Truth (2015)

Truth arrives as a prestige drama about the Killian documents controversy, in which CBS producer Mary Mapes and anchor Dan Rather reported on George W. Bush's National Guard service and then watched the story collapse under questions about fonts, typewriters, and Microsoft Word. James Vanderbilt directs with the sober competence of a man who has studied All the President's Men and taken careful notes. The cast is a wall of pale, familiar faces: Blanchett, Redford, Quaid, Moss. Nobody appears to have been hired with an eye toward reflecting the demographic texture of American newsrooms or the country they serve. The ensemble is white, the framing is traditional, and the film shows no interest in interrogating that arrangement.

Mapes is the emotional center, a woman ground up by a corporate machine, and the screenplay affords her dignity. Her gender goes unmentioned as a political matter. The film treats her downfall as a question of journalistic standards and network cowardice, not as a parable about women in the workplace. There are gestures toward the ownership class: Viacom's business interests, the desire to stay friendly with the White House. The critique lands softly, more institutional nervousness than class anger. Race never enters the frame. Neither does the environment, nor the body, nor the mind's varied wiring.

Where the film does exert itself is in the sermon. The climax hands Blanchett a monologue about fonts and forgeries and the way people scream instead of reading, and the room becomes a pulpit. Critics noticed the characters functioning as mouthpieces, and CBS itself issued a statement calling the whole affair a distortion dressed as martyrdom. The result is a well-acted argument that knows which side it is on and is not shy about saying so, at length, with the camera holding steady.