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anon_xdc8rmuek44eq
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Trying to get in as many 'award season' movies as I can before the Oscars and of course, The Post was high on my list. I don't know that any movie has ever had such a ridiculous pedigree - Streep, Hanks, Spielberg, John Williams (score) - nearly every role in the movie - even the smallest - are from known actors (special shout out to Alison Brie channeling Trudy Campbell as Katherine Graham's daughter 'Lally'...). Rounding out the main cast is Bob Odenkirk, Matthew Rhys, David Cross, Bruce Greenwood, Carrie Coon, Jesse Plemons, and Tracy Letts. Of course, the movie is mostly about the decision by Washington Post Executive Editor Ben Bradlee (Hanks) and owner Graham (Streep) to publish the 'Pentagon Papers' despite immense legal, financial, and political pressure for them to do otherwise. With that, on to the review...
First, all the performances are good, but not what I would consider stellar. There's so much going on in such a short amount of time you don't get a lot of 'Oscar' moments where someone really gets to chew into a scene. Streep has one and she does it well, but it's the kind of thing she can do in her sleep (and while it looks effortless, I was a bit shocked at how 'meh' I was by her performance - maybe if I knew more about Graham personally I would connect better). Hanks gets a bit more - he's the movie's moral compass and while you get the sense he's a hardline crusader for the truth, you can also tell he's a bit chapped in the ass that the New York Times are the ones beating him to all the big stories - especially this one.
Anyway, the movie begins with RAND Corporation employee Daniel Ellsberg (played by Matthew Rhys - and who one might consider to be a pretty smart mf'er) embedded with a group of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam and you learn quickly he's not a 'soldier'. Anyway, he sees some action and later reports to then SecDef Robert McNamara (who commissioned the Papers) that what has surprised him the most about Vietnam was how much things are the same. McNamara sees this as a loss and is frustrated. Ellsberg, on the other hand has some moral epiphany and smuggles the RAND Corporation's copy of the report out of their compound, copies it, and sends it to New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan. Soon, the NYT starts publishing articles about how the U.S. Government has been knowingly lying to the U.S. public about the prospects of winning the war in Vietnam, manipulating elections there, and basically sending American soldiers to die for a lost cause. I know many here believe Nixon takes most of the heat, but Johnson and Kennedy are beat up pretty good too - Kennedy especially since he was good friends with Bradlee, and Johnson since he seems to have been the one to suggest the most 'strategic' change/failure in Vietnam based on the report. Nixon is sort of seen as a tough guy President who is left with the mess and like others, doesn't want to be the guy who loses the war - and when word gets out about the leak, he squashes it with a court ordered injunction (the first in the history of the U.S. against the press according to the movie) and the Times comply without a fight. Once the NYT are out of the picture, Bradlee and his ambitious staff get to work on getting their own copy of the report. Turns out they have a journalist on staff (Ben Bagdikian played by the excellent Bob Odenkirk) who used to work at RAND and who has suspected Ellsberg from the beginning. The two hook up and Ellsberg is anxious to get him the Papers for release noting going to jail is worth it if it ends the war.
From there, the movie is about the moral, economical, and political struggle at the editorial/ownership level of The Post to release the papers. Graham is putting the Post on the Stock Market and investors are wary of anything that might harm the paper (such as the editorial board and owner going to jail) but Bradlee is insistent that there is no paper without a commitment to publish the truth and if the government is dictating what can and can't be published then there is no Post anyway. He ultimately wins Graham's favor and the Post gets lumped into a Supreme Court hearing with the NYT and ultimately win, with the SC noting, 'The press is for the governed - not the governors...'. It's mostly a fine, and not very suspenseful, film, and it casts a pretty big shadow over today's political climate (there are a few forced lines suggesting the same, but no need to get into that here). The movie ends with Nixon (whose every line in the film is from actual recorded conversations of him I believe ) instructing staff that no WaPo reporters, or photographers, are ever allowed in the WH, and that he will fire anyone who allows otherwise. We then close at a break-in at the Watergate....
So, again, all well done and fine - great acting and a compelling piece of history. I did think it was a bit interesting to almost completely ignore the work of the NYT and Sheehan who isn't even in the movie (only named). Of course, when asked why the movie was called 'The Post' instead of 'The Times', Hanks said, 'If they had Katherine Graham, we'd be calling it The New York Times.'
Of the other Oscar moves I've seen so far, this is maybe the one I would recommend least. See Ladybird, Darkest Hour, Three Billboards, or Dunkirk first if you haven't.
Welcome comments from others who have seen the movie and as an aside, Revisionist History author Malcolm Gladwell did a really excellent piece on RAND Corporation's involvement in the Vietnam war and how this sort of ties into the Pentagon Papers...
http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/02-saigon-1965
In the early 1960s, the Pentagon set up a top-secret research project in an old villa in downtown Saigon. The task? To interview captured North Vietnamese soldiers and guerrillas in order to measure their morale: Was the relentless U.S. bombing pushing them to the brink of capitulation?
Saigon, 1965 is the story of three people who got caught up in that effort: a young Vietnamese woman, a refugee from Nazi Germany, and a brilliant Russian émigré. All saw the same things. All reached different conclusions. The Pentagon effort, run by the Rand Corporation, was one of the most ambitious studies of enemy combatants ever conducted—and no one could agree on what it meant.
Mai Elliott, working in the RAND villa on Rue Pasteur. The windows are taped to prevent the glass from shattering in case of an explosion from a mortar round.
First, all the performances are good, but not what I would consider stellar. There's so much going on in such a short amount of time you don't get a lot of 'Oscar' moments where someone really gets to chew into a scene. Streep has one and she does it well, but it's the kind of thing she can do in her sleep (and while it looks effortless, I was a bit shocked at how 'meh' I was by her performance - maybe if I knew more about Graham personally I would connect better). Hanks gets a bit more - he's the movie's moral compass and while you get the sense he's a hardline crusader for the truth, you can also tell he's a bit chapped in the ass that the New York Times are the ones beating him to all the big stories - especially this one.
Anyway, the movie begins with RAND Corporation employee Daniel Ellsberg (played by Matthew Rhys - and who one might consider to be a pretty smart mf'er) embedded with a group of U.S. soldiers in Vietnam and you learn quickly he's not a 'soldier'. Anyway, he sees some action and later reports to then SecDef Robert McNamara (who commissioned the Papers) that what has surprised him the most about Vietnam was how much things are the same. McNamara sees this as a loss and is frustrated. Ellsberg, on the other hand has some moral epiphany and smuggles the RAND Corporation's copy of the report out of their compound, copies it, and sends it to New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan. Soon, the NYT starts publishing articles about how the U.S. Government has been knowingly lying to the U.S. public about the prospects of winning the war in Vietnam, manipulating elections there, and basically sending American soldiers to die for a lost cause. I know many here believe Nixon takes most of the heat, but Johnson and Kennedy are beat up pretty good too - Kennedy especially since he was good friends with Bradlee, and Johnson since he seems to have been the one to suggest the most 'strategic' change/failure in Vietnam based on the report. Nixon is sort of seen as a tough guy President who is left with the mess and like others, doesn't want to be the guy who loses the war - and when word gets out about the leak, he squashes it with a court ordered injunction (the first in the history of the U.S. against the press according to the movie) and the Times comply without a fight. Once the NYT are out of the picture, Bradlee and his ambitious staff get to work on getting their own copy of the report. Turns out they have a journalist on staff (Ben Bagdikian played by the excellent Bob Odenkirk) who used to work at RAND and who has suspected Ellsberg from the beginning. The two hook up and Ellsberg is anxious to get him the Papers for release noting going to jail is worth it if it ends the war.
From there, the movie is about the moral, economical, and political struggle at the editorial/ownership level of The Post to release the papers. Graham is putting the Post on the Stock Market and investors are wary of anything that might harm the paper (such as the editorial board and owner going to jail) but Bradlee is insistent that there is no paper without a commitment to publish the truth and if the government is dictating what can and can't be published then there is no Post anyway. He ultimately wins Graham's favor and the Post gets lumped into a Supreme Court hearing with the NYT and ultimately win, with the SC noting, 'The press is for the governed - not the governors...'. It's mostly a fine, and not very suspenseful, film, and it casts a pretty big shadow over today's political climate (there are a few forced lines suggesting the same, but no need to get into that here). The movie ends with Nixon (whose every line in the film is from actual recorded conversations of him I believe ) instructing staff that no WaPo reporters, or photographers, are ever allowed in the WH, and that he will fire anyone who allows otherwise. We then close at a break-in at the Watergate....
So, again, all well done and fine - great acting and a compelling piece of history. I did think it was a bit interesting to almost completely ignore the work of the NYT and Sheehan who isn't even in the movie (only named). Of course, when asked why the movie was called 'The Post' instead of 'The Times', Hanks said, 'If they had Katherine Graham, we'd be calling it The New York Times.'
Of the other Oscar moves I've seen so far, this is maybe the one I would recommend least. See Ladybird, Darkest Hour, Three Billboards, or Dunkirk first if you haven't.
Welcome comments from others who have seen the movie and as an aside, Revisionist History author Malcolm Gladwell did a really excellent piece on RAND Corporation's involvement in the Vietnam war and how this sort of ties into the Pentagon Papers...
http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/02-saigon-1965
In the early 1960s, the Pentagon set up a top-secret research project in an old villa in downtown Saigon. The task? To interview captured North Vietnamese soldiers and guerrillas in order to measure their morale: Was the relentless U.S. bombing pushing them to the brink of capitulation?
Saigon, 1965 is the story of three people who got caught up in that effort: a young Vietnamese woman, a refugee from Nazi Germany, and a brilliant Russian émigré. All saw the same things. All reached different conclusions. The Pentagon effort, run by the Rand Corporation, was one of the most ambitious studies of enemy combatants ever conducted—and no one could agree on what it meant.
Mai Elliott, working in the RAND villa on Rue Pasteur. The windows are taped to prevent the glass from shattering in case of an explosion from a mortar round.
