The Post (2017)

  A middling Spielberg is still pretty good.

Katherine Graham (Meryl Streep) finds herself the owner of the Washington Post newspaper after being widowed.  The paper belonged to Graham's father, but he willed it to her husband instead of her.  For the paper's financial health, she is making an Initial Public Offering (IPO), on the advice of her board of directors.  It seems fine but Katherine worries about a boilerplate clause stating that if there is a catastrophic event, the bank can pull out of the deal.  Her lawyer (Tracy Letts) assures her that it will be fine.  Then Daniel Ellsberg (Matthew Rhys) begins publishing the Pentagon Papers through the New York Times.  The papers detail a cover-up going back four presidential administrations regarding America's losses in the Vietnam War, a war kept up in order to save face and pretend we were not in fact losing our shirts.  The Nixon administration immediately uses the legal system to slap down the Times.  In the meantime, the Post's editor-in-chief, Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks), hounds his reporters over getting their own coverage of the largest scandal in recent memory.  Ben Bagdikian (Bob Odenkirk) recalls an observer named Ellsberg when he was covering the war.  Now the decision rests with Katherine Graham:  publish and risk the ire of a sitting (and vindictive) president, potential jail time for violating the Espionage Act, and financial ruin or don't publish and destroy the integrity of the Fourth Estate.

This was a pretty low-key movie to discuss access journalism and the moral imperative of presenting the truth to readers.  I saw almost no marketing and I don't remember reading any reviews that touched on it.  And it's especially ironic now considering the Washington Post is owned by a narcissistic billionaire and nearly every news outlet is obsessed with access and clicks to feed a 24-hr cycle that runs exclusively on outrage.

This would be a good double-feature with The Most Dangerous Man in America, the documentary about Ellsberg, like a fiction/non-fiction thing.  The Post uses audio from Nixon's obsessive tape recordings, which is a nice touch, and some historical TV clips as well to really bring you into the room of the time.  Rhys doesn't have a large part but he stands out for his grim-jawed adherence to The Truth. The writers made Graham's character more of a #girlboss arc than I felt was warranted but I mean, it's Meryl Streep so...  You could give that woman the part of a goldfish and she'd make you believe she had gills.

I didn't hate it but I can't say I super loved it.  It was interesting.  Unfortunately, it is not streaming (except to rent or buy).  I got it on disc from Netflix.  It's probably worth a rental, though.