Spielberg's Political Turn
Steven Spielberg was never much of a radical. While Francis Ford Coppola made Apocalypse Now and George Lucas attacked the Vietnam war with Star Wars, the nervy new Hollywood hotshot was more interested in moviemaking's toys than its politics. In Peter Biskind's bestselling book of Tinseltown gossip, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, the actor Kit Carson remembers running into Spielberg at a party when the tumult of an eventful 1968 presidential campaign was at fever pitch. 'Everybody was up,' Carson remembered. 'The revolution was about to happen.' All the young director wanted to talk about was how to get a shot while throwing a camera off a roof.
A Fast-Paced Production
In the end, it took him 40 years to produce his own broadside against the US foreign policy of his youth. In uncharacteristically political style, he spent most of it drawing parallels to the then current resident of the White House. The Post is cosy competency porn in front of the camera and behind it. Spielberg read Liz Hannah's spec script in February 2017 after another project collapsed. By December, it was in cinemas, and while its subject is nominally the Washington Post's handling of the Pentagon Papers, its substance is one of the last full-throated hurrahs for journalists and journalism on the big screen. A boring choice for a journalist's feelgood movie? Maybe: it's like a dog explaining the merits of a pat on the head.
More Than a Journalism Drama
But though it's often compared to the investigative journalist's favourite, All the President's Men (not unfairly, considering its final scene leads, MCU-like, into the events of Alan J Pakula's 1976 classic), The Post is actually a very different beast from most of its genre stablemates. Its story isn't a slow burn in pursuit of truth and justice, instead scorching shoe leather at speed as an intern sprints across Manhattan to deliver the latest scoop to the New York Times. Spielberg himself described it as 'a chase film with journalists'; it certainly flows like one.
This is breaking news told at a breakneck pace – good people making difficult decisions while everyone screams at them to hurry the hell up. It's journalism as both public service and adrenaline hit, made more urgent by John Williams's brilliantly propulsive score; like everything in the film, it was composed at speed. The pace of production was so fast that Spielberg entered recording sessions for the score 'having not heard a note' in advance.
Meryl Streep's Standout Performance
Then, an island of calm among the rapids. Meryl Streep is effortlessly assured as a very un-assured Katharine Graham. It's a movie star performance in a role that turns the character's insecurity into her greatest weapon: her triumphant put-down of Bradley Whitford's boardroom goon ('I'm talking to Mr Bradlee now') is an endorphin shot straight to the brain. For all its lofty veneration of the first amendment, Spielberg doesn't forget to stuff The Post with moments like this; he's making a movie, dammit, and he'll be damned if it doesn't feel like one.
The old Hollywood feel stretches to the rest of the cast, too, made up less of movie stars (Tom Hanks aside) and more an impeccably chosen gang of character actors. Under-the-radar choices like Jesse Plemons and Matthew Rhys have been vindicated a hundred times over in the years since. It even has a shadowy villain, the sinister silhouette of Richard Nixon voiced using archive tapes of the man himself.
Historical Liberties and Impact
Like any good fictionalisation, though, the story (ironically) takes a few liberties with the truth. New York Times staffers were 'furious' at the minimisation of their paper's role in one of its biggest-ever scoops. 'I've been so pissed off,' said one; '[a] stupid project,' harrumphed another. But The Post's selective attitude toward the truth matters less than it should. Written more as a character study of Graham than a history of the Pentagon Papers, producer Amy Pascal originally picked up the story of a woman's leadership against the odds in 2016 to coincide with Hillary Clinton's looming election victory. The result, religiously factual or no, captured a national mood – just a different one than intended.
The film's optimistic take on the journalism industry seemed to die shortly after its release. Five years later, Deadline would declare 'Journalists aren't as interesting as they think they are' when dissecting #MeToo investigation She Said's box office woes. Spielberg may have been right to say this story had to be told as quickly as possible; would audiences today so easily believe journalists are the good guys?
A Nostalgic Tribute
So I'm left feeling nostalgic for, of all years, 2017: when films were movie-shaped and grown-up, when Steven Spielberg could get a $50m drama greenlit on a whim, and when 'truth' and 'the American way' could appear together outside of a punchline. A collection of world-class talents working at astonishing speed to tell a story in which time is of the essence. Could there be a better tribute to the journalistic ideal than that? The Post is available to rent digitally in the US.
