The Post

I saw this film first at the cinema and there was no doubt that we should screen it at our club. The sight of the old hot metal printing presses give the film a specific historical link, but the story itself seemed depressingly contemporary.

The Post

USA 2017        116 minutes

Director:          Steven Spielberg

Starring:            Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Sarah Paulson, Ben Odenkirk and Tracy Letts   

“For all its period detail, however, this is an urgently contemporary tale, with Spielberg taking a break from preparing his forthcoming effects-heavy sci-fi thriller Ready Player One to turn The Post around in double-quick time. Hitting our screens as the current White House incumbent raves about news media being “the enemy of the American people”, The Post offers a reminder that “the founding fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfil its essential role… to serve the governed, not the governors”. The film-making may hardly be groundbreaking, but this story is more relevant than ever, and it is told with wit, precision and understated passion.”

Mark Kermode

Awards and Nominations

• Oscar nominations for Best Film and Best Actress (Meryl Streep)
• Golden Globe nominations for Best Film (Drama), Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor (Tom Hanks), Best Actress (Meryl Streep) and Best Score (John Williams)
• A further 18 wins and 92 nominations

Katherine Graham (Meryl Streep) is the proprietor of The Washington Post and Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) is its editor. When Bradlee obtains the Pentagon Papers, classified documents revealing the true picture of 30 years of US involvement in the Vietnam War, he and Graham have to fight attempts by Nixon’s White House to prevent their publication.

The screenplay for The Post by first time screenwriter Liz Hannah appeared on the annual Hollywood Black List of most liked screenplays not yet produced, and was picked up by a producer who assembled the team of Spielberg, Streep and Hanks for the project, the first time that all three had worked together. Spielberg then brought in Josh Singer, who won an Oscar for his screenplay for Spotlight (2015), a film about journalists on the Boston Globe investigating the cover up of sexual abuse by Catholic priests, to work with Hannah as he had the on-set writing experience that she lacked. Spielberg himself halted pre-production work on another project after a casting setback and decided to direct the The Post himself, commenting "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”.

The film is essence a prequel to All the President’s Men (1976) about the exposure by Woodward and Bernstein of Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate scandal, and in the final minutes of the film it explicitly acknowledges the link with a brief radio news report of the initial burglary at the Watergate Building. Bob Woodward has subsequently written books about every US President since Nixon and Fear, his book on Trump’s presidency, became a global bestseller on its publication. The events portrayed in the film are generally true, although the screenplay does downplay the role that The New York Times had in breaking the story while emphasizing The Washington Post’s subsequent involvement: it was The New York Times that first published the Pentagon Papers, set the stage for the legal battle between the press and the US government and then won a Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for its work.

The Post was named as one of the top ten films of the year by both Time and the American Film Institute.

This is the trailer: