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Other than a brief detour into Roald Dahl’s literary work, Steven Spielberg seems particularly obsessed with exploring American values in his recent films. Lincoln looked at politics in action, Bridge of Spies was a Cold War thriller, and The Post delves into the newspaper business, more specifically the constitutional rights of the free press. It’s a valiant argument for the validity and necessity of the free press, but The Post feels rushed and like a second draft pushed through to the finish line in order to make a political point during a chaotic time.
It’s not as if The Post doesn’t speak directly to our time in which the current political administration is all but declaring war on the press at every turn, but that this is a film that too often bluntly hammers its points when a work finessed caressing would do. The Post was filmed during the earlier months of 2017 and rushed through for an awards season release, and the hurried nature of the production shows at times. Not just in the script’s occasionally soundbite dialog, but in the ways that several characters merely exist as a well-known character actor doing their thing and as not much else.
It’s also in the ways that The Post underscores Kay Graham’s decision to publish the Pentagon papers as a heroic endeavor. Not that she doesn’t deserve it, but The Post’s rough draft nature treats every action and development in a life-or-death struggle with a largely unseen but oft mentioned enemy. Graham’s social position, many of the people the Pentagon papers pointed fingers at and painted in broadly negative lights were among her circle of friends and acquaintances, takes a large chunk of the film’s settings and drama. It’s almost too comfortable in these powerful circles, and some of the finger-wagging feels a little deflated as a result.
Still, there’s plenty to admire and love about The Post. There’s Meryl Streep’s performance where she finally plays a real person instead of an overacted monstrosity (August: Osage County) or a broadly comic creation (Florence Foster Jenkins). Her Graham is a woman slightly uncomfortable with the power she’s been given, not only as the owner of the Washington Post but with the choice to publish the Pentagon revelations or not. This is a Streep performance that you can get behind and root for, all fluttering anxieties spilling out in her nervous pauses and occasionally awkward diction.
Just as good is Tom Hanks as Ben Bradlee, all sweaty rumpled career-man in the newspaper business. His gruff voice and demands to elevate the Post beyond its minimal sphere of influence is a loving tribute to the cigar chomping editors that typically populate newsrooms in film. He’s aided by a staff of reporters played by some of the best under-sung actors in the business, Bob Odenkirk being the best of the supporting players. The love for the newsroom is infectious in scenes of them hovering over mountains of material and trying to not only make sense of it all, but to condense it into a digestible piece of reporting to the masses.
The Post is ultimately frustrating simply because it just feels so self-congratulatory. It knows it’s talking about an important subject matter, it has two beloved actors, a tony production value, and a prestige director, but it mistakes these things as enough when it should probe deeper. The Post most reminded me of a Capraesque drama about Americana, and it works at that level, but it had the potential to really probe deeper and speechify less.
