Hot mettle!
NEWS DRAMA A SIZZLER
IT’S impossible not to see present-day parallels in Steven Spielberg’s classy newspaper drama.
It’s 1971, and a controversial president is waging a war with news outlets that are trying to expose his shadowy dealings.
The big story of the day is The Pentagon Papers, a secret government dossier exposing years of official lies about the Vietnam War.
When President Nixon gets an injunction preventing The New York Times from publishing further extracts, the leaker moves on to The Washington Post.
This poses a thorny dilemma for Post owner Katharine Graham (Meryl Streep) and editor Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks).
If they reveal the secrets, they risk jail and the closure of their paper. If they do nothing, they betray the principles of a free press.
Apart from a brief opening in Vietnam, there are no guns and no car chases. Yet, Spielberg uses this one decision to power a tense political thriller.
At first, Post owner Graham seems an extremely unlikely rebel. The bumbling socialite (and Streep bumbles brilliantly), we learn, has inherited the news-paper after her husband’s suicide.
She is well-connected, well-meaning but considered a lightweight.
As the paper is about to be floated on the stock exchange, the all-male board give her a simple remit – don’t spook the investors. Defying the Supreme Court definitely falls into that category.
The film’s best sequence plays out in the hours before Graham must decide whether or not to publish.
In the living room of editor Bradlee, reporters are poring over photocopied pages. Next door, Bradlee is arguing with lawyers and money men.
Meanwhile, Graham is agonising over her decision in a flowing kaftan at a posh party.
Spielberg keeps ratcheting up the suspense by cutting to newsrooms, typesetters, printworks and that wonderfully incongruous outfit.
The period details are lovingly recreated, a tribute to forgotten technologies of payphones, hot metal and typewriters.
It’s nostalgic and topical at the same time.
In the expert hands of Spielberg, this is a killer combination.