The Post (film)
The Post is a 2017 American political thriller film[8][9] about The Washington Post and the publication of the Pentagon Papers. It was directed and produced by Steven Spielberg, and written by Liz Hannah and Josh Singer. It stars Meryl Streep as Katharine Graham, the publisher of the Washington Post, and Tom Hanks as Ben Bradlee, the longtime executive editor of The Washington Post, with Sarah Paulson, Bob Odenkirk, Tracy Letts, Bradley Whitford, David Cross, Bruce Greenwood, Carrie Coon, Alison Brie, and Matthew Rhys in supporting roles.
For the 1929 film, see Post (film).The Post
- Steven Spielberg
- Kristie Macosko Krieger
- Amy Pascal
- Michael Kahn
- Sarah Broshar
- 20th Century Fox[1]
- DreamWorks Pictures[1]
- Participant Media[2]
- Amblin Partners[3]
- Amblin Entertainment[3]
- Pascal Pictures[3]
- Star Thrower Entertainment[3]
- 20th Century Fox[3] (United States and Canada)
- Mister Smith Entertainment[4] (EMEA)
- December 14, 2017 (Newseum)
- December 22, 2017 (United States)
116 minutes[5]
United States
English
$50 million[6]
$179.8 million[7]
Set in 1971, The Post depicts the true story of attempts by journalists at The Washington Post to publish the infamous Pentagon Papers, a set of classified documents regarding the 20-year involvement of the United States government in the Vietnam War and earlier in French Indochina back to the 1940s.
Principal photography began in New York City in May 2017 and wrapped in July 2017. The film premiered at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., on December 14, 2017, and went into limited release in the United States by 20th Century Fox on December 22, 2017. It entered wide release on January 12, 2018, and grossed $179 million worldwide.
The film received positive reviews; critics praised Spielberg's direction, the performances (particularly Streep, Hanks, and Odenkirk) and the film's references and allusions to the presidencies of Richard Nixon and Donald Trump.[10][11][12] The Post was chosen by the National Board of Review as the best film of 2017 and was named as one of the top 10 films of the year by Time magazine and the American Film Institute.[13][14][15] The Post was nominated for Best Picture and Best Actress (for Streep) at the 90th Academy Awards, and received six nominations at the 75th Golden Globe Awards: Best Motion Picture – Drama, Best Director, Best Actress – Drama (for Streep), Best Actor – Drama (for Hanks), Best Screenplay, and Best Original Score.[16]
Plot[edit]
In 1966, U.S. State Department analyst Daniel Ellsberg is sent to Vietnam, where he embeds with American soldiers and documents the on-the-ground reality of the Vietnam War. He soon realizes that the war is hopeless, and, when he returns to the U.S. to deliver his report, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara agrees. However, Ellsberg is left disillusioned when McNamara continues to publicly justify further deployments of American troops.
After his mission ends, Ellsberg works for the RAND Corporation, a think-tank with access to classified information. Over the following years he secretly copies thousands of classified pages documenting long-term U.S. interference in Vietnam, dating back to the Truman administration; once he finishes copying the full collection, he leaks it to journalist Neil Sheehan at The New York Times.
In 1971, Katharine Graham has been the owner and publisher of provincial newspaper The Washington Post for eight years since the suicide of her husband Phil Graham, the former publisher, and the death of her father Eugene Meyer, the former owner. Although she lacks journalistic and business experience, she hopes to take the company public and secure investment for higher-quality news of national importance. She personally appoints the bullish Ben Bradlee as the Post's executive editor as he agrees with her vision, but her male-dominated board still view her as a housewife in over her head. She is also still a prominent D.C. socialite, and Bradlee has to repeatedly assert his editorial independence whenever the paper runs a story critical of her friends.
McNamara, one of these friends, tells Graham that an "unflattering" story about him will be published in The New York Times—the first of Sheehan's scoops from Ellsberg's documents. As the Post's editors discuss how they might pursue the story further, an anonymous woman leaves one hundred pages of the leaked documents on a reporter's desk. Bradlee is delighted at the chance to get ahead of the Times on a major story in the Post's own backyard, but a federal district court issues an injunction against the Times. Graham—concerned about both the Post's liability and her own social standing—orders Bradlee to respect the injunction.
Post assistant editor Ben Bagdikian tracks down Ellsberg, a former colleague at RAND, as the source. Ellsberg gives him the full 4,000-page report and Post reporters dig through the pages, but their attorneys advise against publishing lest the Nixon administration file criminal charges. Agonizing over whether to publish, Graham confers with McNamara and her disapproving board. They warn that she will face social exile in D.C., retaliation from President Nixon, and loss of investors. However, Bradlee argues that they have a strong public interest defense, and it could transform the Post into the important journalistic institution that Graham had been dreaming of. The documents also revealed that his own circle of elite D.C. friends, including John F. Kennedy, lied to him to garner sympathetic coverage; he argues that Graham's own friendships with figures like McNamara should not influence her decision.
Graham gives the go-ahead to print. However, Bagdikian then reveals he used the same source as Sheehan instead of independently verifying the documents. The Post's lawyers panic—it puts Graham and Bradlee in contempt of court under the original injunction, and opens them to further criminal liability under the Espionage Act.
The Post and Times appear before the Supreme Court to plead their First Amendment rights. In solidarity, other newspapers across the U.S. publish information from Ellsberg's documents. On June 30, 1971, the Supreme Court rules 6–3 in the newspapers' favor, vindicating Graham's decision. Nixon bars the Post from the White House.
One year later, Watergate complex security guard Frank Wills discovers a burglary-in-progress and calls the police, inadvertently kicking off the Watergate scandal.
Reception[edit]
Box office[edit]
The Post grossed $81.9 million in the United States and Canada, and $97.9 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $179.8 million, against a production budget of $50 million.[7]
During The Post's limited opening weekend, December 22 to 24, it grossed $526,011 (and a total of $762,057 over the four-day Christmas weekend) from nine theaters. The following weekend, the film grossed $561,080 for a per-theater average of $62,342, one of the highest of 2017.[47] The film had its wide release alongside the openings of The Commuter, Paddington 2 and Proud Mary, and was projected to gross around $20 million from 2,819 theaters over the weekend.[48] It made $5.9 million on its first day and $18.6 million over the weekend (and a four-day MLK weekend total of $23.4 million), finishing second at the box office behind holdover Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.[49] 66% of its opening weekend audience was over the age of 35.[50] It dropped 37% the following weekend to $12.2 million, finishing 4th behind Jumanji and newcomers 12 Strong and Den of Thieves.[51] It dropped to 5th in its third week of wide release, grossing $8.9 million.[52]
Critical response[edit]
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 88% based on 409 reviews, with an average rating of 7.90/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "The Post's period setting belies its bitingly timely themes, brought compellingly to life by director Steven Spielberg and an outstanding ensemble cast."[53] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 83 out of 100, based on 51 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[54] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale,[49][55] while PostTrak reported 63% of audience members gave the film a "definite recommend".[50]
Alonso Duralde of TheWrap praised the acting and Spielberg's direction, though he noted the script was too on-the-nose at times, saying, "The Post passes the trickiest tests of a historical drama: it makes us understand that decisions validated by the lens of history were difficult ones to make in the moment, and it generates suspense over how all the pieces fell into place to make those decisions come to fruition."[56] David Ehrlich of IndieWire gave the film an A− and wrote: "Nobody needs to be reminded that history tends to go in circles, but The Post is so vital because it captures the ecstasy of trying to break the chain and bend things towards justice; defending the fundamental tenets of the Constitution hasn't been this much fun since Hamilton."[57]
Chris Nashawaty, writing for Entertainment Weekly, gave the film a positive review, but also compared it with previous journalism films such as All the President's Men stating, "Spielberg makes these crucial days in American history easy to follow. But if you look at The Post next to something like All the President's Men, you see the difference between having a story passively explained to you and actively helping to untangle it. That's a small quibble with an urgent and impeccably acted film. But it's also the difference between a very good movie and a great one."[58]
Manohla Dargis of The New York Times awarded the film an NYT Critic's Pick with a strong acknowledgment of Spielberg as director saying, "Mostly, (the Post decision to publish) went down fast, a pace that Mr. Spielberg conveys with accelerated rhythms, flying feet, racing cameras and an enjoyably loose approach to the material. With his virtuosic, veteran crew, Mr. Spielberg paints the scene vividly and with daubs of beauty; most notably, he creates distinct visual realms for the story's two main overlapping, at times colliding, worlds. Katharine reigns over one; at first she's all but entombed in her darkly lighted, wood-paneled empire. Ben rules the other, overseeing the talking and typing warriors of the glaring, noisily freewheeling newsroom".[31]
Matt Bobkin, writing for Exclaim!, gave the film a 6 out of 10 score, saying the film "has all the makings of an awards season hit, but is too calculated to reflect today's ragged, tenuous sociopolitical climate."
Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com reflected on the film nearly two years after its release, noting that due to the film's accessibility and Spielberg's invisible style of direction, critics underrated the film and tended to take its story literally such as by fact-checking historical details, in spite of the film being a "coded commentary" and doubling "as a stealth portrait of the media’s responsibility in the age of Trump, and in any age."[59]
Bob Woodward, a Washington Post journalist who reported on the Watergate scandal, expressed that the film is a "masterpiece".[60]
Portrayal of The New York Times[edit]
The film portrays the original role that The New York Times had in breaking the Pentagon Papers and then emphasizes The Washington Post's subsequent involvement.[61][62] In an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review, former New York Times associates James Greenfield, who coordinated the Pentagon Papers project as the Times foreign editor; James Goodale, the Times' general counsel at the time; and Max Frankel, the Times' Washington bureau chief when the Papers were published, criticized the film's more minor portrayal of the paper,[63] although The New York Times is shown as publishing the Pentagon Papers before The Washington Post and having also set the stage for the major legal battle between the press and the United States government.[61] The newspaper also won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for its contributions.
The 1972 Pulitzer jury of journalists noted in their recommendation not only the significance of Daniel Ellsberg's Pentagon Papers leak, but also that of Times reporters Neil Sheehan, Hedrick Smith, Fox Butterfield and E. W. Kenworthy, and stated that their effort was "a combination of investigative reporting, analysis, research, and writing — all of which added to a distinctly meritorious public service, not only for readers of The Times but also for an entire nation."[62] Goodale noted in an article for The Daily Beast that the Times published the Papers after Ellsberg had leaked them to Sheehan, and further stated that the film "creates a false impression that the Post was a major player in such publication. It's as though Hollywood had made a movie about the Times' triumphant role in Watergate."[25] On PBS NewsHour, Goodale further said, "Although a producer has artistic license, I think it should be limited in a situation such as this, so that the public comes away with an understanding of what the true facts are in this case . . . And I think that if you're doing a movie now, when [President Donald] Trump is picking on the press for 'fake news', you want to be authentic. You don't want to be in any way fake."[64]
