News is only the first draft of history is a quote that The Post , a movie I watched over the weekend , attributes to Phil Graham, the publisher and co-owner of The Washington Post , whereas Wiki would have us believe that someone else had used it earlier. Be that as it may The Post ( directed by Steven Spielberg) is a brilliant and thoroughly enjoyable movie on the theme of media. I am a sucker for this type of film. New Delhi Times , perhaps an early Indian movie of this genre , was made by Mr Romesh Sharma , a gentleman from my hometown who even as an unknown tyro at the time had such a stellar script that the great Shashi Kapoor was persuaded to work gratis for it.
When The Post opens , America is stuck in the quagmire of the Vietnam War and Katherine Graham ( Meryl Streep) , after the suicide death of her husband Phil Graham, is thrust into the role of the sole owner and publisher of The Washington Post. There are also talks underway for the paper — a provincial rag at the time — to get enlisted in the stock exchange. Ben Bradlee ( Tom Hanks) is it’s editor.
The movie takes us to behind the scenes action that culminates in The Post publishing the Pentagon Papers, a cachet of leaked reports on the political subterfuge behind the US involvement in the Vietnam War. This reportage first by The New York Times and then The Washington Post and a whole host of other American newspapers thereafter was instrumental in turning the tide of American public opinion against the war. The political resistance that it overcame and a seminal Supreme Court Judgement on the right of newspapers to publish truth uncomfortable to politicians — a Judge opined that the media is for the governed and not the governors — were instrumental in bolstering the freedom of the press in the country.
The movie deftly and seamlessly takes us into the tense newspaper office deliberations , the corporate boardroom parleys, the Supreme Court , the Nixon Whitehouse — shown in eerie silhouette with sinister voiceovers — and the personal life of Katherine Mayer , who while struggling with the legacy of the great men in her life — her illustrious father and husband — finally makes a decision that shows her coming of age as a humane , warm , brave , intelligent, sensitive newspaper owner not shying, on the pain of her own personal ruin , to take on the political and financial muscle of the establishment to publish the truth. The movie is indeed as much about this remarkable woman as it is about the newspaper that she recreated
The last scene in which we are shown an ongoing police despatch of a burglary in progress at the Democratic National Convention at Watergate , informs us that The Post in now on the cusp of something even greater and breathtaking in the journalistic firmament.