The Post (2017)
Directed by Steven Spielberg
A cover-up that spanned four U.S. Presidents pushed the country's first female newspaper publisher and a hard-driving editor to join an unprecedented battle between journalist and government. Inspired by true events.
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26 films that influenced The Post
What critics say influenced The Post
Lo que consigue es un filme que muy bien podría proyectarse en una doble tanda con All the President’s Men, en el que rinde tributo a uno de sus héroes cinematográficos, el gran Sidney Lumet, al tiempo que produce uno de los mejores largometrajes de este periodo actual de su filmografía, predominado por historias basadas en hechos verídicos.
You could see The Post (and the filmmakers clearly do) as a kind of prequel to All the President’s Men.
Movie fans will enjoy seeing Hanks as Bradlee, the iconic news figure who was previously immortalized by Jason Robards in 1976’s “All the President’s Men,” and Streep’s performance is meant to underscore a theme of female empowerment (Graham was also the first female CEO of a Fortune 500 company).
This film precedes Watergate – and all of the events in Alan J. Pakula’s masterpiece “All the President’s Men” – and explores how the publication established itself as one of the country’s (and consequently the world’s) most fearless and trusted publications.
The elephant in the room is Alan J. Pakula’s classic 1977 Watergate film All the President’s Men, which infamously reduced Graham’s integral role at the Post to an off-color joke.
The great newspaper films in history (“All The President’s Men,” “Zodiac,” “ Spotlight ”) all have one crucial thing in common: they’re not really about newspapers.
There are film noir-ish scenes of paranoia, in which the camera circles a gloriously kaftanned Streep from above while she’s on the phone, trapped in indecision during the film’s middle sequences, as well as shots of diagonally-cut architecture reminiscent of one of the great films of 1970s political anxiety, The Parallax View.
Instead of the shadowy film-noir thrillers that inspired Pakula, Spielberg reaches further back into cinema history by imitating pre-World War II newspaper comedies like His Girl Friday, Libeled Lady, and Nothing Sacred, with their bright tone, deadline-driven pace, rapid-fire dialogue, and editors and reporters who are always quick with a wised-up joke.
Instead of the shadowy film-noir thrillers that inspired Pakula, Spielberg reaches further back into cinema history by imitating pre-World War II newspaper comedies like His Girl Friday, Libeled Lady, and Nothing Sacred, with their bright tone, deadline-driven pace, rapid-fire dialogue, and editors and reporters who are always quick with a wised-up joke.
“Stop the presses!” It’s a great movie-cliché moment, enjoyed and employed by everyone from Michael Keaton in The Paper to Gonzo in The Great Muppet Caper.
Spielberg in The Post seems to channel director Ron Howard, who directed The Paper (1994), with Michael Keaton.
That kind of label has often translated into turgid, self-congratulatory pictures (The King’s Speech, A Beautiful Mind, Crash, Gandhi, etc.).
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Instead of the shadowy film-noir thrillers that inspired Pakula, Spielberg reaches further back into cinema history by imitating pre-World War II newspaper comedies like His Girl Friday, Libeled Lady, and Nothing Sacred, with their bright tone, deadline-driven pace, rapid-fire dialogue, and editors and reporters who are always quick with a wised-up joke.
But it is the greatest newspaper movie since All the President's Men, the best film about journalism since 1987's Broadcast News and Spielberg's finest since Saving Private Ryan two decades ago.
The Post isn’t really about Ellsberg, whose story was told in a cable movie from 1993, The Pentagon Papers, starring James Spader.
The WWII epic Empire of the Sun takes place after the 1939 release of Gone with the Wind , but the background poster art in the film stems from the 1967 reissue.
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“Stop the presses!” It’s a great movie-cliché moment, enjoyed and employed by everyone from Michael Keaton in The Paper to Gonzo in The Great Muppet Caper.
Screenwriters Liz Hannah and Josh Singer (writer of a thread of screen stories about journalism such as “Spotlight,” “The Fifth Estate,” and “The West Wing”) use the cataclysmic event in American identity, the ‘Watergate’ period, as a lens to view the increasing volatility and hostility of our contemporary political climate and the propagandistic ‘fake news’ ethos that’s permeated the zeitgeist.
Working off a strong script by Liz Hannah (her first feature screenplay) and Josh Singer ( Spotlight , The Fifth Estate ), Spielberg offers a multilayered tale where not only The Washington Post rises to the occasion, but so does Kay Graham, finally claiming her rightful place at the top, in a nice feminist twist.