The Post

The Post is a hard hitting, compelling, but slow moving story about the importance of freedom of the press as it occurred during the Vietnam War. Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep provide great chemistry in this true life saga of the government's attempts to censure a New York Post story about illicit behavior and actions prior to the Vietnam warm It's a great movie to talk to your family about censorship and the importance of freedom of the press; especially for those kids who have an interest in the media. So put up some popcorn, grab a paper and instead talking about codvid19, talk about the importance of the media as it plays in today's world.

Saw this my 10 yo son and 65 yo FIL. First, the brief Vietnam War scenes in the beginning are much milder than I was expecting based on reviews. My kids are very sheltered from violent media (though fascinated with the idea of violence)--I thought whatever violence was in these scenes would be worth it for giving violence more real life context and for setting up the opposition to the Vietnam War. The gunfire scene was brief and at night, then there's a guy zipping up body bags (no bodies shown) as Daniel Ellsberg (who leaked the Pentagon papers) is typing a government report in a tent--I had to whisper to my son that those were body bags for dead soldiers for him to get it! After that it's all newspaper offices and DC parties. I had to do a fair amount of whispering to make sure my son was tracking the plot and characters (a Post vs NYT subplot and the Post's public stock offering subplot were the conflicting forces Katherine Graham was considering in her decision about publishing the leaked info). My son really wanted to see The Post after seeing a preview, he listens to politics and economics podcasts and is very interested in the present political moment and history--he did get most of the movie. He can also be a really squirrelly typically ADHD kid but he was pretty focused throughout this because it's an area of interest. He really liked the scenes of newspapers being printed (very cool big system/process thing that was visually great) and hearing some actual Nixon tapes in context. My FIL attended part of the Watergate hearings as a young lawyer so it was really fun to talk about it afterward. I loved my son seeing gender roles of the 60s and Katherine Graham's struggle--looking forward to talking about that more. There is some "shit!" and "shiiiit, wow" and a forceful "he's a real son-of-a-bitch"--my son giggled I should have warned him that there would be swearing! We don't swear at home with our kids but I don't have a problem with him knowing swear words or that adults use them so I didn't mind this swearing especially as it was all of the exclamation variety rather than violent (like "F-you b--!" That's a different type of swearing in my mind). I think we'll watch it again at home so we can stop and talk about it, but I love seeing movies in theaters and it was nice to enjoy it all together.