Spotlight and The Post: two movies about the press
I was recently re-watching a video essay by YouTube creator Evan Puschak, a.k.a. The Nerdwriter, about the refined, subdued style of the Oscar-winning Spotlight (2015), a film that chronicles the real-life efforts of journalists at the Boston Globe as they break a story about systemic child abuse in the Catholic Church. Puschak singles out director Todd McCarthy’s intention to “capture [journalistic] storytelling as honestly as possible,” emphasizing the film’s use of montage, a muted color palette, and inconspicuous cinematography to “dramatize the undramatic,” and communicate “something vital about the nature of good journalism.”
That vital thing, he says, is the reality that uncovering a story usually amounts to “a long and tedious process, full of dead ends and monotonous tasks.” To drive this point home, Puschak contrasts Spotlight with The Post (2017) — Steven Spielberg’s historical drama about Katharine Graham’s (Meryl Streep) and Ben Brantley’s (Tom Hanks) roles in publishing the Pentagon Papers, which exposed several U.S. Presidents’ hidden knowledge of the failing war in Vietnam. Typical for Spielberg, the film strikes a far more heroic note than its low-key counterpart, and Puschak observes this difference as evidence of the films’ varying success — claiming that though The Post may have “the same goals [as Spotlight],” it also “leans a little too far into righteousness.”
Revisiting this argument piqued my interest in the two movies; it had been four and six years, respectively, since I last saw them, and I remembered liking both. Spotlight came out when I was a college student, working at an art house movie theater, and many of my cinephile coworkers were dismayed when it took home the Oscar for Best Picture over more vibrant or auspicious nominees like The Revenant or Mad Max: Fury Road. I associate The Post with the convoluted atmosphere of Donald Trump’s earliest days in office, and though I remember balking at some of Spielberg’s stylistic grandiosity, the movie was a rousing entertainment that, in its depiction of a woman claiming her power within a man-dominated profession, dovetailed neatly with the #MeToo movement.
Now that I’ve seen them again, I’ve affirmed my liking for both movies — but I also must contradict Puschak’s analysis: I don’t think they do share the same goals. They’re both about the press, yes, but I would argue that Spotlight is specifically about the process of journalism, whereas The Post is about the idea of journalism.
This may sound like a trivial distinction, but I think it’s an important one. To understand why, it helps to identify the opposing eras in which these films were made.
Though released only two years apart, they came into existence at very different moments in American political history: Spotlight was produced during the final years of Barack Obama’s presidency, and, indeed, its level intelligence and gentle pace aligns with Obama’s moderate-progressive values of incremental change.
On the other hand, The Post came directly on the heels of Trump’s inauguration; it was a fast-tracked production — Spielberg first read Liz Hannah’s screenplay in February 2017, and the completed film was in theaters eight months later — specifically designed to criticize the new administration’s antagonistic relationship to the press.
These films approach journalism from different angles, in part, because of the demands of the political climates in which they were made. Spotlight affirms the settled ethos of a period marked by institutional consistency, while The Post is a call to action against disruptive and abusive leadership.
Their contrast in context is matched by a contrast in content, too. It’s tempting to read Spotlight’s quiet aesthetic as more sophisticated than The Post’s brash pageantry — but the stylistic restraint of Todd McCarthy’s direction not only aligns with the drudgery of reporting, it mirrors the drudgery of the story that the Boston Globe reporters are telling.
The unflashy, steady tone of journalistic research parallels the discreet, business-as-usual practices of church officials who cover up and enable generations of abuse. Meanwhile, the story at the center of Steven Spielberg’s film is explosive: the discovery that several U.S. Presidents have all lied about the nature of American involvement in a war that cost thousands of lives is one for elementary school textbooks — so the on-the-spot urgency of its direction captures the strong emotions that must have been coursing through Graham and Brantley as they readied to break the story.
What’s more, the nature by which these people came upon their respective stories couldn’t have been more different: whereas the Boston Globe staff were faced with the challenge of collecting material and building a story, journalists at The Washington Post were handed classified documents, brimming with scandalous revelations, on a silver platter. This means that the dramatic focus of The Post is much narrower than Spotlight’s: it primarily concerns the decision to publish, and therefore opens up simpler, more foundational conversations about the principle of a free press.
I understand why Evan Puschak holds McCarthy’s film on a higher plane than he does Spielberg’s. It examines the subtler forms of resistance that arise from exposing the bad behavior of powerful people. It’s about procedure, rather than gesture — but gestures are crucial, too, especially when a nation’s key figure of authority turns his back on morality.
Spotlight and The Post function as constructive companion pieces: testimonies to the diligence required in vetting institutional power, and celebrations of the courage that it takes to do such work.
