Today
Twentieth Century FoxIf you were a kid in the 1960s or ‘70s, perhaps even as late as the ‘90s, and your parents took a newspaper, you probably saw that paper as a grown-up thing. This was where adults went to get important and trustworthy information about the world. Therefore, newspapers would always be there—for them to die was unimaginable.The unimaginable has nearly happened, and we’ve all heard the reason: The old model of advertising is unsustainable in the age of the Internet, or some variation thereof. But none of that explains away the need for what reporters do. The Post,Steven Spielberg’s account of the Washington Post’s risky decision to publish the Pentagon Papers, is set in 1971, yet it’s an example of old-school filmmaking that’s modern at its core. It’s a reflection of all we stand to lose if news reporting and the outlets that support it should vanish, especially in the face of a President who strives daily to crush it. It’s the story of a woman, Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham—played here in a striking performance by Meryl Streep—who had to fight for respect at a paper she actually owned. And even if its goals are lofty, the movie is so fleet and entertaining that you never feel you’re being lectured to. This is a superhero movie for real grownups.When Daniel Ellsberg, at the time a Defense Department analyst, leaked classified information pertaining to the Vietnam War to the New York Times, the Nixon White House was so enraged that it sought, and secured, a temporary court order barring the Times from publishing further excerpts from the documents. The Post, written by first-time screenwriter Liz Hannah and Josh Singer (Spotlight), details the role of the Washington Post as that story began to expand and explode—which happened to coincide with the paper’s stressful preparations for an IPO, endangering the institution’s very survival.
Twentieth Century Fox
If you were a kid in the 1960s or ‘70s, perhaps even as late as the ‘90s, and your parents took a newspaper, you probably saw that paper as a grown-up thing. This was where adults went to get important and trustworthy information about the world. Therefore, newspapers would always be there—for them to die was unimaginable.
The unimaginable has nearly happened, and we’ve all heard the reason: The old model of advertising is unsustainable in the age of the Internet, or some variation thereof. But none of that explains away the need for what reporters do. The Post,Steven Spielberg’s account of the Washington Post’s risky decision to publish the Pentagon Papers, is set in 1971, yet it’s an example of old-school filmmaking that’s modern at its core. It’s a reflection of all we stand to lose if news reporting and the outlets that support it should vanish, especially in the face of a President who strives daily to crush it. It’s the story of a woman, Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham—played here in a striking performance by Meryl Streep—who had to fight for respect at a paper she actually owned. And even if its goals are lofty, the movie is so fleet and entertaining that you never feel you’re being lectured to. This is a superhero movie for real grownups.
When Daniel Ellsberg, at the time a Defense Department analyst, leaked classified information pertaining to the Vietnam War to the New York Times, the Nixon White House was so enraged that it sought, and secured, a temporary court order barring the Times from publishing further excerpts from the documents. The Post, written by first-time screenwriter Liz Hannah and Josh Singer (Spotlight), details the role of the Washington Post as that story began to expand and explode—which happened to coincide with the paper’s stressful preparations for an IPO, endangering the institution’s very survival.
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