Review of The Post (2017) by Huraxdax — 18 Mar 2018

Steven Spielberg's new movie is not for everybody, that is certain.

It's one of his most dialogue-heavy works, the entire movie is basically made up of only dialogue. Even the music is used very sparsely (John Williams didn't have that much to do here), making most of the movie very quiet. I liked production design and direction. Steven Spielberg is a filmmaking veteran and you see that very clearly. For a dialogue-heavy drama, we have advanced, yet fitting cinematography. Entire scenes (e.g. the first time we see Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep together on screen) are made out of one camera position just watching what happens. What you see goes hand in hand with what you hear: It's calm, yet focused and incredibly well executed. Sound editing and mixing are also very high-quality; you almost feel immersed by the simple offices that the movie plays in.

There's not too much to be said about acting. It was brilliant, at least inside the methodical cage that is mainly offices and serious business talk.

What I didn't enjoy that much was the first half. It was lengthy, boring and didn't really have too much impact on the main plot. Loads of back stories and (what seemed to be) preparation for the exciting second half, except you would perfectly understand that second half if you had just tuned at about 45 mins into the movie. I would have preferred movie that stretches some parts I found more important but is shorter overall. The prologue for example was amazing and it did a good job setting the scene and tone, I wouldn't mind it having lastet a little longer.

All together, it's a great movie because of Steven Spielberg's technical expertise, because it doesn't completely fail at making a dialogue-heavy drama entertaining and because of a nice cast.

The story is layed out unevenly, the second part is exciting and suspenseful, the first half is a bore.