Tom Hanks & Meryl Streep Are Good at Acting in “The Post”
And Other Controversial Opinions
As I said in the title, after watching this stirring tale of government secrets, corruption, and the power of the free press, I’ve come to the opinion that Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep are rather good at acting, and enjoyable to watch. Also, and I know I’m getting downright avant-garde with my read here, so bear with me: Steven Spielberg is also better at directing than a significant portion of the other directors working today. Again, not trying to make any waves, but I came away from this film with that strong impression.
I kid, of course. While plenty of movies with great casts and great directors have fizzled upon their release, the reach of their collective creative ambitions exceeding their grasp, this Lebron-era-Miami-Heat-esque superteam was exceedingly unlikely to fail. Needless to say, they did not, and the result is another worthy entry in my dear Uncle Steven’s fruitful “hard-edged Frank Capra” period, facing down the ease with which Americans abandon our principles in the name of political expediency *cough cough* the same way Lincoln faced our racism and Bridge of Spies condemned the vindictiveness of our national character, while showing us how the best of us can transcend those lesser angels of our nature.
As in Spotlight, the contemporary audience knows the importance of the reportage in question before the characters in the movie do, which gives the film a sense of stakes even when it slows down: you know Nixon is coming for them, and you know the paper needs to survive to destroy him in the future, like John Connor. Unlike Spotlight, there is no real procedural element, because we’re told about contents of the Pentagon Papers and the identity of the leaker (a quietly effective Matthew Rhys) in the first three minutes. Without the time-tested beats of a procedural to keep the audience flush with anticipation, it falls on the characters to stoke the drama. They do so with aplomb.
Washington Post owner Katherine Graham was an heiress, a socialite, and a classically tight-assed creature of the Protestant patriarchy; the sort of uber-Wasp who was remote to anyone outside of her class in 1971, and downright alien to modern-day sensibilities. However, in the able hands of Meryl “this is why America should have knighthood” Streep, she is painted in subtle shades of shyness, hesitation, and self-doubt. For most of the film, every word out of her mouth is followed by an apology, her confidence wavering and building five times in the course of a single sentence. The rarefied Mrs. Graham is brought down to earth, and becomes a universally feminine figure.
In the end, her lack of intersectional, girl-power credibility is the very thing that makes the character’s quiet but growing resolve so revelatory. She was raised to fear the big, important business of men, and when Bruce Greenwood’s magnificently-acted-but-tragically-coiffed Bob McNamara screams in her face about Nixon’s vindictive paranoia, confronting her just like he would any man in that scenario, we see her gripped with physical terror, bewildered by a level of aggression from her genteel friend and dinner party guest that she’s never had to face before. Then, like someone getting punched in the face for the first time and realizing that they can take a hit, she summons herself and leans in.
There’s no ahistorical, crowd-pleasing, burn-this-bitch-down moment, à la Taraji P. Henson tearing Kevin Costner a new asshole in Hidden Figures, but the audience doesn’t need one. Meryl never drops the character’s delicate sensibilities, reacting to the threat of prison as if she’s facing a social embarrassment. With every successive line, her confidence ebbs a little less, and flows a little more, and you can see her footing in the world growing firmer, frame by frame. Again, and not to wear this point out, the character is played by Meryl Streep.
With all due deference to Mr. Hanks, Bob Odenkirk’s Dan Bagdikian is the close second to the Queen Bee in this one: he walks away with this the movie every time he’s on screen. He was cast for a reason, in that Better Call Saul gave him three seasons of practice for the role. He’s an affably schlubby and buoyant presence that elevates the film whenever he’s present— unlike Saul’s fundamentally amoral character who wishes he were good, Dan is a fundamentally good character who wishes he were more of a sleazeball, and his being caught between the two impulses in the course of his reporting provides some of the film’s best humor (it helps that his comic spirit animal is present in the form of a bedraggled, combed-over David Cross).
Tom Hanks’s Ben Bradlee doesn’t quite amount to an Oedipal victory over his Philadelphia co-star Jason Robards’ turn in All The President’s Men, in all his gruff sexiness, but Tom’s folksy interpretation comes close. He initially seems like he’s more (eminently watchable) connective tissue than a dynamic character in his own right, present mainly to wrangle the roughly four million supporting characters. His character arc is the plot itself, more or less, and to the extent that he comes in conflict with his boss, it’s to convince her to do what the audience, from our perch on the far side of the Nixon Administration, knows to be The Right Thing™.
However, Spielberg uses that bit of dramatic irony to flip the script on the legendary editor, and his audience. Like his knowing, post-Watergate audience, Bradlee is dead certain that publishing the Pentagon Papers in defiance of a court order is doing The Right Thing, so much so that he resists considering his own complicity in the chummy government-media relationships that led to the whole mess. He was too close to Jack Kennedy, a coziness that let Kennedy get away with the very lies about Vietnam that Bradlee seeks to reveal in his paper. It’s a note that blurs the line between heroes and villains, turning the ire of the film against the system that they worked to bring down rather than any black hat (except Nixon), and deepens the film well beyond the preachy morality tale that the haterati claim it to be.
As for the lesser roles, the film takes another page from Lincoln in that it seems to avoid cutting a single real-world figure out of the story, let alone condensing anyone, no matter how minor. As in that film, there are more three-line roles than an episode of Law & Order, though they’re all filled by outstanding and well-known character actors who all make their brief appearances feel like they could’ve made for great characters if the film had more time — looking at you, Michael Stuhlbarg. When Zach Woods appeared onscreen, I looked around the theater and saw every single face light up with delight: Jared!
The brief appearances do tend to feel incomplete and a bit rushed at times, though. Jesse Plemons is charming as a lawyer who is better at his job than the film lets on at first, Richard Nixon was effective in his limited role, and Tracy Letts makes a winning Good-Dude foil for Meryl Streep’s anxieties; but Bradley Whitford is a one-note shitheel, Alison Brie is pointless, and Carrie Coon’s character feels like a waste of not only her as an actress, but of the real Meg Greenfield’s wit and relationship with Mrs. Graham. Also, she’s burdened with the most on-the-nose, transparently cheesy monolog imaginable at the end, though it did admittedly make me cry a little.
I cried a few times, actually. This is a fascinating and important story, told well, and it’s an American story, about who we are and who we choose to be as a people. It’s worth seeing for Meryl Streep alone, but the film as a whole is an embarrassment of riches, more exciting than it has any right to be, sumptuously shot in the bright-yet-august tones of DC, and directed by a master. See it.
Also, there’s apparently some sort of statement it’s making about our present political situation, but I was never able to discern what that is. A little too subtle for me, I guess…