The Post

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Bechdal Test: Pass

Recommend to a friend? Yes

Summary:

 It's 1971 and Katherine Graham (Meryl Streep) has inherited The Washington Post from her husband after his death. The is the first female publisher of a large American newspaper and almost all of the men around her believe she is incapable of successfully filling this position. Soon after taking this position The New York Time publishes top secret government documents which show how the government had been lying to the people of America about the Vietnam War. The staff as the Washington Post, lead by Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) have to race to find the documents and navigate the legal complications of publishing when the president will do all in his power to stop the press publishing.


Review:

The post is a very special and unusual film. This is a film which mainly involves people in rooms talking and there are essentially no action scenes and yet I found I was on the edge of my seat for much of it. I cried at several points and laughed at others, there are several reasons why I enjoyed this film so much.

Firstly, the performances in this film are exceptional, particularly from Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks. These two actors are two of the most recognisable faces in the industry and yet I instantly believed in their characters and believed that they were those people. This meant from the beginning I felt very involved and emotionally invested in the film.

It is not hard to spot the parallels between the Nixon Administration in this film and the current Trump Administration. Both consistently lie to the country and have used the power of the president to try to limit the freedom of the press. Stephen Spielberg actually said that 'the urgency to create this film was because of the Trump Administration'.  It is this element of the film which make is so easy to connect with this story, whether you already know this story or not and means that the dilemma's of the characters so emotionally engaging.

One reason I got so much from this film is that although it is about corruption in government, about journalism and the newspaper industry it is also a film about female empowerment and about misogyny. This film proves that female empowerment can be part of any and every film and it does not have to be the only topic of the film. The subject is addressed subtly and realistically and I found it deeply moving.

This is not to say that this film is perfect, there are several important missteps. This is a film about the Vietnam war and yet apart from the first scene we barely see  the war at all. There is one small scene at the beginning but I feel that this scene fails to do the only thing it should do; show how horrific the war was. Yes, it's violent but there is no emotion in he short scene and it fails to engage the audience with the horrific and pointless nature of the war. If it is not possible to do this in a short scene then maybe it is best not to include it in the film. I feel that the war itself was something they could either have shown in depth or not at all. This scene added nothing to the film. Instead the time could more effectively been spent explaining the illegal and abhorrent ways in which the office of the president had misled the country.

Despite any reservations I really enjoyed this excellent film. When it finished I felt elated and determined to do more to make the world a better place. The Post shows that we all have a moral responsibility to stand up against things we do not agree with and that is we do so we can help to create a better future.