Steven Spielberg’s The Post, an account of The Washington Post’s printing of the Pentagon Papers, was inevitably compared to Alan Pakula’s superb 1976 movie, All the President’s Men, about the Watergate scandal.
Written by Liz Hannah and Josh Singer, it stars Meryl Streep as Katharine Graham, the publisher of the Washington Post, and Tom Hanks as Ben Bradlee, the newspaper’s longtime executive editor.
The impressive ensemble includes Sarah Paulson, Bob Odenkirk, Tracy Letts, Bradley Whitford, David Cross, Bruce Greenwood, Carrie Coon, Alison Brie, and Matthew Rhys in supporting roles.
Set in 1971, The Post depicts the attempts by journalists at The Washington Post to publish the infamous Pentagon Papers, classified documents regarding the 20-year involvement of the U.S. government in the Vietnam War, and earlier in French Indochina, back to the 1940s.
Spielberg’s Motivation
“When I read the first draft of the script, this wasn’t something that could wait three years or two years—this was a story I felt we needed to tell today.”
Premiering in December 2017 to qualify for Oscar considerations, The Post went into wide release on January 12, 2018.
My Oscar Book:
It received only two nominations: Best Picture and Best Actress for Meryl Streep, who once again topped her own achievements by gaining her 21st nod.
Greeted with positive reviews, The Post benefited from the socio-political context in which it was seen. Rude right wing businessman Donald Trump was elected president one year earlier, in November 2016, which led to the irk of Hollywood’s prominent democrats, such as Spielberg and his two leading stars, Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks.
Spielberg infuses every scene with tension and authenticity. Assisted by his brilliant team, he draws on well-honed craft of lending some magic to the depiction of ordinary work, here a news agency. That said, by his own standards, The Post was a tad too dry and procedural to make the movie a grand experience in the way that Pakula’s picture was in 1976, a Bicentennial year.
