The Post (2017)

As soon as I saw who was involved in The Post, I was hooked – you give me Steven Spielberg directing people like Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep, and it’s kind of like the most surefire Oscar contender you can get. And I got exactly the film I expected with The Post: a high-quality, entertaining, and even slightly informative movie with some great performances and few if any flaws behind the camera.

It’s probably irrational for me to assume that The Post could be any greater than the sum of its parts, but that sum – as good as it was – is something I have seen before. Spielberg has gotten into a groove of these kinds of movies, these politically-charged dramas that tend to show a correlation between the world of the past and the world of today. The Post does everything that films like Lincoln and Munich have already done and done well; as lazy as that may sound for someone with Spielberg’s profile, this film does make some very pointed connections between the Nixon and Trump administrations’ relatively similar treatment of the press while also alluding at its end to how the former was ultimately brought down by that same press. In other words, I don’t care if I’ve seen it before: if Spielberg wants to keep making films that show the past as incredibly relevant to today, I will be the last to complain.

Every part of the filmmaking of The Post has exactly the quality you would expect from such a stacked production team. Janusz Kaminski as cinematographer does some unique things with handheld camerawork to heighten the frantic nature of the newsroom, and John Williams does the same with his brilliant score, one of the best I have heard this year. Supporting players Bob Odenkirk, Bradley Whitford, and Tracy Letts all do great work, but it is Streep and Hanks that do exactly what they are known for and shine above the rest; unfortunately, the script focuses more on the event than the characters behind it. That script, however, does a very good job of explaining everything the audience needs to track with the plot in effective, entertaining, and swift ways – not unlike the way The West Wing did the same.

The Post is exactly the kind of film you would expect. There’s nothing surprising or groundbreaking about it, which does make me look less favorably on it than other films this year that have taken more risks; however, that does not make it a less entertaining experience, and it is one of the more poignant films of the year with its timely themes about the role of the press. Spielberg has once again made a bit of a “statement film” – one that does a good job as both a journalistic and political drama and seamlessly weaves the two worlds together.

My recommendation: See it, especially if you’re a fan of Spielberg’s recent films. 

My grade: 80/100