Paper Chase

“The Post.”

- Anthony Lane

The new film by Steven Spielberg, “The Post,” begins in the jungle, shifts to Washington, and defies us to tell the difference. Courtrooms, boardrooms, nicely decorated drawing rooms, and newsrooms furnished with little more than telephones and smoke: they all feel cocked and combat-ready, and every deadline looms like an ambush. With Spielberg in command, almost nothing is allowed to soothe the tension. If a great white shark swam by, it would be told to move on.

“Who’s the longhair?” So one soldier says to another, as they prepare to head into a dark Vietnamese forest, in 1966. The guy with the frizz is Daniel Ellsberg (Matthew Rhys), who is employed by the Rand Corporation and embedded with U.S. troops. On the plane back to America, he is summoned by the Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara (Bruce Greenwood), and asked, straight out, for his opinion on the war: “Are things better or worse?” Much the same, Ellsberg replies, and an exasperated McNamara agrees. But that is not what he tells the press, who have assembled on the tarmac to hear his views. “In every respect, we’re making progress,” he says. Greenwood has perfected the McNamara smile—long and curved, like a scythe.