, backed by his intuitive directing style, brings out actors' best instincts - it always has.
Spielberg holds nothing back in tapping into his deep refined set of film making skills, tapping his influences Hitchcock and Bergman in camera work and scene structure. It is a true work of art we are witnessing in 'The Post'. Like Streep is to acting, Spielberg is held to a higher standard than today's mere mortal film makers. This means Stephen and Streep are unlikely to take home hardware, but this film could easily win best "everything" if it were not for their stature (success-penalty alert).
Was it good enough for the elite actors and director to win Oscars in a great year for film? Maybe, but I'm guessing Chastain or Robbie for Lead Actress, Oldman for Lead Actor, Plummer for Supporting Actor and Janney for Supporting actress take the hardware home. Streep put forth the best performance of the year though, regardless of who actually takes home the hardware. She is simply the best actor alive and this was a great performance.
This movie was a thriller film that was directed by Steven Spielberg and it is my favorite movie. It keeps you guessing and it is a drama about freedom from the press the performance by Streep and Hanks are outstanding and brillant
As a movie, The Post is engrossing and enjoyable, if falling slightly short of “All the President’s Men” and “Spotlight.” As a period piece, it couldn’t feel more eerily of the moment.
Spielberg is in complete control of the material and even manages to tamp down his customary treacle until the movie’s almost over. It’s a fine, enjoyable ride, even if the ultimate destination is never the slightest bit in doubt.
If Hollywood is going to make “now more than ever” movies, this is the way to do it: with a marvelous cast, pitch-perfect design, and a story that feels like the work of latter-day Frank Capra. The Post is an act of goodwill and faith in American institutions, but it’s also aware of how fragile those institutions are, how dependent on their participants they are for their survival, and how much is at stake when press freedom is threatened.
There’s more than enough to like here, including a great ensemble, the best performance from a living legend in years, and, again, a message that feels depressingly timely.
The more you interrogate the premises underlying The Post’s themes, the more they disintegrate. The daunting fact is that only mass movements truly change society for the better. But that’s a messy process with a lot of depressing history built in, and not ideal for narratives catering to prim liberal sensibilities.
While I feel that its attemps at being more inpsirational and emotional than other journalistic dramas mostly fall flat, when it does focus on the journalism, it's pretty riveting stuff.
It's impossible not to compare this to All the President's Men, especially since its ending makes this somewhat of a prequel to that movie.
All the President's Men is better because it focused solely on the journalism, while this movie tries to tackle subjects like feminism, censorship, family legacies and more. It tackles some better than others and while they add some nice layers to the story, I kept wishing to know more a bout the papers and the sources and all that stuff. I also wish it focused more on the court cases.
Overall, I liked this movie and I cheered on more than one ocation, but I think its main problem may be that it's just too short. Had this been a slower, three hour long movie it may have been able to put more focus on all the details and kept it from feeling as rushed, but nonetheless, this was quite good.
How can a film based on such incredible events feel this generic? While the film most certainly has its stand-out moments, Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks sadly are unable to bring to life the characters they are portraying. The score especially feels generic and out of place. The direction is a net win, with beautiful shots within the film. I can't help but feel that if you want to see a film about the press uncovering the terrible secrets we try to keep under the rug, you should go and watch Spotlight instead.
Movie started of slow and sloppy. Actor roles were cliché and at times overacted by majorly Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks. Artistic style of the movie was at times authentic 1960s feel to it, but at times it was Full HD crisp, which threw you a bit off the vibe of the time period that it was designated. All the more the topic of the movie is a very relevant one. Both the prominent newspapers mentioned in the movie (New York Times and Washington Post) are depicted to have high sense of morality and wanted to do good for the public. It is all the more sad to say these 2 prominent newpapers of today are full of fake news and its topic politically charged leaning towards a specific political spectrum in geopolitical reporting. In todays setting american newspapers aren't lacking press freedom, they abuse press freedom to the point of manipulating the masses and accommodating aggressive foreign politics of their government. In current times these newspapers should look carefully at their policies if they are really unbiased and subjective in their news reporting, and should remember to do their predecessors justice in keep reporting righteously and should refrain from bias.
Off the bat, this movie makes the puzzling decision to tell the story of the Post deciding to publish someone else's reporting, rather than telling the (one imagines) more fascinating and compelling story of the Times' hard and dangerous work of obtaining the Pentagon Papers in the first place. Then, in telling the story it chose, this film has nothing to say about it. It seems to want to make a point about sexism, but confines all sexism safely to the boardroom and does not interrogate AT ALL the real experiences of female employees of the Post during that era. Sarah Paulson is wasted as the supportive wife who makes sandwiches for her husband's work friends, and Carrie Coon is similarly squandered as seemingly the only female reporter at the Times, who has nothing to do story-wise, but whose easy presence seems designed to reassure the audience that sexism didn't (and doesn't) REALLY exist at the Post, despite the earlier boardroom scenes. The film seems to want to be a biopic of Kathryn Graham, but it only covers one thing that happened in her life, and even then it barely scratches the surface. She could be wholly excised from the movie and it would hardly make a difference, so little of it is about her. And while I can see the occasional black secretary answering phones in the background, would it have killed this film to give a non-white person something meaningful to do? The monochromatic speaking cast would be galling in a film that's NOT ostensibly about an underdog hero overcoming prejudice in the workplace.
Most review-trolls are calling this film "liberal propaganda," but I found its point of view so conservative as to be insulting. Nothing about this film is interesting or challenging, and everything it strives for, it seems afraid to actually achieve. I wasn't just bored or disappointed by this film, I was actually angered by how cowardly it was. Spielberg assembles an all-star cast, only to timidly put them to work serving up tepid mashed potatoes.
Production Company
Twentieth Century Fox,
Dreamworks Pictures,
Reliance Entertainment,
TSG Entertainment,
Participant,
Amblin Entertainment,
Pascal Pictures,
Star Thrower Entertainment