Stop the presses
It is a sensible precaution of film critics to be wary of claims to relevance. Of course, movies do seem sometimes to arrive at the right moment to respond to history as it develops before us – perhaps for no reason more complex than our inclination to carry the zeitgeist with us to the cinema, and see it reflected on the screen. But we’re too often duped and flattered by that horrible little word, “timely.”
We’re eager for a vision of the world and its problems, and desperate to be told what to do about them. We admire the costume drama whose period setting, with its supposedly bygone plights or prejudices, resembles the present day: we’re reminded of contemporary moral failings, so the film thus becomes, in the hackneyed parlance of the pull-quote and headline, “more relevant now than ever.” We applaud the science-fiction blockbuster whose dire forecast of future peril criticizes our proximity to dystopia: what we’re meant to infer from prophecies of coming doom is that things are hopeless already, and the film that bears this message is congratulated for its “urgent” savvy – the “wake-up call we need right now,” grave and courageous.
Or we exalt a frivolous, self-satisfied prestige picture such as The Post, thrilled to glory in its trite celebration of democratic ideals.
The carnival of rapturous praise that met The Post upon its arrival to theatres across North America last week was to be expected. People who work for newspapers tend to cherish movies about the importance of a free press – and doubly so in “this age of Trump,” a phrase grimly invoked in reviews of the film by the Guardian, the New York Times, the New York Post, Playboy and W Magazine, among several dozen others. Indeed the temptation to commend The Post on the merit of its relevance has proven irresistible. It isn’t merely rousing, but “a pointed statement in Donald Trump’s America.” It isn’t just “extraordinary,” but “exactly the gamechanger we need right this minute.” “Although the events of Steven Spiel- berg’s movie transpired 46 years ago,” writes one insightful critic, “they find surprising relevance in today’s political climate.” This is the response Spielberg courts with zeal. The symmetry duly emphasized between Nixon, whose efforts to repress the publication of the Pentagon Papers is the subject of the drama, and Trump, whose name is (naturally) unmentioned but seems to linger on every actor’s lips, is brazen and clear. The film even makes the connection a punchline: relishing their triumph in court over the White House at the end of the picture, Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep, the Post’s editor and publisher, respectively, together rejoice that the free press will never come under attack by a president in office again, inviting us with a shared wink to laugh.
Finally, in a coda that must be the five-minute nadir of Spielberg’s career, the Watergate break-in is staged with the blithe comic gusto of a post-credits Marvel stinger – a mock-serious happy ending meant to re-inspire confidence in the ability of an unfettered press to hold the powerful accountable. As drama, this ending is ridiculous; if one feels charitable, it’s maybe intended to be. Still, it feels false, at once too flippant and too satisfied with its rectitude.
We know throughout The Post who is meant to be chastened by its moralizing: the enemies of democracy and the First Amendment, then and now, as well as all those complacent bureaucrats whose absence of resolve helps maintain the status quo. We know, too, who is meant to be flattered by its hagiographic brio: we the enlightened, who share with the heroes in their venerated glow, and who leave the cinema pleased with the understanding that we know the difference between wrong and right.
Spielberg, as a filmmaker, remains in command of his gifts – the movie is accomplished and frequently gratifying. But he has misjudged the effect of his sermon, and has the wrong idea about what we need now. The choir is preached to; those deaf to such matters will continue to ignore. Such a feeble cry of outrage isn’t really relevant at all.