Meryl Streep and Tom Hanks will be collaborating for the first time.
The trailer for Steven Spielberg‘s next picture, The Post, has been released, courtesy of 20th Century Fox. The film reunites Spielberg with both Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep and is sure to be a dramatic spectacle of Hollywood royalty.
The Post is a historical drama based on The Washington Post‘s race against The New York Times to publish the contents of the Pentagon Papers, which detailed the true, horrifying extent of the Vietnam War. The Washington Post‘s first female publisher, Kay Graham (Streep), as well as the publication’s editor, Ben Bradlee (Hanks) put their careers and lives on the line to reveal the truth to the American public, going up against the US government to unearth the cover-up. Watch the trailer below.
Needless to say, The Post will be a noteworthy release this awards season. Firstly, we can’t discount the huge names involved in bringing the project to life. Spielberg and Hanks have made a whole bunch of acclaimed films and executive produced projects like Band of Brothers and The Pacific together. Their working relationship is well-known in Hollywood, and extremely reliable. Meanwhile, Streep, despite being the queen of chameleonic acting that she is, has only ever cameoed in a Spielberg film in the past (A.I. Artificial Intelligence). Overall, this is already a rather irresistible collaboration.
But the timeliness of the picture possibly vies for even more attention. The social utility of filmmaking comes into play in films like The Post and other such journalism-based projects — for example, recent Best Picture Oscar-winner Spotlight. The element of whistleblowing is obviously an added bonus in films. Government secrets or similar bombshell discoveries of misconduct amp up the suspense in these movies. But importantly, films can and should embrace the function of shedding light on awful, institutionalized secrets that distort the truth at best, and bury it entirely at worst.
Of course, being a definitive period piece, The Post sits a comfortable distance from the political commentary of today. Streep and Hanks’s acting evidently comes first from the scenes in the trailer, with a distinct focus on how the characters put aside their differences and combative personalities for the greater good. Still, politics seem to be no side note in The Post, and the film clearly seeks to uphold the ideals of the free press.
The Post is slated for release on December 22, 2017.
Related Topics: Meryl Streep, Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Trailers
