Theatrical release poster
by Peter J. O’Connell
The Post. Released:
Dec. 2017. Runtime: 116 mins. MPAA Rating: PG-13 for language and brief war
violence.
Print journalism is an
embattled phenomenon today. Digital devices and controversies about bias and
“fake news” have taken away much of the readership and advertising that
newspapers used to have. Two recent films, however, have reminded us if the
vital role that a newspaper can play.
Spotlight,
the 2015 Oscar winner, depicted how the Boston
Globe at the turn of this century exposed the cover-up of child sexual
abuse by the Catholic clergy. Now, The
Post, one of the Oscars nominees for 2017, shows how in 1971 the country’s
first female publisher of a major newspaper and a hard-driving editor entered
an unprecedented battle between the press and the government to uncover
deceptions about the Vietnam War.
This story of The Washington Post’s role in the Pentagon
Papers affair is directed by Steven Spielberg and was written by Liz Hannah and
Josh Singer. A 20th Century Fox film, it begins by showing the
company’s logo but not its usual fanfare. Instead, we hear sound effects of
action in Vietnam, which leads into the movie’s first scene.
In that scene, set in late
1965, Daniel Ellsberg (Matthew Rhys), a military analyst for the State
Department, observes things going badly for U.S. troops. On a flight home,
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (Bruce Greenwood) agrees with Ellsberg’s
view that the war in Vietnam is hopeless. Yet upon landing in the U.S.,
McNamara buoyantly expresses an optimistic attitude about the war effort to the
press and public.
Experiencing increasing
disgust at this kind of mendacity, in 1971, Ellsberg, now working for a
civilian military contractor, the RAND Corporation, secretly photocopies a
trove of classified reports from the 1945-1967 period that document the
policymaking process with regard to Vietnam and the progress—actually, lack of
same—of the war there. He then leaks these documents, which come to be known as
the Pentagon Papers, to The New York
Times.
In the meantime, heiress
Katharine Graham (Meryl Streep) has become owner and publisher of The Washington Post, following the
deaths of her father and her husband. A wife, mother, and socialite for most of
her life rather than a business executive, Graham finds running a major
newspaper a difficult challenge, particularly in view of the prevailing sexism
of the period. The movie indicates this aspect of the period well by having
Graham as the only woman in a room full of men in dark suits and white
shirts—or even waiting outside the room—or chatting after dinner about light
matters with women while in a another room men discuss weightier topics. Things
are particularly difficult for Graham in 1971 as the Post is about to become a publicly traded corporation rather than a
privately held one. This pending deal is a delicate one that could be derailed
if controversies or legal hassles engulf the paper.
One of the men who sometimes
“overrules” Graham is the paper’s assertive editor-in-chief, Ben Bradlee (Tom
Hanks). Bradlee is extremely desirous of catching up with The New York Times in terms of getting the “big stories.” Ellsberg
has given the Times the big story of
the Pentagon Papers, but when the Times
begins to publish that story, a court injunction obtained by the Nixon
administration halts the series.
At this point the movie takes
on aspects of a thriller as Bradlee activates Ben Bagdikian (Bob Odenkirk), an
assistant editor, to track down the source of the Pentagon Papers and obtain
copies. Bagdikian succeeds in this assignment, and Post editors and reporters find themselves, in a somewhat humorous
scene, on the floor trying to put together thousands of pages (page numbers
have been cut off) in the proper order for possible publication, while making
sure that no genuinely current national security material will be revealed.
Whether there will be
publication or not depends on Graham’s yes or no. If legal action by the Nixon
administration after publication should be successful, the Post could be badly harmed at a crucial juncture. But if the
newspaper should prevail in a legal challenge, it would become a national
institution, not just a Washington one. Lawyers advise against publication.
Bradlee is for publication but knows that the difficult decision is Graham’s
alone to make.
And she does. And it’s “yes.”
That always exciting moment in movies about newspapers when the presses run and
the paper hits the streets is particularly well done in The Post. The White House immediately strikes back. The Times and the Post are soon before the Supreme Court arguing for their First
Amendment rights to publish the Pentagon Papers. As the case is argued,
newspapers throughout the country publish the formerly secret documents. The
Court rules for the press. Nixon then orders that the Post be banned from the White House.
And in a flash-forward to
1972, a security guard discovers a break-in in progress at Democratic Party
offices in the Watergate complex. Thus, The
Post ends as a kind of prequel to the
classic movie about the value of newspapers, All the President’s Men (1976), which dealt with how Washington Post reporters did much to
uncover the scandals that led to President Nixon’s resignation.
Steven Spielberg’s direction
of the film is economical and “to the point,” nicely weaving together the
political and legal themes with the woman’s empowerment theme, and the world-historical
aspects with lighter ones. And he lets his stars do what Meryl Streep and Tom
Hanks always have done so well—create convincing characters , whether based on
actual persons or not. Hanks may not have quite that “certain something” that
Jason Robards as Bradlee had in All the
President’s Men, but he’s very good. Streep’s Kay Graham, like her Margaret
Thatcher in The Iron Lady (2011) or
the title character in Florence Foster Jenkins
(2016), is a “grande dame” type but with a likeable as well as “grande”
side. She has “spunk” as well as aplomb. (And she was sometimes called the
“Iron Lady” by her colleagues.)
All in all, The Post is an effective reminder of the
truth declared in the majority Supreme Court opinion in the Pentagon Papers
case: “In the First Amendment, the Founding Fathers gave the free press the
protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The
press was to serve the governed, not the governors.”
“Footnotes” to the film: (1) The Post
may give The Washington Post a bit
too much credit and The New York Times
not enough. It was, after all, the Times
that began publication of the Pentagon Papers and was the sole winner of the Pulitzer
Prize for doing so. Also, The Post
may give the Nixon administration too much discredit. The Pentagon Papers dealt
mostly with the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and not at all with the
Nixon administration. There is no reason to believe that the Nixon
administration in its response to publication of the Pentagon Papers was not
acting out of sincere beliefs regarding national security. (2) Spotlight was written by Josh Singer,
co-screenwriter of The Post. Ben
Bradlee’s son was a reporter on the Boston
Globe and is depicted in Spotlight.
(3) Steven Spielberg developed The Post
with great alacrity. Shooting and final cutting was done May-July of 2017, and
the film was released at the end of the year.
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