Have you noticed that we seem to get the art that fits our times? “The Post” is Steven Spielberg’s richly layered thriller about The Washington Post’s publication of the Pentagon Papers – a damning, classified account of American military failure during the Vietnam War – at the height of Nixonian America, 1971. It’s also a moving chronicle of an underestimated woman – Katharine Graham, who succeeded her late husband, Phil, as Post publisher – coming into her own. And that makes it a tale that resonates in the age of #MeToo and “fake media.”
WAG had the pleasure of seeing the movie the other night at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, after which Lally Weymouth, senior associate editor of The Post and the Grahams’ daughter, spoke with Burns executive editor Edie Demas about being portrayed by Alison Brie on film as well as Washington D.C. then and now.
We’ll have more on the Weymouth in March WAG’s design issue and about the relevance of the film on my blog at http://www.thegamesmenplay.com/ , but in the meantime, suffice it to say that “The Post” will send you scurrying to Katharine Graham’s absorbing Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir, which details in part her childhood in Mount Kisco. Both book and film will give you new admiration for Graham as a self-made publisher and reinvented woman, who steered her publication through its darkest, finest hours – the Pentagon Papers and then Watergate – and acted not only out of principle but great love. –
For “The Post” times and tickets, visit burnsfilmcenter.org.
– Georgette Gouveia
