☆☆☆☆☆
Maybe I'm just a sucker for this story. I mean, I still get the newspaper delivered at home, and one or the other of us still trudges out to the driveway in all kinds of weather to pick it up, unfold it and, it's true these days I fear, not read it. There's no denying newspapers lack vitality and relevance, but there was a time ... oh, there was a time.
And what Steven Spielberg's intensely satisfying movie The Post reminds us of most urgently is that there is no more important time than now. The thrum and pulse of the printing press may not be as vibrant, there is no hot lead, there are no ashtrays lining endless desks of newsrooms with ink-stained thumbs clack-clack-clacking on typewriter keys. No, those days are over, and The Post treats them almost as legend, as days about which we can do little more than marvel because they will never return.
But the spirit of those days ... ah. That spirit is what lives on most mightily, and is what we need to protect. The ability of people who do think, argue, talk, inquire and write is treated here as mythical and heroic, and who can argue that these people, whose feats are not physical and whose names are not household words, do things that move the world?
That's what Ben Bradlee, Katharine Graham and Ben Bagdikian did. Bagdikian -- there's a name most people have forgotten, if they ever knew, and yet he as much as Woodward and Bernstein brought down an entire government. "Never forget," Bagdikian said later, "that your obligation is to the people. It is not, at heart, to those who pay you, or to your editor, or to your sources, or to your friends, or to the advancement of your career. It is to the public."
Those words, more than any others, inform the yearning, beating heart of The Post, a movie that wrings suspense and excitement out of a story whose ending everyone in the audience knows, a story about people who don't do a whole lot more than discuss finer points of journalistic ethics. So, how is it that The Post is so damned ... rousing?
Credit goes, of course, to Spielberg, who for a number of years now has been hit and miss, but who found his stylistic way back with Bridge of Spies and now seems to have resumed top-of-his-game status with The Post.
But huge credit goes to the screenplay by Liz Hannah and Josh Singer, and I think, too, to the seemingly rash decision to make The Post. The movie was just announced in March, and here it is on the screen in December, all the better for the kind of let's-just-do-this-thing mentality that pervades the movie.
And, of course, there are those huge names that dominate the poster: Streep and Hanks. There is no way to overstate what these actors bring to the roles -- how is it they can be so visibly Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep and yet allow us to so fully buy into their characters?
In The Post, Streep plays Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham with an unexpected timidity; it's natural to expect a replay of, say, Streep-as-Margaret Thatcher or maybe a toned-down Miranda Priestly from The Devil Wears Prada, so its something of a shock to see the indomitable Katharine Graham come across as someone who's easily intimidated, not sure of her own role or its importance, aware only that she is frequently the only woman in the room, and when she's not the women are expected to go into another room to talk among themselves.
Then there's Hanks, who has the unenviable task of trying to make us forget that Ben Bradlee was played to perfection by Jason Robards Jr. in All the President's Men, which he might not do completely but maybe that's because no one, not even Tom Hanks, could erase the memory of Robards. Here, Hanks finally manages to transcend his persistent on-screen affability; his Bradlee is not particularly well-mannered nor does he care to be -- he is tough where Katharine Graham is perceived as weak, and the way the characters (and actors) play off of each other is remarkable.
The whole cast is stellar, with Odenkirk taking a bit of an underwritten role as Bagdikian and turning it into a memorable portrait of persistence, while other actors like Sarah Paulson as Bradlee's wife, Jesse Plemmons as the Post's attorney, and Tracy Letts as one of Graham's key advisers prove that there are no small parts -- even ones that feel like something of an afterthought are given some vibrancy here.
The story, of course, turns around the Post's decision in 1971 to publish a series of articles about the "Pentagon Papers" report ordered by Robert McNamara (played eerily by Bruce Greenwood) and leaked by Daniel Ellsberg (Matthew Rhys). The Post wasn't the first newspaper to publish the Papers, but its role turned out to be pivotal -- picking up the story after Richard Nixon attempted to prevent The New York Times from finishing what it had started.
While there's a lot of attention given to just how both newspapers came to get the Pentagon Papers and how they put the story together (co-screenwriter Josh Singer not surprisingly wrote Spotlight), what makes The Post stand so tall is that it realizes the story is only partly about the paper and even only partly about the ultra-timely and mesmerizingly relevant idea of a news organization's responsibility to investigate and reveal the truth behind the government's actions and motives.
The Post works so effectively because it's about the individual courage of both Bradlee and, mostly, Graham to take the stand. And in that, it hits the same sort of underdog note as, say, Rocky -- it's about people who don't know if they can do what they need to do, and aren't even sure that they should, but feel a burning urgency to do it anyway.
Part historical drama, part political commentary (keep in mind, the script was written while Obama was still in office and Clinton was largely presumed the next president), and a large part personal drama, The Post is fantastic entertainment. It's a return to form for Spielberg, a reminder of why he remains one of the most potent and accomplished of filmmakers, blending his visual style with narrative thrust in ways most filmmakers can only hope to emulate.
And it has a hell of an ending, to boot. Go see it and you'll know what I mean. Those last 45 seconds are sly, sleek, provocative, funny, disarming -- just like everything in The Post. Like I said, I'm a sucker for newspaper movies, but The Post goes way beyond that; subject-matter aside, it's one of the best movies of the year.
Viewed Dec. 5, 2017 -- DGA Theater
1900
And what Steven Spielberg's intensely satisfying movie The Post reminds us of most urgently is that there is no more important time than now. The thrum and pulse of the printing press may not be as vibrant, there is no hot lead, there are no ashtrays lining endless desks of newsrooms with ink-stained thumbs clack-clack-clacking on typewriter keys. No, those days are over, and The Post treats them almost as legend, as days about which we can do little more than marvel because they will never return.
But the spirit of those days ... ah. That spirit is what lives on most mightily, and is what we need to protect. The ability of people who do think, argue, talk, inquire and write is treated here as mythical and heroic, and who can argue that these people, whose feats are not physical and whose names are not household words, do things that move the world?
That's what Ben Bradlee, Katharine Graham and Ben Bagdikian did. Bagdikian -- there's a name most people have forgotten, if they ever knew, and yet he as much as Woodward and Bernstein brought down an entire government. "Never forget," Bagdikian said later, "that your obligation is to the people. It is not, at heart, to those who pay you, or to your editor, or to your sources, or to your friends, or to the advancement of your career. It is to the public."
Those words, more than any others, inform the yearning, beating heart of The Post, a movie that wrings suspense and excitement out of a story whose ending everyone in the audience knows, a story about people who don't do a whole lot more than discuss finer points of journalistic ethics. So, how is it that The Post is so damned ... rousing?
Credit goes, of course, to Spielberg, who for a number of years now has been hit and miss, but who found his stylistic way back with Bridge of Spies and now seems to have resumed top-of-his-game status with The Post.
But huge credit goes to the screenplay by Liz Hannah and Josh Singer, and I think, too, to the seemingly rash decision to make The Post. The movie was just announced in March, and here it is on the screen in December, all the better for the kind of let's-just-do-this-thing mentality that pervades the movie.
And, of course, there are those huge names that dominate the poster: Streep and Hanks. There is no way to overstate what these actors bring to the roles -- how is it they can be so visibly Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep and yet allow us to so fully buy into their characters?
In The Post, Streep plays Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham with an unexpected timidity; it's natural to expect a replay of, say, Streep-as-Margaret Thatcher or maybe a toned-down Miranda Priestly from The Devil Wears Prada, so its something of a shock to see the indomitable Katharine Graham come across as someone who's easily intimidated, not sure of her own role or its importance, aware only that she is frequently the only woman in the room, and when she's not the women are expected to go into another room to talk among themselves.
Then there's Hanks, who has the unenviable task of trying to make us forget that Ben Bradlee was played to perfection by Jason Robards Jr. in All the President's Men, which he might not do completely but maybe that's because no one, not even Tom Hanks, could erase the memory of Robards. Here, Hanks finally manages to transcend his persistent on-screen affability; his Bradlee is not particularly well-mannered nor does he care to be -- he is tough where Katharine Graham is perceived as weak, and the way the characters (and actors) play off of each other is remarkable.
The whole cast is stellar, with Odenkirk taking a bit of an underwritten role as Bagdikian and turning it into a memorable portrait of persistence, while other actors like Sarah Paulson as Bradlee's wife, Jesse Plemmons as the Post's attorney, and Tracy Letts as one of Graham's key advisers prove that there are no small parts -- even ones that feel like something of an afterthought are given some vibrancy here.
The story, of course, turns around the Post's decision in 1971 to publish a series of articles about the "Pentagon Papers" report ordered by Robert McNamara (played eerily by Bruce Greenwood) and leaked by Daniel Ellsberg (Matthew Rhys). The Post wasn't the first newspaper to publish the Papers, but its role turned out to be pivotal -- picking up the story after Richard Nixon attempted to prevent The New York Times from finishing what it had started.
While there's a lot of attention given to just how both newspapers came to get the Pentagon Papers and how they put the story together (co-screenwriter Josh Singer not surprisingly wrote Spotlight), what makes The Post stand so tall is that it realizes the story is only partly about the paper and even only partly about the ultra-timely and mesmerizingly relevant idea of a news organization's responsibility to investigate and reveal the truth behind the government's actions and motives.
The Post works so effectively because it's about the individual courage of both Bradlee and, mostly, Graham to take the stand. And in that, it hits the same sort of underdog note as, say, Rocky -- it's about people who don't know if they can do what they need to do, and aren't even sure that they should, but feel a burning urgency to do it anyway.
Part historical drama, part political commentary (keep in mind, the script was written while Obama was still in office and Clinton was largely presumed the next president), and a large part personal drama, The Post is fantastic entertainment. It's a return to form for Spielberg, a reminder of why he remains one of the most potent and accomplished of filmmakers, blending his visual style with narrative thrust in ways most filmmakers can only hope to emulate.
And it has a hell of an ending, to boot. Go see it and you'll know what I mean. Those last 45 seconds are sly, sleek, provocative, funny, disarming -- just like everything in The Post. Like I said, I'm a sucker for newspaper movies, but The Post goes way beyond that; subject-matter aside, it's one of the best movies of the year.
Viewed Dec. 5, 2017 -- DGA Theater
1900
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