Guardian - 21 January 2018, 11:00 (+ 2289 days 11 hours and 54 minutes) Movies & TV
Steven Spielberg’s urgent 70s-set thriller stars Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep in a timely lesson on the need for a vigilant press“We can’t have an administration dictating to us our coverage just because they don’t like what we print about them in our newspaper…” At a time when Donald Trump’s White House has declared war not merely on the media but on “truth” itself, there’s something almost quaint about the spectre of a corrupt US president attempting to quash a story, rather than the entire fourth estate.Playing like a prequel to All the President’s Men (the final coda nods towards the opening of Alan J Pakula’s masterpiece), Steven Spielberg’s Vietnam-era thriller recalls the 1971 revelations of the Pentagon Papers – a devastating internal report that detailed how “the White House has been lying about the war”. While Nixon (making a creepy voice-cameo appearance) seethes about “treasonable action”, newspaper editors head to the supreme court, asserting their constitutional right to speak truth to power. Meanwhile, a behind-the-scenes battle of the sexes rages, as the Washington Post balances the demands of its investors with the awful truth that “the only way to protect the right to publish is to publish!” Continue reading...