Merit outweighs sappiness in 1st amendment defense
My favorite moment in director Steven Spielberg’s “The Post” hinges on Meryl Streep’s delivery of the word “however.”
Katharine Graham, The Washington Post’s publisher and company president, finds herself surrounded by the usual clutch of tense, murmuring male advisers. She must decide whether to defy Richard Nixon’s White House and risk possible incarceration by printing the first of many stories, in the wake of The New York Times’ groundbreaking and court-challenged coverage, about the massive classified report on the secrets and lies propping up the Vietnam War. The report was commissioned by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara.
We know the outcome. The Pentagon Papers did not stay a secret, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in favor of the newspapers’ right to publish. But a great performer can temporarily make you forget a true story’s resolution by burrowing into a character’s inner struggles. Graham’s advisers are pushing her not to publish, not to threaten the company’s future. Yes, that would be prudent, she says.
And then Streep, scratching her left eyebrow with her right hand, obscures her face entirely in Spielberg’s close-up and, raising her voice an unexpected half-octave, in a sort of tra-la-la way, says the crucial word “however ….” From such howevers, First Amendment triumphs change the course of history, and from there “The Post” chugs toward a sleek montage of linotype clinking into place and papers rolling off the presses.
The movie itself is a blunt reminder that everything in this story concerning a craven, paranoid president’s loathing of an aggressive free press did not exactly vanish with the Nixon administration.
“The Post” has a lot going for it, alongside a certain amount of hokum. The project fell together very quickly last year, when fledgling screenwriter Liz Hannah’s script attracted the interest of Spielberg’s longtime producing partner Amy Pascal, along with Spielberg and Streep. Once Streep and co-star Tom Hanks were set, screenwriter Josh Singer (“Spotlight”) joined the project, and the script underwent considerable additions and cuts and revisions.
Most of the film unfolds in 1971, when Graham and company were taking the Post public, in the same momentous week the Ellsberg treasure-trove fell into the Post’s hands. Hanks plays Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee. His turn is valiant but effortful — the film’s one casting misstep.
Cinematographer Janusz Kaminski and costume designer Ann Roth set a muted visual palette. As written, “The Post” seesaws artfully between Graham’s story and her newsroom’s. The Post belonged to her late father, and then to Graham’s husband, Phil, whose suicide led to Graham’s control of the company.
I love how Spielberg stretches out here, visually (he favors large groups in medium and long shot) and in terms of style. The first scene between Streep and Hanks, a testy breakfast meeting, runs more than three minutes in an elegant, unbroken shot.
Near the end, the film nosedives into sap, which is too bad. The writing becomes extra-speechy, with cries of “The legacy of the company’s at stake!”
Spielberg has said in interviews that he was searching for a way to respond, through the right story, to Trump’s assaults on the free press. He found it, all right.