About The Post

It seems a fair guess that Spielberg decided to make The Post because you can imagine every single element being utterly disdained by Trump:

*  key character:   a woman forced by circumstance to make her own way in a male dominated corporate world, and succeeds;

*  said woman makes an important right (not Right) decision in the public's interest, contrary to what the powerful men in the White House want;

*  lying politicians undone by a whisteblower and dedicated reporters willing to take risks;

*  a talk heavy story - hardly any guns or fights at all.

The perfect anti-Trump movie!  It's hilarious to think  that the White House asked for a screening (not sure if it was given);  I suspect Trump would have just said "no thanks" if told it was on, or walked out after 10 minutes claiming boredom.

I thought it was very good - not earth shatteringly remarkable, but a well directed, largely well acted, and (from what I can gather) only mildly fictionalised recreation of an important moment of US history of particular resonance to politics today.    There are one or two pretty static bits of background exposition near the start, but the story picks up speed and ends up quite engaging and satisfying. 

Even though it shares the same inevitability of Bridge of Spies, in that it is a true story and we pretty much know the ending, I thought it was significantly better than that movie, which I really felt had no surprises or complexity of any kind.   I remain a bit puzzled as to why so many reviewers praised it so highly.

One other point of comparison with Bridge:   this may seem minor, but there was something about the look of the rooms and streets in that film that seemed to me to look too much like a fake recreation of the era.   (Not sure that any other viewer in the world was thinking about art direction as I was, but there you go.)   On the other hand, The Post somehow looked to my eye to be much more convincingly of its day.   There, I've made some art director happy.  Unless it was the same person for both movies, of course.

Spielberg's use of hand held camera in some sequences is, as usual, fluid and not unsettling as it is with some other directors.   He just knows how to add subtle interest to scenes via camera movement and framing.   I think, to be objective, that there were a couple of "overtalking" scenes between characters that did not ring true (I think Spielberg used to do this in some of his earlier movies), but this is a very minor quibble about a movie in which, in large part, my Spielberg admiration was amply satisfied.