THE POST

It goes without saying that Steven Spielberg is one of the best-known directors of our time. His movies embrace a wide variety of subject material, and he has won three academy awards. In The Post, released in December 2017, Spielberg continues his long-time corroboration with composer John Williams and actor Tom Hanks.

Hanks has a real affinity for history, and this film, based on the events leading up to Watergate, showcases his passion. Meryl Streep, who has the lead role, is her usual brilliant self, and the acting is superb throughout.

The story is a profound one, given our current political climate in which we have a president and cabinet that are obviously hostile to the idea of a free and independent press. The film strives to show the historical precedent during Richard Nixon’s presidency. Given all the top-flight talent, and the timeliness of the film’s release, this movie should be a terrific theater going experience.

Unfortunately it falls short for several reasons. The first is the completely unnecessary battle scene at the beginning of the movie, which has nothing to do with the plot other than to emphasize the bloodiness of the Vietnam conflict, and of war in general. Presumably, most people are already aware that: “war is hell.”

Next, the film assumes that its viewers are all familiar with the main characters in the story; for example Streep plays Kay Graham, the owner of The Washington Post, but I can’t help but wonder how many viewers were familiar with Graham before entering the theater. The same applies to Tom Hanks’ Ben Bradley and the rest of the major cast members’ characters. Unless viewers are either well-aware of the actual history or have seen “All the President’s Men” which came out in 1976, they will be in a confused stupor for most of the first part of the film. It was a serious mistake to tell this story without first introducing us to the actual historical people on which the film is based. The end result is that most viewers feel themselves cast adrift in a sea of unfamiliar characters in a plot that should have been made clear from the outset.

Worse than the above two flaws is the failure of the director to make the main plot as fascinating as it should be. There are way too many run-on speeches, but the main problem here is that the story is told from the wrong perspective, namely of Streep’s concern about how printing the Pentagon Papers will affect her and her newspaper. Finally, there is no sense of continuity, of one idea logically leading to another.

But the single worst failing of the movie is the camera work. Perhaps it has become an artsy thing for the camera to bounce around, and to go up and down and side to side, but this is a singularly stupid idea (probably originating with The Blair Witch Project) that made me literally dizzy and almost made me leave the theater ten minutes into the movie! It has also become fashionable to focus on close-ups of the actor’s faces to such an extent that one can almost count their nose hairs. Panoramic scenes are completely absent from this movie, a great disservice to the viewing public. Spielberg of all people should be aware of this.

Steven Spielberg has directed many of the finest movies of our time. Unfortunately, this is just not one of them. It could have been a great film, had he changed the focus, re-done the beginning and, most importantly, fired the cameraman! On a scale of one to ten, I rate this a three.