(Steven
Spielberg/2017/USA)
Recounting
the Pentagon Papers exposé on the Vietnam War in the early 70’s
The Post never really goes beyond a historically interesting
retelling of events. It’s all about the Washington Post obviously
but the New York Times gets short shrift for its part in the
revelations. That’s because the focus is on the personalities and
relationship between Katherine Graham and Ben Bradlee the owner and
editor respectively of the Post. Hanks and Streep are in fine fettle
but there are a lot of chummy, luvvey type scenes. Maybe I’m
misreading things and these were the characters of the people at play
but I detected an underlying self satisfaction in the performances.
Also the blunted reshaping of Katherine Graham as a sort of feminist
hero is a kind of revisionism that works against an honest recounting
of history. It’s a bit cack handed to be fair and the plot is not
in any way dynamic. The story is spoon fed to you and lacks any real
intrigue or political paranoia like All the Presidents Men which is
the obvious film to compare it to. Other comparisons with the current
administration in America are obvious too but the plot of this film
seems to have been moulded to allow these comparisons along with the
feminist reading of Graham rather than them being natural by products
of the original story. This is the core reason it falls a bit flat
for me.
(2.5/5)
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