The Post, The Craft

“If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.”
Orson Welles

The Post, The Craft

I can’t afford a gourmet dinner. I don’t live in New York so I can’t go to the Met. But for the price of a matinee and popcorn and a coke, I can go to the movies with my sister and get the best.

The Post opened this weekend. Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Steven Spielberg and John Williams are the greatest of this generation. With careers spanning decades of very good solid work, it is a pure pleasure to watch the finest craftsment create a movie for me to enjoy. Rarely does anyone see an allstar team like this on one flick!

Never once did I feel that anyone was being “crafty”. There was no “step aside, kid, let me show you how it’s done”. Simply solid performances telling a story that, today, is extremely timely and powerful. The good guy wins and everyone walks away happy except Richard Nixon.

I’d like to watch it again. I’d like to really look at one of those “did I really see that” moments. Did Tom Hanks strike a super-hero pose with Mr. Spielberg giving him an upward camera near the end? If so, it would be hilarous but the moment was too quick for me to do a double-take. Tom is a funny guy.

As always, after the film my sister and I talked about what we saw and liked. We were discussing the idea of Signature Moments in movies; when an actor has just five seconds of screen time but it is the pivot or the sum-up of the film. It is super important for the actor to carry off this brief powerful “thing” in a movie. We might need a different name; Pivot Moment, Signature Moment, The Dot on the I?

One example is in The Devil Wears Prada when Meryl Streep, at the end of the movie, is alone in the car and she smiles and what an eloquent smile, loaded with everything. It is a five-second scene and she nails it. Another quick example is in La La Land when Ryan and Emma nod at each other across the room; it is so important to nail this very quick silent scene and is, what we are calling, a Signature Moment.

Maybe you can’t afford the best of everything, but for the price of a matinee, you can watch the best in The Post.