If Spotlight winning Best Picture brought back The Newspaper Movie, it did so in more of a nostalgic way. We watch newspaper films in the same way that we watch a Jane Austen adaptation. They’re more for posterity than anything else. There is still very good journalism being printed, and the Fourth Estate is about as powerful now as it has ever been, but actual good journalism as it has been portrayed in Spotlight and All The President’s Men is no longer existent. The Post is about Katherine Graham and the Washington Post, a short time before the Watergate stories that made the newspaper legendary. The film chronicles the paper’s tooth-and-nail fight against the Nixon administration to publish top secret government information that proved multi-decade malfeasance. Sound familiar?

Director Steven Spielberg doesn’t shy away from the connections in his film and the current maelstrom occurring between President Trump and the media. In The Post, Graham’s battle with Nixon seems almost quaint by comparison. It’s true that Spielberg has a sort of idealism that can come across as naïve, but The Post is boosted by a remarkable script by Josh Singer (who won the Oscar for Spotlight) and Liz Hannah. Singer and Hannah make The Post a movie about the newspaper business more so than about journalism. Reporting is not the main action that the movie is focusing on. Instead, it’s a more macro view of how journalism functions as a business, and tells the story of how Katherine Graham risked a lot to make sure The Washington Post was always viewed as an honest, unbiased publication.

Graham is played by no other than Meryl Streep, our country’s most respected actor and a performer whose very presence brings a rather hefty sense of importance. This is, to my knowledge, the first time Streep and Spielberg have ever worked together. These two industry giants have a lot of similarities in their careers. Both probably get too much credits for their successes and too much criticism from their litany of attackers. Both are very much mainstream talents, but both are also consummate professionals whose commitment to preparation and execution are nearly unmatched in their field. Few people work harder while also getting consistently successful results. As a tandem, you get pretty much what you expect: a level of excellence produced to entertain the broadest possible audience. The Post is proof that that approach isn’t always a negligible thing.

Tom Hanks plays Ben Bradlee, the Post’s gruff, embattled editor whose position often finds him at odds with the Post’s owner and publisher, Graham. When The New York Times publishes previously sealed documents showcasing a systematic, bipartisan betrayal of the American people and the country’s involvement in Vietnam, the nation is shocked but Bradlee seems miffed to have missed out on the story. The whistle-blow seems to highly implicate Robert McNamara (Bruce Greenwood), former Secretary of State for John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, and who was the one responsible for the documents being assembled to begin with. His motive was to save information for historical consideration, but instead it harbored evidence that multiple presidents explicitly lied about our goal in the Vietnam War. When Graham declines to squeeze McNamara, her personal friend, for more information, Bradlee sees it as further proof that she is not entirely invested in the integrity of The Washington Post.

Of course, Graham is used to men being disappointed in her decisions, to thinking that they can make decisions better than she can. Her ownership of The Post is a bit of an accident, having acquired it from her father, but only after her husband’s suicide (Graham’s husband was meant to be the true benefactor, despite it being her father). In a time when Kay (as everyone calls her) must find a way to help the newspaper financially, she risks jeopardizing the newspaper’s future if it suddenly becomes target no. 1 for Nixon and his brutal rampart. When the New York Times finds themselves and their research frozen by government interference (the presidential administration declares the publishing of classified information to be unlawful), the Post is suddenly open to complete their own investigation. Graham must choose a side: Bradlee and his group of hard-nosed reporters, or an ornery board of directors hoping to avoid legal trouble with the president.

The Post is as much about Graham’s impossible position as it is about ‘The Pentagon Papers’ (as they have now gone on to be named). Chronicling the wary path that a woman must take toward earning respect from The Boys in a business that seems to be nearly all boys. As Graham, Streep is absolutely remarkable. This is the kind of performance that earns Streep her level of reputation; a piece of work so resoundingly strong, vulnerable and technically precise. In this era of Late Spielberg, the director’s “adult” films have become these very taught, character-driven pieces, which matches perfectly with the way Streep performs. There’s a standard of competence she always brings that when met by those around her can produce something otherworldly. This reminds me of her more transparent performances in the eighties. She was a much less confident actress then and it led to more interesting work. There’s a sense of discovery here and a trust in the material that makes this the best work I’ve seen from her in a very long time.

As director, Spielberg is quite coy with the camera, moving it around without intruding too much on the action. This is his least showy collaboration with cinematographer Janusz Kaminski and he seems perpetually interested in teeing up his talented ensemble cast for flattering, dialogue-serving shots. That ensemble includes Streep and Hanks, but also has Sarah Paulson as Tony Bradlee, Ben’s sensible, intelligent wife; Bob Odenkirk as Ben Bagdikian, a veteran Post reporter who has a very high-level source; Michael Stuhlbarg (him again!) as Abe Rosenthal, the New York Times editor who finds himself counting on a rival newspaper; Carey Coon as Meg Greenfield, a reporter tough enough to be the only girl in the room; Jesse Plemons as Roger Clark, the Post’s young and cautious legal counsel; and Tracy Letts as Fritz Beebe, Kay Graham’s top advisor. Spielberg directs them in many scenes of spiraling, overlapping dialogue creating a true sense of their collective performance.

There are, of course, moments when Spielberg cannot help himself. His on-the-nose references to The Post‘s contemporary relevance sometimes spell it out for the audience in a way that might seem patronizing, as is often the complaint against the all-powerful director. He does better when he lets the actors express the film’s ideas, when he’s more concerned with what the film is rather then what it is about. Hannah and Singer’s script (they wrote different drafts) is filled with lengthy monologues from all of the film’s major players – which in a way makes it very much unlike Spotlight – but it’s that old school, traditional approach to storytelling that makes the film work so well. It’s what gets Streep and Hanks to rise to the occasion so heroically, so theatrically. This is, first and foremost, a very entertaining film, capable of reaching a large audience. A lot of people in that audience may need this lesson spelled out to them, and who better to do it than this collection of populists?

 

Directed by Steven Spielberg