Recently I sat down and watched the Oscar-nominated 2017 movie, The Post. My grandfather recently watched the movie and highly recommended it to me. At first, I was unsure if I would like it, but after taking the time to watch it, I found The Post to be an informative, engaging story that got me invested in the characters and taught some valuable lessons. At no point did the movie drag, and I thought the opening especially was fantastic. These next three blog posts will be my thoughts on The Post. I will give a broad overview of the movie (this post, Part 1), talk about a day in the newsroom (Part 2), and finally about the fundamental themes of the film (Part 3).
To start with the overview (major spoilers from this point on), The Post takes place in the 1970s and follows the leak of a classified government study on the Vietnam War. Based on a true story, the film follows Katharine Graham (Meryl Street) as she tries to manage her newspaper company, The Washington Post, and deal with the leak. The leaked study shows that the U.S. Government had known that the Vietnam War was unwinnable for quite some time but had refused to pull out anyway. As Daniel Ellsberg says in the movie, "If the public ever saw these papers, they would turn against the war. Covert ops, guaranteed debt, rigged elections? It's all in there. Ike, Kennedy, Johnson... they violated the Geneva Convention. They lied to Congress, and they lied to the public. They knew we couldn't win and still sent boys to die." A rival newspaper, The New York Times, gets its hands on this study and publishes part of it. President Nixon, furious at the leak, orders them to cease publication of any other materials from the study and attempts to prosecute them. Through the course of the movie, The Washington Post gets its hands on the same study, and Graham is forced to decide whether or not to publish it. Doing so could mean the destruction of her company and severe jail time. However, she feels that the public has a right to know, and urged on by her editor, Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks), Graham runs the story anyway. Tensions are high, but the ensuing court battles end in the newspapers' favor, and Graham manages to hold on to her company. Overall, I found The Post to be a great watch and well worth the time.
The next articles will talk more about the mechanics of running a newspaper, such as source confidentially, competition, and short deadlines.
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