Warning: This article contains spoilers about ”The Post.”
Every great Steven Spielberg movie is compared to the last great Steven Spielberg movie. Maybe you’ll think “The Post,” a new biopic about The Washington Post’s efforts to expose the American government’s duplicitous Vietnam War tactics, is Spielberg’s best since “Lincoln” in 2012. Or “Munich” in 2005. Maybe you’d harken back to 2002, calling it his finest since “Catch Me If You Can” or “Minority Report.” (We send our regrets to “The Terminal.”)
The world’s most famous director works so voraciously, and with such creative consistency, that contrasting his successes is almost futile. Even at its weakest, there’s nothing like that classic Spielberg polish.
However you valuate “The Post” against the rest of Spielberg’s oeuvre, the film’s appeal is infinite. I fell even harder for it on a second viewing, particularly one scene that ranks among the most thrilling phone calls ever captured onscreen: when Washington Post publisher Katharine “Kay” Graham decides to move forward with an exposé despite the Nixon administration’s injunction barring The New York Times from releasing the same information.
The moment crystallizes the entire film. It’s a proverbial applause break that kicks the third act into hyperdrive.
Everything that matters in “The Post” can be gleaned from this one transaction, which crackles with an old-fashioned tension that recalls dramas from the 1970s. Graham (Meryl Streep), who had never before held a job but inherited the role after her husband’s death, is managing an organization dominated by men. In June 1971, the same week that loquacious Post editor Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks) and star reporter Ben Bagdikian (Bob Odenkirk) get ahold of the classified documents that would become known as the Pentagon Papers, Graham is taking the company public, a process that again thrusts her into boardrooms monopolized by dudes. If the Post’s story is rebuked, the newspaper’s value could falter. And now the White House, which for years concealed the military’s breadth in Vietnam, is besmirching the First Amendment and threatening to silence the press. If the Post publishes, its staff risks being held in contempt of court.
Graham is tasked with adjudicating the risk. Does she hold the government accountable, thereby prioritizing resolute journalism? Or should she be a prudent businesswoman and protect her paper’s bottom line?
Graham, shimmering in a divine golden caftan, is throwing a party when her trusted adviser, Fritz Beebe (Tracy Letts), phones her from Bradlee’s den. There, Post employees are sorting through the Vietnam documents, feverishly prepping a front-page scoop for the next morning. Beebe has called to warn her of its arrival. Bradlee, in a dramatic attempt to stop Fritz from talking Graham out of publishing the story, hops on the line. Meanwhile, two of Graham’s naysaying board members (Bradley Whitford and Brent Langdon), who happen to be at her party, pick up receivers in her living room. The exchange balloons into a six-way call when editorial-page editor Phil Geyelin (Pat Healy) joins seconds later, telling Graham that two reporters are threatening to quit if the article isn’t published. The ticktock cuts rapidly between each participant, anxiety mounting. They hang in the balance, awaiting her decision.
Fox
Janusz Kaminski, the Polish cinematographer who has shot each of Spielberg’s movies since 1993′s “Schindler’s List,” knew “The Post” would brim with “big speeches and possibly boring interiors,” so he sought to ”[make] the camera be an active participant” in the commotion. Spielberg is famous for knowing exactly what his movies should look like before they begin production, and he gave Kaminski inspired instructions on how to frame Streep, the true protagonist, who is alone in an office at Graham’s house during the call.
“I say we can; he says we can’t ― there, you’re caught up,” Bradlee barks after Graham picks up the phone, referring to his and Fritz’s divided opinions on whether to publish the story. Kaminski’s camera ― placed on a platform constructed for the set ― then pans upward and rests overhead, miniaturizing Streep as she stands there, listening to the chorus of voices. And then, with a jolt of suspense, while John Williams’ strings score remains faint, the camera slowly revolves around Graham at 360 degrees. That concept came from Spielberg, and the resulting mobility is electric. The audience peers down at her, sympathetically observing her thought process, made palpable by the room’s warm lighting, as well as Streep’s tense facial expressions and jittery hand gestures. The men, meanwhile, are seen in darker, more brooding settings. Hope rests with Graham.
Because the exchange is intercut with static closeups of the men on the other end of the line, that aerial shot of Streep ― more expansive, more invigorating ― generates a certain edginess. Like the camera, everyone else orbits her.
″[Tom Hanks’ shots used] a wider angle so you can see his hand in the frame,” Kaminski said by phone last week. “With Tracy Letts, it’s a little bit more dramatic because he was the one that was the most nervous about the whole situation. The other guys [do not support] the idea of publishing because they would lose money and all that stuff. They were afraid of the legal repercussions, so those shots were more formal. Whereas, with Tom, I didn’t want to be formal; I wanted to be more energized and slightly more nervous, so it was little bit more active.”
In a stroke of genius, the camera returns to a closeup of Graham as she asks for Fritz’s guidance. “I guess I wouldn’t publish,” he says, and Kaminski steadily pushes in on her. The nervous music crescendoes, prompting even those familiar with the historical outcome to grip their seats. After pausing to let Graham ponder the advisers’ feedback, the camera tightens on her face. Suddenly, she embodies the entire frame, as if summoning all her might. Once miniature, she’s now maximized. Streep bites her lip, exhales and finally, in a moment of unbridled triumph, proclaims, “Let’s go, let’s do it.”
A pause as she considers her words.
“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go. Let’s publish.”
Fox
The camera pans out again as she hangs up, giving you permission to release the breath you’ve been holding. History is made, and Graham’s conflict is humanized.
Unlike some directors, Spielberg doesn’t ask his actors to do many takes. Kaminski said he nailed Streep’s sequence in “four or five” tries, necessary for technical purposes rather than anything concerning her performance. She’s Meryl Streep, after all. Even though the actress would slightly modify her tonality each time, Kaminski said, she “gives an importance to the written word” and needs no thorough adjustments. As Streep, Hanks and the rest of the cast have noted in press interviews, they sought to honor the saga’s prescient topicality.
“The biggest decision I made was to stay away from too much of a heavy period look,” Spielberg told The Hollywood Reporter. “I wanted this movie to feel very contemporary, just like the story. I wanted people to feel there is a [direct parallel] between what was happening in 1971 — and the Nixon administration and Washington Post — and what’s happening right now with this administration and [Trump’s] desire to control the press and freedom of speech. I used lots of nondirectional soft light. Normally, I like to use harder light, but for this movie my aim was to be very quiet about my work.”
Compared to, say, “Catch Me If You Can,” a whirlwind that required a bounty of locations and complicated lighting setups, this was “a rather simple movie to make,” Kaminski said. In late February, Spielberg was casting what he thought would be his next project, “The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara.” He was struggling to find a lead when his agents sent over the first draft of “The Post,” written by Liz Hannah. (“Spotlight” scribe Josh Singer later came aboard for a rewrite. They are both credited on the finished version.) Spielberg, now 71, dropped what he was doing and fast-tracked the shoot so it could open this year. “The Post” started filming in late May; it opened in limited release on Dec. 22, when many critics deemed it Spielberg’s best work since ― you guessed it ― “Lincoln” or “Munich” or “Minority Report” or [insert your own choice here].
“I would have shot this movie a little different,” Kaminski said when asked to reflect on the experience. “It probably would be a little bit cooler and a little bit more shadowy. But at the moment we were doing such a transparent movie — everyone was transparent. I felt I didn’t need to create any mystery there. I wanted to be understated. [...] This one was a complicated movie from a production point of view. It was complicated for Steven because of all the characters, all the performances, and how to maintain the integrity of each performance and having so many frames. For me, sometimes lighting became a little more general, particularly in that Washington Post office, where I knew the camera was going to move a lot and I couldn’t be very specific with the lighting because we would not be able to free the director to look 360 all around the actors.”
“But other than that,” he added, “it was a very enjoyable production.”
A social satire in which a man realizes he would have a better life if he were to shrink himself to five inches tall, allowing him to live in wealth and splendor.
The Post
Director - Steven Spielberg
Cast - Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Bob Odenkirk, Sarah Paulson, Bradley Whitford, Matthew Rhys
Rating - 5/5
Freedom of the Press, if it means anything at all, means the freedom to criticize and oppose.
- George Orwell
A newsroom can be an intoxicating place to be in. On certain days, tickets could be sold to the public for them to experience the electricity that surges through its coldly lit paths. Huddles form at every clearing, every desk becomes a meeting room, and the Editor-in-Chief’s cabin takes on the appearance of a government office in a small town, with harried reporters and editors barging in and out. A newsroom is no place for manners.
In this regard, Steven Spielberg’s new movie, The Post, is a documentary. It is also a euphoric, angry, and shamelessly sentimental film – the sort that only Steven Spielberg can make. When everything is said and done, and whether or not any impeachments, assassinations or resignations happen, it will be seen as one of the most important films of our times.
In this image released by 20th Century Fox, Tom Hanks portrays Ben Bradlee, left, and Meryl Streep portrays Katharine Graham in a scene from The Post. (AP)
It tells the story of the Washington Post’s race against time to release damning secret documents that proved the American government had been lying to its people about the Vietnam War, while an unprecedented battle wages on between the Nixon administration and the Ben Bradlee-led Post. The President had already shut down the New York Times’ efforts to publish the sensitive documents – it was the first time in history that the government had refused to allow a newspaper to report on a story of such magnitude – and Bradlee and his publisher (Katharine Graham) saw this an opportunity to let the world know that the Post wasn’t in the business of reading the news, but reporting the news.
Faced with insurmountable odds, and against the advice of an army of very expensive lawyers, they pushed ahead. Their reputations, the legacy of the Washington Post, and possible jail time was at risk; but the country’s future was at stake.
Like its two protagonists, The Post is a brave movie – perhaps even braver than its biggest inspiration, All the President’s Men. That film, which has developed an unchallenged reputation as the seminal film about journalism, was only released years after Richard Nixon – who in the Post, is depicted almost as a Bond villain, lurking in his sinister lair – had resigned. The current President is still in office.
In this image released by 20th Century Fox, Tom Hanks portrays Ben Bradlee in a scene from The Post. (AP)
And as played by Tom Hanks, Bradlee is just what an adversary and an editor should be – decisive, inspirational, and – as he’d like to believe – brave. The sort of unstoppable idealism that he displays is almost impossible to find anymore, regardless of what the story is. In an early scene, he refuses the White House’s demand to assign a different reporter from the usual one to cover the President’s daughter’s wedding. He could simply have agreed and avoided the trouble, but in one of the first of the film’s many rousing moments, he declares, “We cannot let the administration dictate what we can and cannot print.”
By Bradlee’s side is Katharine Graham, played by the great Meryl Streep. Her battles are different. She inherited the newspaper from her late husband, who’d been handed the reins when her own father skipped her as the rightful heir. And she didn’t question his decision. How could she? It was a different time for women. In one poignant dinner party scene, even as one of the most powerful persons in the room, when the men declare that it is time to discuss politics, she excuses herself with the other ladies to gossip about fluff pieces.
Spielberg and his longtime cinematographer, Janusz Kaminski, shoot the several of the duo’s scenes in a two-shot, and let the dialogue – partially written by Josh Singer, who previously won an Oscar for Spotlight – and their performances do the work. The camera takes a more frantic approach in the newsroom, lit with greys and blacks, dense with the smoke of a hundred cigarettes.
In this image released by 20th Century Fox, Tom Hanks portrays Ben Bradlee, left, and Meryl Streep portrays Katharine Graham in a scene from The Post. (AP)
There are, of course, parallels to be drawn between what happened during the Nixon presidency and what is happening now, under Donald Trump, and even at home. We cannot forget the FIR that was registered against a journalist not one week ago. To control the news is to control the votes, and to control the votes is to control your fate. The press has always been a vulnerable machine, both envied and coveted. They’ve tried to attack it, to tame it, to cage it and yet, like Ben Bradlee and Kay Graham, it barrels on.
There is disenfranchisement, there is constant mocking, constant blaming - and in many cases, it is deserved. As someone on the inside, I can reveal that the worst possible way for this scenario to play out is if the reader believes everything he or she reads. Everything should be questioned, even this review, because in cynicism lies the truth.
These aren’t necessarily the debates we’re either willing or confident enough to have. But we must. To doubt, to challenge, to never settle - that’s what The Post is about. Journalism has seen worse days, so there is no question that it will survive this worrisome phase in its undeterred story. We will not see it survive, but we can help make sure it stands a chance.
Watch the trailer for the Post here
Follow @htshowbiz for more
The author tweets @RohanNaahar
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Steven Spielberg is a legendary filmmaker, and for over two decades now he’s been working with the same cinematographer on every film: Janusz Kaminski. The Polish DP’s first collaboration with Spielberg was on 1993’s Schindler’s List, and it’s been a match made in heaven ever since. Kaminski’s use of bold light has resulted in iconic imagery in films ranging from Minority Report to Catch Me If You Can to War of the Worlds, and he’s showed off his dynamism shooting non-Spielberg films like The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and The Judge, as well as the Lady Gaga music video for “Alejandro.”
Kaminski has a knack for striking lighting choices and cinematography that traffics in visual metaphor, and that’s certainly the case with his latest film The Post, another collaboration with Spielberg. This grounded period drama is essentially a series of scenes that involve people talking in rooms, but Kaminski finds ways to keep the frame engaging while also reinforcing story, character, and theme through composition and lighting choices. It’s not as flashy as something like A.I. Artificial Intelligence, but Kaminski approaches the scenes in The Post with the same meticulousness and eye for beauty, going so far as to capture dialogue scenes with the intensity of a big action set piece.
With The Post expanding into theaters nationwide on January 12th, I recently got the chance to speak with Kaminski about his work on the film. As a longtime fan of Kaminski’s work and admirer of what he was able to capture in The Post, I jumped at the opportunity, and the result was a wide-ranging, insightful, and refreshingly candid conversation with one of the most interesting cinematographers working today.
During the course of the interview, Kaminski talked about the speed with which The Post came together, how he approached the material, and the limitations of shooting in a real office building. He also went in depth on his working relationship with Spielberg and the staging of a scene towards the end of the film, and he teased his work on Ready Player One and what it’s like to collaborate on scenes set in a digital world. Kaminski also discussed his philosophy on lighting at length as well as the current state of cinematography, and he kindly indulged me in talking about a specific scene from Catch Me If You Can that is straight-up gorgeous.
It was a delightful chat that I could have continued for many, many more hours, and I do think you’ll find what Kaminski has to say about the art of cinematography fascinating. He also, of course, provides insight into what it’s like to collaborate with someone like Steven Spielberg. Check out the full interview below.
I know that this came together quite fast, and I believe you and Steven were preparing a different movie at the time, The Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara, or getting ready to, so I was kind of curious, what was it like to jump into this project so quickly?
JANUSZ KAMINSKI: Well, Kidnapping of Edgardo Mortara was still in the early stage of casting. We scouted the movie last summer, but you know the conundrum of finding the boy was always the primary deterrent and as he was looking for the right actor, he got this offer from Fox to read a script and the movie was almost set up and Steven read the script and he fell in love with it, and he immediately hired Josh Singer to do a little bit of a rewrite. I think Meryl might have been already in some kind of early negotiations to do the movie. And he brought an amazing cast with him and we got into production. He’s a very, very productive man. He doesn’t waste time on unnecessary talks. It’s straight to the point. He knows exactly what he wants in terms of the coverage.
You know what he wants in terms of the performance, so at the top of it, he really doesn’t have to deal with anyone’s demands for additional coverage or rewrites to accommodate some young executive’s notes. There are no notes. He’s the one who makes notes. So he’s in a sense the auteur. He’s making the movie he wants to make. Subsequently, he’s able to make them really, really fast in terms of pre-production. It’s not a complicated movie from my point of view to make. It was harder for Rick Carter at the art department simply because the schedule dictated that the production was going to be centered around major locations that were part of the movie. So we’re filming in White Plains, because that’s where we got the office building that we could build our set inside, then other locations of White Plains, to facilitate the story of The Post. Fortunately, White Plains has really great architecture that resembles some of the architecture in DC. It’s kind of brutalistic, rather grub, but I find it to be really beautiful architecture, so we were able to do several additional locations in White Plains.
Then, we went to Manhattan and we grouped our locations in Manhattan. We used 7th Street in Manhattan to perform as Manhattan. Then we used some locations to perform as Washington D.C. Moviemaking to some degree is such a well organized machine. We go build those sets, like Ready Player One, we’re building those sets that are 200 feet tall, you know, layered with trailers sitting on the top of each other. And we’ve got people acting on those trailers and nothing happens. So, you know, moviemaking is efficient operation conducted by people who are really great at it.
I’m always curious about the early stages. So, when this project was a go, when Steven said it was his next movie, what were those first conversations with him like about the visual approach to the movie? Did you guys have a specific idea in your head right off the bat?
KAMINSKI: No we don’t do that. We don’t do that. The conversations are really clear about the locations and the sets and Rick Carter at this point. The decision has to be made very fast in terms of Steven wanting to make the movie because Rick Carter needed a certain amount of time to build the office, you know? We need to have it right away. Otherwise, we wouldn’t make the deadline. I think Rick might have started even before the movie was fully greenlit. So that Washington Post floor was the most essential part of making the movie from the technical aspect of the movie. Locations and the story dictate the visuals. Knowing that I’m filming on an existing location, meaning that it was taking over an office building in White Plains, that we’re on the 26th and 27th floor, there’s no equipment that allows me to bring the lights to the windows because it’s so high.
Also, the reality of the movie is such that they did exist and live and work in the brightly, fluorescent-lit workspace, so the necessity of location prevents me from altering what the light might have been there. Consequently, we put our own light. We took existing fixtures and put our own ceiling and put our own color-correct and lights that we could alter the color and brightness. But essentially, the movie was lit from the ceiling fixtures with occasional supplements from softer sources from outside the frame. But as you know, as you’ve seen the movie, some of the shots are very complicated, where we see the entire floor. So, that approach made it look realistic, slightly gritty, within the confinements of the story and easy for Steven to move the camera any direction he wanted to.
Well, I think that’s one of the things that’s really great about the movie. The reality is, there’s only so much you can do with a newsroom to make it look compelling and dynamic without taking away from the characters. So was that challenging for you in terms of you have this floor and there are only a certain amount of ways that you can actually shoot and light it to make it look interesting on screen?
KAMINSKI: I did. Particularly with the scene with Bob Odenkirk and Jesse Plemons that takes place at night. So you take a liberty to say, “Okay they work through the night, how do you bring the night?” You make the windows darker and then you do some of the lights. But really if this is a more dramatic filmed movie—I’ve done that in other movies where, you know, you’re in the office building and you turn lights off and you put, particularly Tom Hanks in Catch Me If You Can, he’s sitting in the FBI office, it’s completely dark except for one little lamp. You know, it was a different movie.
In this movie I could alter some of the density of the light but it still had to represent the reality of what the journalists and newspaper’s floor looked like, even at midnight. So I took some liberties. I already took some lights off, made it slightly bluer, slightly cooler, because it was good for the confrontation for Jesse and Bob. One could have pushed a little bit harder, but my aim was to stay not as stylized. Be really, really, really subtle with my work, and that style also was embracing Steven’s work as a director. They always serve the story. We don’t have major camera moves. We don’t have the flashiness in terms of storytelling that we normally do, simply because we wanted to stay as honest to the story, as honest to the performance, and be respectful too, of what the story tells us and how relevant it is to a modern America.
There’s no explosions, there’s no big set pieces, but one of my favorite shots in the movie, towards the end, features a bunch of men huddled around a table while Kay is carefully considering a decision. And that plays out with the tension and the thrills of a big action set piece. I was wondering if you could talk about how that shot came together and the blocking and staging of it, because I think it’s really terrific.
KAMINSKI: You know there is a painter who Steven loves. He owns several paintings by him. He was considered to be more of an illustrator when he was doing illustrations—the name will come to me later but maybe too late. But you know there are several images that Steven has of this painter and they’re always very—men caught in the moment of importance. So we didn’t use that painting as the blueprint but there is a certain aesthetic that Steven has and we don’t fight our aesthetics, you know, and Steven’s aesthetics are such that like, shot of relevance. So you have Kay sitting at the desk with men huddling around and there’s a conversation with Kay and Tracy Letts. There’s this tremendous sense of importance and a little secrecy. What are these men talking about? It must be important because they all huddle in their little group and it feels a little spacey at first, but you forget that really quickly because of the significance of what they’re saying.
It was a great way to space the scene because the content was so important. It’s woman against men and men are standing. It’s not really even the men against the woman, it’s the attitude of that particular time period. Men were in the condition of decision-making and women were always subservient to the men and often, if not always, serving position to support the men and make the men better in terms of facilitating the needs of the men. In this case, Kay is making the choice, very strong choice, by saying, “This is not your paper, this is my paper and this paper in fact is not even my paper. It belongs to the citizens and I’m going to make the decision I’m going to make.” But before she makes that decision, there is a whole big, beautiful conversation. It’s a straight, wide shot, as you stated. And it’s really great because you see all the participants, not necessarily making the decision but being affected by the strength of Kay and her ability to not finally step up to her position, but making the choice to be less of a subservient or what’s expected of her and become a stronger leader.
Consequently, she stands up and the rest of the dialogue is delivered with her standing, which means she’s not in the lower position of the frame, she’s equal to the man as a visual metaphor and now she’s going to make a decision in terms of how she’s going to conduct herself as an owner of the newspaper.
I love the visual storytelling in that shot and I’ve heard that Steven likes to feel out a scene on the day and likes to change things up, so I was curious what’s that relationship like once you get on the set, once you get to a scene? Does he have storyboards that you guys are working off of?
KAMINSKI: No, there are no storyboards. Not on this movie. We never have storyboards on movies that deal with non-CGI or non-action subject matter. We only have storyboards for the visual tech department so we can budget the movie. Or, if it’s an intricate action scene, there are storyboards so the stuntmen know what to create and the piece of equipment that has to be created to facilitate that. And, even with that, we follow the storyboard as a general blueprint but we really do not fully, fanatically follow what’s in the storyboard he created three months before he makes the movie, because three months later he’s got another idea.
