The Post - Directed by Stephen Spielberg Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Spoiler Alert: Much of the plot is revealed here, but that shouldn't detract from the film.
Most people have probably never heard of or remember who Daniel Ellsberg was. He was the forerunner of the government whistle blower, the first in a line of heroes who had the guts to expose government corruption, cover-ups and malfeasance. You might say he was the first Edward Snowden.
Steven Spielberg's The Post is the dramatic story of how The Pentagon Papers came to be published.
Ellsberg was a military analyst working for the RAND Corporation. In the mid-sixties, he worked for the Pentagon and was an observer in Vietnam. The movie starts with him flying back with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Informally McNamara tells him Vitenam is a lost cause. They have a snowball's chance in hell of winning. But when the plane lands, McNamara says the complete opposite to the press. Everything is dandy. The war is on track.
This sets the stage as Ellsberg goes back to the RAND Corporation and smuggles out a copy of a secret study commissioned by McNamara on US-Vietnam relations from 1945 to 1967. The 47 volume report had to be smuggled out piecemeal, photocopied and replaced volume by volume - 3000 pages of analysis and 4000 pages of documents. They showed a history of subterfuge, covert operations and cover-ups since the Truman years including political assassinations to effect regime change and the remarkable conclusion very early on that the war was unwinnable, that its aim was containment of China, even at the cost of millions of dollars and lost lives.
In 1971 Ellsberg spills some of the documents to a contact at The New York Times, which publishes the story on the front page promising more details in days to come. The Nixon White House immediately slaps an injunction on publication of more.
Meanwhile at the Washington Post, crusading editor Ben Bradlee, played by Tom Hanks, has his staff try and find the Times's source. Reporter Ben Bagdikian tracks down Ellsberg and gets a copy of the Pentagon Papers. The staff hustles to put together a series of stories.
But the Post at the time is owned by Katharine Graham. She inherited the paper from her husband who had committed suicide in 1959. She is dominated by her board of directors, all male, who effectively run the ship. The company has just gone public.
The suits, including the corporate lawyer, decide that publishing is too risky. They could be found guilty of contempt of court as the Times injunction could apply to them. Bradlee urges publication. Freedom of the press is at stake. It's too big an issue to knuckle under to possible threats. The decision is up to Graham.
Throughout the film, Graham, played by Meryl Streep, has been waffling. She is a liberal and personal friends with McNamara. She knew the Kennedys and was friends with the liberal elite in Washington. She knows that publication will damage the reputations of her friends. But she also had a son in Vietnam and is incensed that he was unnecessarily put in danger. She pow-wows with McNamara in person. He tells her the Vietnam War was prolonged primarily to save face as the US had never lost a war.
The pages are set and the presses are ready to roll. All that's needed is an okay from Graham. She gives the okay and the presses start to roll. I don't know why but the sight of the presses starting to roll in a movie, watching the papers move through on giant rollers, the machinery humming, the papers flopping into a pile and bundled up for distribution, always gives me a thrill. There is high drama in the very act of putting out a newspaper. The papers hit the street.
The White House is incensed and takes the Post and the Times to court, but the cat is out of the bag. Nearly every paper in the country follows the Post's lead and defiantly publishes the story.
In the climactic moment, a reporter is on the phone with the Supreme Court and repeats the verdict to the tense newsroom. The court upholds freedom of the press in a landmark ruling. A free press, rules the court, is there to serve the governed, not the governors. Along with the 1931 Supreme Court ruling on prior restraint, this is probably the most important ruling on freedom of the press in American history.
Ellsberg blazed the trail for Julian Assange and Wikileaks, for Chelsea Manning, and for Edward Snowden. People willing to risk imprisonment to reveal the truth about the backroom dealings of government. Crusaders for transparency and openness.
The Post as been nominated for Best Picture and Meryl Streep for Best Actress for this year's Oscars. It has an outside chance to win Best Picture, following on the heels of Spotlight, another movie about a crusading newspaper, that won Best Picture for 2015. But while Streep's performance was solid, it was not exceptional in my opinion. Tom Hanks should have been nominated for Best Actor though. The movie was nominated for six Golden Globes but did not win any.
- History Versus Hollywood - how accurate is The Post? Fairly accurate as it turns out.
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