Butler's Cinema Scene

Meryl Streep, Tracy Letts, Tom Hanks

“THE POST” My rating: B+ 

115 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

Steven Spielberg’s powers as a storyteller are so secure that not even the miscasting of one of “The Post’s” two leads can do much damage to the narrative.

This sprawling effort — it begins with a firefight in Vietnam and winds down with a firestorm over the Second Amendment — hits the ground running and rarely slows down for a breath. It’s like a Spielberg master class in taking a complicated story and telling it cleanly and efficiently.

And like other major movies about real-world journalism — “All the President’s Men” and “Spotlight” especially — “The Post” could hardly be more timely.  With a president who shows every indication that he’d love to roll back freedom of the press, this film is so relevant it hurts.

The subject, of course, is the 1971 scandal over the Pentagon Papers.  That massive study, commissioned by LBJ’s Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, looked at American involvement in Vietnam going back to the Truman administration. It revealed that the experts had always known a land war in Vietnam was unwinnable — but had plowed ahead anyway, sacrificing billions of dollars and countless lives on what amounted to political face-saving.

The papers showed that the Johnson administration had systematically lied to the public and to Congress so as to continue the war.

McNamara suppressed the study; the public only learned of its existence when one of its authors, Rand Corporation analyst Daniel Ellsberg (Matthew Rhys), made an illegal copy of the top secret document and passed it on to The New York Times.

Today  The Washington Post sits at or near the top of American newspapers (thanks to its reporting on the Watergate Scandal in 1972-’73).  But in 1971 The Post was at best a regional paper…and not a very good one.

Its new editor, Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks), was pushing it toward greatness, but still felt himself outclassed by the journalistic aces at The Times. He was particularly concerned about rumors that The Times was about to scoop The Post (and every other news outlet) with a major story.

That big story was the Pentagon Papers. No sooner had the first in a series of articles been published than a federal judge — at the behest of the Nixon administration — enjoined The Times from printing additional material.

Bradley’s Post, however, was under no gag order. Working back channels Bradley got his hands on another copy of the papers and prepared to publish even more revelations on the pages of The Post.

Though it has a spectacularly deep cast — Bob Odenkirk, Tracy Letts, Bradley Whitford, Michael Stuhlbarg, Bruce Greenwood, Alison Brie, Carrie Coon, Jesse Plemons, David Cross — this is essentially the story of two people.

First there’s Hanks’ Bradlee, a fire breathing newspaperman whose sardonicism is leavened by his abiding faith in American institutions.

And then there’s Kay Graham (Meryl Streep), head of the family-owned Post since the death several years earlier of her husband. Despite her wealth and society credentials, Graham is nervous and tentative when it comes to operating her paper; in most gatherings she’s the only woman at the table and it’s widely believed that she hasn’t got the skill (and certainly doesn’t deserve) to run such a massive and important enterprise.

Usually Graham relies on Bradlee’s good judgment and counsel to see her through. But the Pentagon Papers couldn’t have come at a worse time…Graham wants to take the company public, and potential stockholders will be spooked if the paper becomes involved in technically treasonous activities and gets into a massive pissing match with Tricky Dick.

And there’s your conflict. Will she shut down Bradlee’s expose or run with it? Every lawyer, financial expert and staff member seems to have a different opinion. What’s she going to do?

Streep is simply spectacular here, moving from timorous to assertive over the course of several days, and embodying not only the journalistic issues at stake but also the sexual ones.

And Hanks is, well, not quite right. It’s not like he totally screws the pooch here. “The Post” still works, sometimes magnificently. It’s just that Hanks’ good-guy persona is at odds with the real Bradlee’s cigarette rasp and wraithlike presence. I wasn’t convinced. Give me Jason Robards Jr. in “All the President’s Men” any time.

Apart from that issue, my only complaint is Spielberg’s penchant for overstating his case (like at the end of “Schindler’s List,” with its endless slow line of aging Holocaust survivors waiting to place a pebble on Schindler’s gravestone). This time around such a moment is delivered by Sarah Paulson, as Bradlee’s wife, who gives a monologue about all that Graham is risking: her reputation, her family’s business, a jail term.

Another moment comes when Graham exits the Supreme Court where the Post‘s case has been argued. Exiting down the building’s front steps, Graham must negotiate a small army of young women who press in on her and note her passing with something like reverence.

We don’t actually need these scenes — although Paulson’s moment has been well written and impeccably performed — because we’ve already seen all these points for ourselves in the course of the narrative. It’s as if Spielberg and writers Liz Hannah and Josh Singer felt the need to restate the case for any mouth breathers in the audience. (I’m interested in what sort of  mouth breather would be drawn to this story.)

One last observation: This is history. We all know how it turned out.  And yet despite our familiarity with the situation, “The Post” builds tremendous suspense.

That’s some mighty fine storytelling.

| Robert W. Butler