The Post | Little White Lies

The Post

18 Jan 2018 / Released: 19 Jan 2018

A woman with greying hair wearing a grey coat and scarf, sitting at a table with papers and files in front of her.
A woman with greying hair wearing a grey coat and scarf, sitting at a table with papers and files in front of her.
4

Anticipation.

A new Spielberg’s a new Spielberg.

3

Enjoyment.

A film about rushing to meet a deadline that feels like it was made that way.

2

In Retrospect.

Stop the presses, it’s his worst in years.

Steven Spiel­berg recounts the sto­ry of the Pen­ta­gon Papers – with one eye on Don­ald Trump – in this strange­ly unsat­is­fy­ing polit­i­cal drama.

It’s unclear whether Steven Spiel­berg still believes in Amer­i­ca, or if he just needs to. His lat­est film, The Post, drama­tis­es the heat­ed days lead­ing to the Wash­ing­ton Post’s deci­sion to pub­li­cise high­ly clas­si­fied doc­u­ments on US involve­ment in the Viet­nam War, and Spiel­berg seizes this chap­ter of his­to­ry for a clear Com­men­tary on Nation­al Themes.

The terms of this con­flict will not be unfa­mil­iar to any­one with even a pass­ing knowl­edge of cur­rent pol­i­tics; it falls to the brave jour­nal­ists to out the President’s malfea­sance while he throws the full pow­er of the White House at them, even threat­en­ing them with jail time. It’s a Trump-era motion pic­ture, and not inci­den­tal­ly; Spiel­berg signed on in March 2017 and pro­duc­tion began in May, blaz­ing through pho­tog­ra­phy and edit­ing to make the Acad­e­my Awards’ end-of-year con­sid­er­a­tion date.

But in his hur­ry to make a rel­e­vant movie, Spiel­berg may have for­got­ten to make an hon­est one, or even a good one. Here, the proud patri­ot­ic spir­it that seemed a lit­tle corn­ball when Bridge of Spies got Tom Han­ks mono­logu­ing about the rules” ful­ly over­reach­es into irre­spon­si­ble sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty. Han­ks and co-star Meryl Streep por­tray the newspaper’s fiery edi­tor and untest­ed pub­lish­er and por­tray these char­ac­ters as pil­lars of moral­i­ty dur­ing a tri­al by fire.

A group of men in business attire gathered in an office, one man sitting at a desk surrounded by others.

They’re not entire­ly untar­nished; the film’s most mean­ing­ful scene inter­ro­gates the close per­son­al rela­tion­ships they had with sit­ting Pres­i­dents involved in the Viet­nam cov­er-up. But that the scene con­cludes with both char­ac­ters sim­ply resolv­ing not to do that any­more is but the first in a series of increas­ing­ly frus­trat­ing cop outs.

The nar­ra­tive sur­round­ing the acqui­si­tion and pub­li­ca­tion of the damn­ing Pen­ta­gon Papers just doesn’t con­form to Spielberg’s hope­ful world­view, and his attempts to force it into that shape end up disin­gen­u­ous. Before an aston­ish­ing­ly dumb final scene at the Water­gate Hotel, Spiel­berg gives his peo­ple the cathar­sis they crave when Han­ks and Streep pull the trig­ger and their con­tro­ver­sial report goes what­ev­er the pre-viral name for of viral was.

The tri­umphant music informs the audi­ence that our heroes have won, and not to give any thought to what a Pyrrhic vic­to­ry this is. Nev­er mind that nobody impli­cat­ed in the Papers faced jail time, or that the gov­ern­ment has con­tin­ued its sketchy over­seas med­dling else­where, or that mon­eyed news­pa­per own­ers – a posi­tion inex­plic­a­bly placed at the fore of the film, while the leak­ers and writ­ers who assem­bled the sto­ry get scant min­utes of screen time – rep­re­sent the great­est threat to jour­nal­ism in Amer­i­ca. Don’t wor­ry about it, just keep watch­ing the footage of bustling print­ing press­es and peo­ple hand­ing off files.

There’s some more pedes­tri­an incom­pe­tence at play: hor­ren­dous cos­tumes and worse wigs; a glar­ing­ly and at some points lit­er­al­ly phoned-in per­for­mance from Streep; dub­bing of real archival audio to a fake Nixon’s mouth like an embar­rass­ing ven­tril­o­quism rou­tine. But it’s Spielberg’s attach­ment to an Amer­i­ca that no longer exists that ulti­mate­ly becomes his undo­ing. He wants to believe that jus­tice nat­u­ral­ly fol­lows truth. Look at where that’s got­ten us.

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