Weâve seen a lot of iterations of Steven Spielberg, from Sci-Fi Spielberg (Minority Report, War of the Worlds) to Prestige Spielberg (Schindlerâs List, Lincoln) to Middlebrow Schmaltz Spielberg (The Terminal, War Horse). The Post reveals yet another Spielberg: Message Spielberg. Unlike say, Oliver Stone, weâve rarely seen Spielberg with a bee in his bonnet, delivering a film with a clear and transparent takeaway.
The Post is Spielbergâs clear and passionate ode to the adversarial press, and not only is it a refreshing departure from his past work, it also turns out to be a good fit for his slick storytelling style. Spielberg is, at his core, a populistâa guy who wants to make crowd-pleasers so badly that his name has become synonymous with them. That means he tends not to leave much to the imagination. You donât have to guess what heâs thinking, because he tells you. Without a lot of wasted motion in his storytelling, it becomes painfully obvious when he doesnât have much to say (War Horse again, sorry to harp on this).
With The Post, Spielbergâs skills are put to a purpose: Tom Hanks plays Ben Bradlee, the chain-smoking, gray-suited editor of the Washington Post. Hanks is the perfect choice for a character whoâs juuust enough of a salty old sumbitch to keep things from turning into mushy hagiography. In one of the first scenes, Bradlee tells Katharine âKayâ Grahamâthe owner of the newspaper, played by grand dame of cinema Meryl Streepâto âkeep your finger out of my eye.â
Ah yes, the smoky, Scotch-swilling good olâ days of the news biz, when you could still put a broad in her place, even if she was your boss. Itâs a good setting for a story that turns on Graham and her ability to rise to the challenge. Itâs 1971, and the drama of the day concerns the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret history of the United Statesâ disastrous involvement in Vietnam and the lies the government told the American people along the way. Daniel Ellsberg (The Americansâ Matthew Rhys, who has a great cloak-and-dagger face) has started leaking the report to the New York Times, which gets slapped with an injunction.
With the New York Times silenced, The Post follows the Washington Postâs journey to (1) acquire the Pentagon Papers and (2) decide whether to publish, risking lawsuits and jail time. While Ellsberg is the traditional hero of this story (in an interesting footnote, he avoided jail time largely only because Nixonâs moronic attempts at a cover-up backfired), The Post makes a case for Graham. âThink of what sheâs risking,â Bradleeâs wife (Sarah Paulson) tells him. âSheâs got her familyâs legacy to think about.â
Part of me wanted to go all Braveheart and pooh-pooh the idea of Graham risking more because sheâs rich (âAnd the common man who bleeds on the battlefield, does he risk less?â), but The Post works hard to sell us. Spielberg overdoes the âfeminist heroâ angle a littleâat one point, he shoots her ascending courthouse steps through a corridor of fawning female admirers, a bit of lily-gilding thatâs superfluous after a mother-daughter scene between Streep and Alison Brie that makes the same point better. But itâs forgivable for a male filmmaker trying to do right by this materialâand especially for Spielberg, whoâs always been defined by his inherent too-muchness.
The story has obvious contemporary parallels, with the press risking it all to check the presidentâs powerâand Spielberg, surprisingly, rises to the challenge. In a lot of ways, The Post is the movie Oliver Stone wanted Snowden to be.