By Ashley Davis
On January 24th, Minarets Press along with the US History students took a field trip to River Park in Fresno to watch the new film: The Post.
The film was directed by Steven Spielberg and starred Meryl Streep as Kathryn (Kay) Graham, the owner of the Washington Post, and Tom Hanks as Ben Bradlee, the editor of the Washington Post.
The movie was based on the true story of when the Washington Post published the Pentagon Papers, which were confidential government documents regarding the Vietnam War. Kay Graham, the owner of the newspaper, chose to publish the documents to let government secrets flow into the country, a powerful example of the freedom of the press.
Following the film, each student journalist of the Minarets Press wrote their own reviews. Below are some of the highlights:
According to junior Amanda Anderson, "the triumphant victories depicted in The Post do not make up for its anticlimactic execution of the story of the leaking of classified Pentagon papers detailing the Vietnam War. The dialogue proved easy to follow but quite slow and lacked many scenes to hook the action or drama lovers."
Junior MadaLynn Rocha described that "Streep did a terrific job of showing how Graham did not believe in herself because none of her equals did. However, I also see Meryl Streep as one of the strongest female leads a movie could have. So her being so visibly scared was strange to me."
Junior Anthony Aleman felt that "the cinematography is amazing as expected, you never get the same angle twice and I’ve noticed when the camera actually foreshadows the movie’s plot, in the opening shot I remember it’s in Vietnam and you see all the men getting ready when there’s a clean typewriter in the middle of all of it. Later they use that typewriter to document what happened in the forest by a character who is later to be revealed as the guy who leaks the documents in the first place."
Junior Sydney Myer explained that "the movie, “The Post” was a very confusing movie. It seemed to me that it was very biased and there wasn’t a lot of detail about who the man was that gave them the documents. A lot of the movie just seemed like conversation and arguing in the workplace, which was difficult to find entertaining."
Senior Deveon Thao thought "it was very slow and confusing at first but once you got the gist of the movie you could honestly the plot very well. The way that the actors showed how fierce the emotion and tension that arose during that time setting was amazing. I could honestly feel how emotional and frightened the characters felt when all of the events were occurring."
Whether our reporters loved or hated the movie, it was a great experience to see the history that makes journalism what it is today.