This tense political thriller, which was conceived well before the Trump presidency, is definitely topical but I suspect it was nostalgia that made it work for me.
“Streep, Hanks, The Post”, reads the sparse and wonderfully cryptic poster, showing the backs of two famous figures climbing a vast, granite staircase.
It doesn’t suggest an obvious hashtag or a key phrase for a Google search but its message is clear: this will be a demanding, grown-up drama that will run on old-fashioned star power.
Hollywood gave up on this sort of film, and this type of marketing, when they moved into the superhero business.
A more modern way to pitch the film would have been to call it “All The President’s Men: The Beginning”.
Set just a few months before the heroics of Redford and Hoffman’s Woodward and Bernstein, it tells how sleepy local paper The Washington Post decided to stand up to President Nixon.
This time the heroes aren’t the fearless young reporters but the worried, middle-aged bosses.
The leaking of The Pentagon Papers, a secret government dossier that revealed the White House’s lies about the Vietnam War, poses a very thorny dilemma for editor Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) and owner Katharine Graham (Meryl Streep).
When Nixon gets an injunction preventing the New York Times from publishing the dossier the leaker moves on to the Post.
If they reveal any of the secrets they risk jail and the possible closure of their paper.
NIKO TAVERNISE
The Post, starring Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep, is definitely a topical film
If they do nothing, they will betray the very principles of a free press that are enshrined in the constitution.
At first, Graham seems an extremely unlikely rebel.
We meet her as she wakes up surrounded by papers and follow her into a restaurant where she knocks over a chair. The bumbling socialite (and Streep bumbles so brilliantly), we learn, has inherited the newspaper after her husband’s suicide.
She is well-connected and well-meaning but widely considered too lightweight for the job.
As the paper is about to be floated on the stock exchange, the all-male board give her a simple remit: don’t do anything to spook the investors. Defying a court order and exposing state secrets defi nitely fall into that category.
NIKO TAVERNISE
Tom Hanks is editor Ben Bradlee while Meryl Streep is the Post’s owner Katherine Graham
The film’s most tense scene plays out in the hours before Graham must decide whether to publish and, in all likelihood, be damned.
In editor Bradlee’s living room, his reporting team are pouring over pages of the dossier to find a front page story.
Next door, Bradlee is arguing with lawyers and money men.
Meanwhile, Graham is agonising over her decision dressed in a kaftan at a party for the well-heeled.
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 the forgotten technologies of hot metal, payphones, typewriters and Xerox machines.
News has never felt this dramatic since they turned on the internet.
Would Spielberg be able to find drama in a modern online newsroom?
I’m not so sure.
The Post’s message is timely, but these are very old-fashioned pleasures.
The Post – (12A, 116 mins) Director: Steven Spielberg; Stars: Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Alison Brie, Matthew Rhys, Tracy Letts