Norbert Haupt

In the mid-1960ies, the “Pentagon Papers” were thousands of pages of highly classified documents that proved that four presidential administrations knew that the Vietnam War could not be won, yet they continuously and repeatedly lied to the American public.

Thousands of young American men died in Vietnam for this war that was based on a lie.

When the New York Times got a hold of the papers and started publishing them, the Nixon Administration shut them down.

The Washington Post, at that time, was a struggling family business that tried to break out of the stigma of being a local paper. Katharine Graham (Meryl Streep) was  the “owner” of the paper. She had inherited it from her late husband. Being one of very few women in executive positions in the business, she was not always taken seriously. The paper’s editor, Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks), pushed hard to get the Pentagon Papers published in order to establish a name for the Post and to uphold the freedom of the press as well as its responsibility to the public.

The stress of making the final decision at midnight before going to print was enormous. Katharine Graham bet the company, her livelihood, and that of everyone who worked there and had shares in the company, all in the name of journalistic responsibility and duty to the country.

Ironically, after I saw The Post, just a few hours later, as I was browsing Reddit, I came across this cigarette lighter, presumably from the Vietnam era. While I have no way to attest that it is authentic, and while there is an entire tourist trap industry of such “interesting” trinkets in Vietnam, the message stands.

 

In our current days, more than 50 years after those thousands of American boys died in Vietnam for a lie, and for the callousness of the presidents that sent them there, we are still facing the same old reality.

We still have presidents in the White House who think it’s ok to send American boys (and now girls) to strange countries across the ocean to do our dirty deeds and our dying, while the rest of us sit at home, watch MSNBC or Fox on TV, and pretend it’s all about our safety and our freedom.

The Post is about journalistic freedom, responsibility for integrity, honesty and truth. We now have a president who systematically undermines “the press” in front of the public, calls it dishonest, crooked, bought, biased and treasonous. “The press” are dozens, hundreds of newspapers, thousands of TV stations, thousands of radio stations, thousands of websites, and our president wants us to believe that all of a sudden, during the summer of 2016, when the election went into full swing, they all suddenly went rogue, and dishonest, just so they could all discredit him, all except a few far-right media channels?

I am not buying it.

The Post is about this responsibility and integrity of the press. It is a movie that could not be playing at a better time in history. Watch The Post, and then tell me who you trust: The media? Or Donald Trump?

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Marshall is based on an early trial in the career of Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall (Chadwick Boseman).

As a young lawyer Marshall traveled around the country in pursuit of cases against African-Americans who were unjustly accused of crimes. In Connecticut, the defended a black chauffeur who was charged with sexual assault of his rich, white employer (Kate Hudson). The court was segregationist and didn’t allow him to argue the case. He had to join forces with Samuel Friedman (Josh Gad), a reluctant Jewish lawyer, who did not initially want to take on this responsibility. Eventually they prevailed in a very racist and anti-Semitic environment and the case contributed to Marshall’s fame and the eventual creation of the NAACP legal defense fund.

The movie introduces the character and legacy of Thurgood Marshall, the first African American Supreme Court Justice, appointed by President Johnson in 1967. While I roughly knew who Marshall was, I had never shown much interest in any of the details of his life, until I watched this movie. This is one of the most valuable and enriching facts about good movies: They introduce us to topics we sometimes know nothing about, only to get fired up and motivated to read up more about the subject.

Marshall did that for me.

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Ebbing, Missouri is a town in rural America where everybody knows everyone else and their business. The people revere their chief of police, William Willoughby (Woody Harrelson). Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand) loses her daughter in a tragic murder and rape case. When, after six months, there is no progress with the investigation, she decides to take matters in her own hands and puts up three billboards in a bold move to attract attention. And attention she gets, seemingly be everyone in town. Officer Dixon, who works for Chief Willoughby, takes matters in his own hands and starts a chain of violence, and a war between a lonely but very determined woman, and Ebbing’s entire law enforcement contingent.

This movie tells a story, and we like our stories. It is very well-acted, it makes us think about justice and about life – which often brings us much adversity – sometimes seemingly too much to bear. There are no bad guys in this movie, only bad circumstances. And the ending is surprisingly satisfying.

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