Set in 1971, The Post depicts the true story of attempts by journalists at The Washington Post to publish the infamous Pentagon Papers, a set of classified documents regarding the 20-year involvement of the United States government in the Vietnam War and earlier in French Indochina back to the 1940s.
In 1966, U.S. State Department analyst Daniel Ellsberg is sent to Vietnam, where he embeds with American soldiers and documents the on-the-ground reality of the Vietnam War. He soon realizes that the war is hopeless, and, when he returns to the U.S. to deliver his report, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara agrees. However, Ellsberg is left disillusioned when McNamara continues to publicly justify further deployments of American troops.
In 1971, Katharine Graham has been the owner and publisher of provincial newspaper The Washington Post for eight years since the suicide of her husband Phil Graham, the former publisher, and the death of her father Eugene Meyer, the former owner. Although she lacks journalistic and business experience, she hopes to take the company public and secure investment for higher-quality news of national importance. She personally appoints the bullish Ben Bradlee as the Post's executive editor as he agrees with her vision, but her male-dominated board still view her as a housewife in over her head. She is also still a prominent D.C. socialite, and Bradlee has to repeatedly assert his editorial independence whenever the paper runs a story critical of her friends.
McNamara, one of these friends, tells Graham that an "unflattering" story about him will be published in The New York Times—the first of Sheehan's scoops from Ellsberg's documents. As the Post's editors discuss how they might pursue the story further, an anonymous woman leaves one hundred pages of the leaked documents on a reporter's desk. Bradlee is delighted at the chance to get ahead of the Times on a major story in the Post's own backyard, but a federal district court issues its injunction against the Times. Graham—concerned about both the Post's liability and her own social standing—orders Bradlee to respect the injunction.
Post assistant editor Ben Bagdikian tracks down Ellsberg, a former colleague at RAND, as the source. Ellsberg gives him the full 4,000-page report and Post reporters dig through the pages, but their attorneys advise against publishing lest the Nixon administration file criminal charges. Agonizing over whether to publish, Graham confers with McNamara and her disapproving board. They warn that she will face social exile in D.C., retaliation from President Nixon, and loss of investors. However, Bradlee argues that they have a strong public interest defense, and it could transform the Post into the important journalistic institution that Graham had been dreaming of. The documents also revealed that his own circle of elite D.C. friends, including John F. Kennedy, lied to him to garner sympathetic coverage; he argues that Graham's own friendships with figures like McNamara should not influence her decision.
Graham gives the go-ahead to print. However, Bagdikian then reveals he used the same source as Sheehan instead of independently verifying the documents. The Post's lawyers panic—it puts Graham and Bradlee in contempt of court under the original injunction, and opens them to further criminal liability under the Espionage Act.
The Post and Times appear before the Supreme Court to plead their First Amendment rights. In solidarity, other newspapers across the U.S. publish information from Ellsberg's documents. On June 30, 1971, the Supreme Court rules 6–3 in the newspapers' favor, vindicating Graham's decision. In response, Nixon bars the Post from ever entering the White House again.
Previous HQ of The Washington Post on 15th Street NW in Washington, D.C.
In October 2016, Amy Pascal won a bid for the rights to the screenplay The Post, written by Liz Hannah.[16] In February 2017, Steven Spielberg cancelled The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara with The Weinstein Company after a casting setback, and consequently opened his schedule to other potential films to direct.[5] The following month, it was announced that Spielberg was in negotiations to direct and produce the film, with Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks in talks for the roles of Katharine Graham and Ben Bradlee, respectively.[17]The Post is the first time that Spielberg, Streep, and Hanks had all worked together on a film.[18][19]
Spielberg read the screenplay and decided to direct the film as soon as possible, saying that "when I read the first draft of the script, this wasn't something that could wait three years or two years — this was a story I felt we needed to tell today."[20] Spielberg worked on The Post while post-production work continued on the visual-effects-heavy Ready Player One, a situation familiar to him from concurrently producing, in the early 1990s, Jurassic Park and Schindler's List.[21]Josh Singer was hired to re-write the screenplay ten weeks before filming.[22]
As filming commenced, a number of New York Times figures who were associated with the Pentagon Papers case—among them James Greenfield, James Goodale, Allan M. Siegal, and Max Frankel—objected to the film's production due to the script's lack of emphasis on the Times' role in breaking the story.[23] Goodale, who was at the time the Times's in-house counsel, later called the film "a good movie but bad history."[24]
Spielberg used the real audio tapes of Nixon in the White House: no voice actor was used for the role, who appears only silhouetted.[25]
Writing for The New York Times, Manohla Dargis indicated some high points in the costume design used in the film stating, "The costume designer Ann Roth subtly brightens Katharine, taking her from leaden gray to free-flowing gold."[30]
When Steven first approached me about [The Post], we talked about Kay Graham and Ben Bradlee and what opportunities the film might present for me. When I've thought about it, I've never been in a newsroom – you know, with the clattering of a thousand typewriters in those days... Now no one's using them, it's all silent. But it must have been quite a noisy environment, really – everyone running back and forth. So I thought, "Well, how are you gonna get any music in a newsroom?"
The score for the film was written by John Williams; it is his 28th collaboration with Spielberg.[31] The music is a combination of traditional orchestral instrumentation and what Williams has called "very light, computerised electronic effects."[32] Williams was originally attached to write the music for Spielberg's 2018 film Ready Player One, but, because both films had similar post-production schedules, Williams chose to work on The Post, while Alan Silvestri composed for Ready Player One.[32] Spielberg has said that The Post was a rare instance in which he went to the recording sessions "having not heard a note" in advance.[33]
Recording began on October 30, 2017, in Los Angeles.[34] The soundtrack was released digitally by Sony Classical Records on December 22, 2017, and in physical form on January 12, 2018.[35]
Release
The Post premiered at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. on December 14, 2017.[9] It began a limited theatrical release in the United States on December 22, 2017, and a wide release on January 12, 2018.[36] The film is distributed internationally through Amblin Partners' distribution agreements with Universal Pictures, Reliance Entertainment, and Entertainment One.[37] The film was released by Reliance in India.[38] Tom Hanks said he would not be interested in appearing at a potential White House screening for President Donald Trump.[39]
Marketing
The first official image from The Post was released on October 31, 2017.[40] The trailer for The Post premiered exclusively on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, on November 7, 2017,[41] and the film's poster, designed by BLT Communications, was released the next day.[42][43] The first TV spot, titled "Uncover the Truth", was released on November 21, 2017. Music for the trailer featured the Boston Typewriter Orchestra.[44][45]
The Post grossed $81.9 million in the United States and Canada, and $97.9 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $179.8 million, against a production budget of $50 million.[6]
During The Post's limited opening weekend, December 22 to 24, it grossed $526,011 (and a total of $762,057 over the four-day Christmas weekend) from nine theaters. The following weekend, the film grossed $561,080 for a per-theater average of $62,342, one of the highest of 2017.[46] The film had its wide release alongside the openings of The Commuter, Paddington 2 and Proud Mary, and was projected to gross around $20 million from 2,819 theaters over the weekend.[47] It made $5.9 million on its first day and $18.6 million over the weekend (and a four-day MLK weekend total of $23.4 million), finishing second at the box office behind holdover Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle.[48] 66% of its opening weekend audience was over the age of 35.[49] It dropped 37% the following weekend to $12.2 million, finishing 4th behind Jumanji and newcomers 12 Strong and Den of Thieves.[50] It dropped to 5th in its third week of wide release, grossing $8.9 million.[51]
Critical response
On review aggregatorRotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 88% based on 409 reviews, with an average rating of 7.90/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "The Post's period setting belies its bitingly timely themes, brought compellingly to life by director Steven Spielberg and an outstanding ensemble cast."[52] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 83 out of 100, based on 51 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[53] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale,[48][54] while PostTrak reported 63% of audience members gave the film a "definite recommend".[49]
Alonso Duralde of TheWrap praised the acting and Spielberg's direction, though he noted the script was too on-the-nose at times, saying, "The Post passes the trickiest tests of a historical drama: it makes us understand that decisions validated by the lens of history were difficult ones to make in the moment, and it generates suspense over how all the pieces fell into place to make those decisions come to fruition."[55] David Ehrlich of IndieWire gave the film an A− and wrote: "Nobody needs to be reminded that history tends to go in circles, but The Post is so vital because it captures the ecstasy of trying to break the chain and bend things towards justice; defending the fundamental tenets of the Constitution hasn't been this much fun since Hamilton."[56]
Chris Nashawaty, writing for Entertainment Weekly, gave the film a positive review, but also compared it with previous journalism films such as All the President's Men stating, "Spielberg makes these crucial days in American history easy to follow. But if you look at The Post next to something like All the President's Men, you see the difference between having a story passively explained to you and actively helping to untangle it. That's a small quibble with an urgent and impeccably acted film. But it's also the difference between a very good movie and a great one."[57]
Manohla Dargis of The New York Times awarded the film an NYT Critic's Pick with a strong acknowledgment of Spielberg as director saying, "Mostly, (the Post decision to publish) went down fast, a pace that Mr. Spielberg conveys with accelerated rhythms, flying feet, racing cameras and an enjoyably loose approach to the material. With his virtuosic, veteran crew, Mr. Spielberg paints the scene vividly and with daubs of beauty; most notably, he creates distinct visual realms for the story's two main overlapping, at times colliding, worlds. Katharine reigns over one; at first she's all but entombed in her darkly lighted, wood-paneled empire. Ben rules the other, overseeing the talking and typing warriors of the glaring, noisily freewheeling newsroom".[30]
Matt Bobkin, writing for Exclaim!, gave the film a 6 out of 10 score, saying the film "has all the makings of an awards season hit, but is too calculated to reflect today's ragged, tenuous sociopolitical climate."
Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com reflected on the film nearly two years after its release, noting that due to the film's accessibility and Spielberg's invisible style of direction, critics underrated the film and tended to take its story literally such as by fact-checking historical details, in spite of the film being a "coded commentary" and doubling "as a stealth portrait of the media’s responsibility in the age of Trump, and in any age."[58]
The film portrays the original role that The New York Times had in breaking the Pentagon Papers and then emphasizes The Washington Post's subsequent involvement.[60][61] In an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review, former New York Times associates James Greenfield, who coordinated the Pentagon Papers project as the Times foreign editor; James Goodale, the Times' general counsel at the time; and Max Frankel, the Times' Washington bureau chief when the Papers were published, criticized the film's more minor portrayal of the paper,[62] although The New York Times is shown as publishing the Pentagon Papers before The Washington Post and having also set the stage for the major legal battle between the press and the United States government.[60] The newspaper also won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for its contributions.
The 1972 Pulitzer jury of journalists noted in their recommendation not only the significance of Daniel Ellsberg's Pentagon Papers leak, but also that of Times reporters Neil Sheehan, Hedrick Smith, Fox Butterfield and E. W. Kenworthy, and stated that their effort was "a combination of investigative reporting, analysis, research, and writing — all of which added to a distinctly meritorious public service, not only for readers of The Times but also for an entire nation."[61] Goodale noted in an article for The Daily Beast that the Times published the Papers after Ellsberg had leaked them to Sheehan, and further stated that the film "creates a false impression that the Post was a major player in such publication. It's as though Hollywood had made a movie about the Times' triumphant role in Watergate."[24] On PBS NewsHour, Goodale further said, "Although a producer has artistic license, I think it should be limited in a situation such as this, so that the public comes away with an understanding of what the true facts are in this case . . . And I think that if you're doing a movie now, when [President Donald] Trump is picking on the press for 'fake news', you want to be authentic. You don't want to be in any way fake."[63]
All the President's Men: 1976 Best Picture nominee about the Post's later efforts to break the Watergate scandal, with Ben Bradlee also portrayed, and which opens at the same moment in which The Post closes - Frank Wills' discovery of the Watergate break-in.
^ abGleiberman, Owen (December 6, 2017). "Film Review: 'The Post'". Variety. Los Angeles, California: Penske Media Corporation. Archived from the original on November 3, 2018. Retrieved December 19, 2018. PRODUCTION: A 20th Century Studios release of a DreamWorks Pictures, Amblin Entertainment, 20th Century Studios, Participant Media, Star Thrower Entertainment production.
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