THE POST
"Journalism is the first rough draft of history", was the motto of Philip Graham, editor of The Wahington Post, a newspaper he inherited from his wife's father Katherine, destined to direct him after the death of his wife. If journalism is the first draft of history, the film is, to quote Ferro or Sorlin de I Cahiers Du Cinema, the litmus test of the feelings and anxieties of the time that is expressed. With the sagacity of a gold prospector, Spielberg sifted through the waters of our media reality (and not) looking for some grain of gold for the new Oscar statuette (four nominations). With a prophetic gaze, the four-time Oscar-winning director manages to anticipate the polemics of # Time's Up and #MeToo that would soon follow at the end of the film, telling a piece of American History through an event that seems to take charge of the contemporary desire redemption of the female team. The plot of the film, which can be summarized around the story that led to the discovery of the Pentagon Papers , with a subsequent competition of skill between The Post and IlThe New York Times, and the Nixon government wriggles its way through the journalistic scandal, which in itself is already sufficient for a cult film, especially in the golden age of fake news. As King Midas of the situation, Spielberg boasts Meryl Streep in the role of heroine (able to enter the Guinness Book of Records with twenty-one nominations) and Tom Hanks as his faithful squire, directed by the screenplay of Liz Hannah and Josh Singer, already Oscar winner for " The Spotlight Case ", another journalistic investigation film. The Post succeeds, in the journey of the heroine able to cross the stages that constitute, de rigeuer , the formation of a protagonist redeemed from the initial difficulties of having inherited a larger company of herself, to show a woman capable of emerging in a world of sharks who miserable to be put in line by a lady. In this sense, the plot of the film is best narrated by Streep's dress choices more than by words - the narration gets stuck in some slightly stale dialogue - initially plastered in rigid suits that camouflage it in a virile fauna, then divine in the white silk dress from regal femininity, used by Spielberg to mark the gap between initial hesitations and the full affirmation of his personality and the choices made to affirm the right to information in his newspaper.
Erica Belluzzi
