A Post on The Post

Looking at its "stat page," the movie The Post seems as though it could have bred in a lab to win Oscars. It stars Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks. It's directed by Steven Spielberg. It's about the Pentagon Papers -- specifically, the decision by the owner of Washington Post in the early 1970s to stand up for the First Amendment, by publishing leaked information harmful to the Nixon administration and executive branch. Star power. Timely subject. Oscar please.

But something happened on the way to being anointed. They neglected to get top writing talent.

To be clear, The Post is a perfectly fine movie. It's worth seeing (later, on home video, at the least). But it's missing that certain extra oomph to make it Best Picture worthy in my mind. The script does have a perspective on things, one even more timely and capital-I Important than the "free press" and "truth to power" elements; the clear arc of the story is that of a woman blazing a trail in a male-dominated environment, and proving as tough and capable as anyone.

Yet the movie also amounts to a somewhat dry recitation of events. There are a lot of characters here, and vanishing few of them have much of a personality. The film cheats on this by casting lots of actors "you love from that thing," inviting you to graft your goodwill onto these ciphers. They do what the story (and history) requires of them, but writers Liz Hannah and Josh Singer really don't give much explanation of what's motivating them. The backbone of the movie, for example, is about the lead character, Katharine Graham, transforming from pushover to leader, yet it never really offers evidence of key moments in that transformation. (I guarantee you that Meryl Streep made decisions about what motivated the change; it's a shame the rest of us didn't get to see it.)

The film also falls short on keeping sight of the personal stakes in all this. Being the second major "Newspaper Movie" in two years (a fact Seth Meyers recently joked about in a viral clip from his late night show), it's easy to want to compare. Spotlight did a much better job of reminding the audience why this fight was "worth having." The principles of The Post feel squishier and loftier, not in as easy reach. It's a much more intellectual endeavor.

But if I seem too down on the movie, it's only because the people involved here are capable of better. The truth is, even if they can't spin straw into gold here, they can spin it into something perhaps like silver. Steven Spielberg can direct a movie like this blindfolded, and it's not that it seems like he isn't trying, it's that he can make it so naturally and effectively that you aren't always even aware of the work. There are plenty of tricky camera moves throughout, from long push-ins on moving cars to elaborate single takes that weave through crowded houses. Framing and staging always subconsciously reinforce the power dynamics. It's really quite clever, and I suspect if I were to watch it again, I would notice plenty more great directorial decisions that slipped by me the first time.

Meryl Streep is excellent. As I said earlier, she clearly made choices about the arc of her character, and the change shows even if the audience can't fully track the reasons. We've seen her portray plenty of "force of nature" women over the years; this performance is notable for the bulk of the story in which her character isn't that self-assured. Halting, doubting, and timid, it's compelling to watch Streep inhabit someone like this, and helps the audience cheer her on to glory all the more when we know what she's capable of.

Tom Hanks is great too. He's a rough, barking "newspaper man," and because he's Tom Hanks, this man never comes off as unlikable. You want to charge into battle at his side. And the list of other great actors here is impossibly long: Sarah Paulson, Bob Odenkirk, David Cross, Bradley Whitford, Bruce Greenwood, Matthew Rhys, Alison Brie, Carrie Coon, Jessie Plemons, Zach Woods, Michael Stuhlbarg (in his third Oscar nominated film this year!), and more. Some of them are only here for one or two scenes, but they're seemingly happy to do even that little to work with these other actors, and for Steven Speilberg.

At the end of the day, The Post is a fine movie from which I expected much more. I understand why it's in the Oscar hunt, and I understand why no one seems to be calling it a serious contender. I grade it a B.