There are few films as fascinating, for good reasons and bad, than The Postman. Directed by lead star, Kevin Costner, and released in 1997, critics coalesced to name it one of the worst movies of all time. It won several Razzie Awards (given to the “worst” films of the year), and as recently as 2023, Rolling Stone ranked it as one of the “worst decisions in film history” (I often consider reading Rolling Stone one of the worst decisions in journalistic history, but I digress…).
While it is ill-advised to insist that The Postman is a great movie, it is not nearly as awful as most critics would contend. It is also significant for presenting one of the most profound cinematic depictions of the political battle between liberal civilization and fascist feudalism. It is a movie that, despite its parcel post-sized flaws, is stunningly applicable to America’s current crisis of democratic endangerment. Adding to the fascination of the film is its wildly contradictory effect on the viewer (or, at least, this viewer). There are moments when the movie feels as if it could become one of the greatest of all time, and then there are scenes that go beyond embarrassment into the terrain of psychological inquiry, namely, “What the hell was Costner – by all accounts and evidence, a highly intelligent man – thinking?”
At its genesis, Costner thought that an adaptation of the award-winning David Brin science fiction novel, The Postman, would make for a perfect follow-up to his brilliant directorial debut, Dances With Wolves, which was also an adaptation of an ambitious and epic novel. Actors Tom Hanks and Richard Dreyfuss, respectively, had already tried to secure the rights to turn Brin’s book into a film, but various legal difficulties proved insurmountable. Costner managed to succeed where his colleagues had failed, and enlisted veteran screenwriters, Eric Roth (Forrest Gump, The Insider) and Brian Hegeland (L.A. Confidential, Mystic River), to help him craft the cinematic version of Brin’s post-apocalyptic saga.
It is easy to understand what potential Hollywood royalty could see in The Postman. Brin explains that his intention was to write a post-apocalyptic novel that, as opposed to stories, like Mad Max and Escape from New York, celebrate civilization, courage, and mutual aid, rather than only displaying humanity at its worst. The novel develops a story with major differences from the film, and I would commit to the minority position that Roth and Hegeland, under Costner’s instruction, made major improvements to the story.
What the movie and novel have in common is that they take place in a post-apocalyptic America where nuclear wars, climate catastrophes, and domestic political violence have created a primitive world fit for a neo-Western. People travel by horseback, searching for whatever food, water, and supplies that they can find, and villages form where many inhabitant are, surprisingly, kind and decent, but due to fear and lack of reliable law enforcement, inhospitable to outsiders. Basic services, like an electrical grid, hospitals, and the post office, no longer exist. Throughout most of the novel, there is no well-defined villain or even adversary. References abound to Nathan Holn, a psychotic reactionary, who created a large and oppressive militia that roams the countryside, the Holnists, but the fascist force marauding the former United States as the only form of law and power, receives little play in the literary chronicle. Brin does include subplots that provoke greater bafflement and balking than Costner’s soon-to-be explored excesses. There are lengthy passages with a supercomputer that talks to the heroic characters, advising them on how to resurrect society, and likewise, there are “super soldiers,” who are crucial to the fighting that breaks out in the last third of the novel.
Costner, Roth, and Hegeland made the wise choice to excise Brin’s absurdities, and to also better present a contrast between the heroes and villains. They maintained the setting, circumstances, and also the arc of the hero: A drifter who stumbles upon a mail truck with a dead mail carrier, and poses as a mailman, while claiming to represent the “Restored United States,” in order to manipulate villagers into providing him with food and lodging. A classic, “reluctant hero,” story, the Postman begins to believe, not in his own lie, but the principles of civilization and human community after observing how the simple act of delivering a letter inspires immeasurable hope in those who thought a functioning, well-connected society was an irretrievable relic of a lost age.
The Postman could have made for an ideal companion piece, and even spiritual sequel, to Dances With Wolves. It has become popular to promote the ignorant misreading of Costner’s Academy Award-winning directorial debut as a “white savior” film. Those who parrot the trendy buzzword miss or ignore that the Native Americans save Costner’s character, and that his western was the first to depict the genocidal slaughter of America’s indigenous people. It was also a beautiful tribute to friendship that demonstrates how open-mindedness is critical to multiracial democracy. As the late Roger Ebert wrote, while giving Dances With Wolves a four star review, in what is, perhaps, the best sentence in the history of popular movie criticism: “A civilized man is a person whose curiosity outweighs his prejudices.”
“There is a morality in this movie that follows a fine line,” Costner told an interviewer while promoting The Postman. It is the same morality of Dances With Wolves – the prioritization of compassion over conquest, celebration of diversity, the need for kindness and restraint, and an abiding belief in the monuments of community, such as the arts and systems of solidarity. Both films also explore and condemn, quite daringly for the 1990s, white supremacy.
The Postman, although not nearly as good of a movie, goes furthest of the two, presenting, perhaps better than any other film, how American fascism would operate if its agents ever obtained national power.
The villainous force of the film is the Holnist army. Its leader, General Bethlehem, is played by Willam Patton. The masterful performance of Patton, who is able to project the menace and vanity of megalomania with hypnotic charisma and terror, would have received much greater acclaim if not for the failures of the film. In an early scene, Costner’s character, not yet a mail carrier, earns his living by traveling from town to town, presenting a one man show of Shakespeare scenes, with some aid from his pet mule, Bill. He takes whatever food and supplies townspeople provide in gratitude for his thespianism. When he is about to eat, following a successful performance, the Holnists ride into town, looking to conscript new members into their army. Costner’s character attempts to sneak into a neighboring forest, but Bethlehem spots him.
The unnamed protagonist is exactly what Bethlehem desires – an able-bodied, white man. Before pointing to a fleeing Costner, Bethlehem rejects a young recruit, because he detects hints of “mongoloid” in his facial features. He permits enlistment of a mixed-race man, believing he is white. One of his advisors later tells the soldier, “General Bethlehem doesn’t see it, but I think you have some [n-word] in you.” In the Holnist army, women have no role outside serving and granting sexual favors to men.
During his brief stint with the Holnists, Costner’s character observes the methodology and ideology of post-apocalyptic fascism. Before executing a man for “disobeying a direct order” to sit down, Bethlehem explains that the “strong have been sapped by the whimpering propaganda of the weak,” and delineates the eight laws of the Holnists. These include, “mercy is for the weak,” “justice can be dictated,” and “terror will defeat reason.”
The 1990s were a launching pad for the violent, far right populist movement in the United States. Due to the liberal presidency of Bill Clinton, most especially the administration’s ban of assault rifles, anti-government militias exploded in popularity. The most chilling and consequential iteration of the militia madness was Timothy McVeigh’s terrorist attack on Oklahoma City. The Republican Party, then as now, refused to condemn the violent rhetoric of militias, even cozying up to them when it suited their political purposes.
The Postman makes it clear that General Bethlehem possesses a sharp intellect, the kind of which is rare at militia camps. He even tells Costner’s character, “If a military man wishes to rise above mere thuggery, he must have education in philosophy, history, even the dramatic.” Despite his superiority of intelligence and knowledge to the average anti-government extremist, Bethlehem and his army present an authoritarian, reactionary right that should freeze the blood of any viewer in 2024. Imagine if the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, or Three Percenters – three violent gangs all involved in the planning and execution of the January 6th attack on the US Capitol – became the most powerful governing force in American life. Their politics of racial purity, misogyny, and their tactics of testing the credo, “terror will defeat reason,” would create exactly the form of misery, oppression, and stagnation that define the world of The Postman.
Given what American politics has become, The Postman functions as a futuristic facsimile of right wing culture. Bethlehem’s deranged ravings about the “whimpering propaganda of the weak,” and his self-motivational speech about the “greatness of I can” as compared to the destruction of “I can’t,” register like YouTube soundbites from the men’s rights, incel “manosphere” of Jordan Peterson, Russell Brand, and various chauvinist “influencers” who equate strength with contempt and intimidation of women, LGBTQ Americans, and anyone who doesn’t believe that the future of masculinity is best represented by a heavy duty pickup truck and AR-15. The Holnists agenda to “create a new world” of Anglo-Saxon dominance – the reassertion of white supremacy as sociopolitical order – is the logical endpoint of the electoral and cultural program surrounding the “Great Replacement Theory” – the delusion that Jewish globalists are diluting white power through mass immigration and multiculturalism that alarmingly large amounts of Republicans believe is true. The Holnists even refer to themselves, in a not-so-subtle hint of the movie’s racial politics, as “the Clan.”
In the fight against the Holnists for the restoration of democracy, civilization, and the communal values of hospitality and solidarity, the film demonstrates admirable restraint. Scenes of violence are few and far between. Costner, like the author of his source material, had no desire to create the kind of cinematic bloodbath that a lesser actor/director, like Sylvester Stallone or Mel Gibson, would have cultivated. Instead, the film shows how the creation of hope is the most powerful weapon against fascism. If “terror defeats reason,” hope overcomes fear.
Even if its origin was a scam, the simple act of delivering mail, and thereby, reestablishing official networks of communication, inculcates in Americans faith in each other, their shared history, and their power to beat back fascism. Eventually, the Postman (the character) has his own army – an eclectic assembly of true believers: women, people of color, elderly hippies who fought in Vietnam, and young men who reject the Holnists in the name of freedom.
In its juxtaposition of fascism and democracy, The Postman acts as not only a forensic examination of right wing autocracy, but also a visual, narrative manifesto on behalf of social services and public goods. Culturally and socially, given how the army of heroes coalesces, and politically, considering what they aim to achieve, The Postman is an unapologetic argument for liberalism.
With its rejection of violence as a tool of leadership and entertainment, The Postman even has an anti-climatic finale. As the two armies are preparing to battle at opposite sides of a field in Oregon, Costner’s Postman challenges Bethlehem for leadership of the Holnists, citing the Holnist law, “Any member has the right to challenge for leadership of the Clan.” The fight that ensues is easily one of the worst in cinematic history. The two men jump off their horses, colliding in midair, and then roll around on the ground until Bethlehem captures the Postman in a headlock, holding a dagger to his neck. “I think I know what your problem is,” Bethlehem says, while preparing to slit his opponent’s throat, “The reason you can’t fight is you have nothing to fight for. You don’t believe in anything.”
The Postman manages to whisper, “I believe in the United States,” gives a headbutt to an unsuspecting Bethlehem, and punches him in the face several times before deciding to spare his life. In its confrontation between the two leaders, the film’s political argument is complete. The United States worthy of celebration and faith is a society that prioritizes the public good, welcomes and protects people of all races and genders, along with the disabled, and governs according to compassion and reason rather than vengeance and brute force.
The scene following the fight, and the one that closes the movie, captures exactly why, despite its political intelligence, Costner’s graceful cinematography, and Will Patton’s brilliant performance, critics and audiences considered it a massive blunder.
Transporting audience twenty-five years in the future, there is a statue unveiling in Oregon. The Postman’s adult daughter – is standing at a podium speaking into a microphone. Boats are on the water behind her, and businesses surround the park. It is evident that resurrection of the postal service, and the revolt against the Clan, has led to the return of modern, democratic civilization. The statue depicts Costner taking a letter from a young boy. An adult man looks at the statue, in tears, and says, “That was me.” The statue is a reference to a scene earlier in the film when the child misses his opportunity to give a letter to the Postman. Instinct makes Costner turn around. He sees the boy with a dejected look on his face, turning around to return to his house. Costner gives his horse a whip, causing it to gallop full blast toward the boy. He takes the letter out of his hand in what seems like an unnecessarily dangerous and dramatic method of receipt.
The fatal flaw of The Postman, other than its bloated, three-hour length, is a combination of ego and mawkishness. If anyone were to play a drinking game involving how many heroic, close up shots exist of Costner throughout the 180 minutes of film, they would likely die of alcohol poisoning. A particularly hilarious case in point is when The Postman and his love interest realize that they are falling for each other. In an otherwise beautifully shot scene at an outside musical performance, with colored string lights hanging overhead, the two characters stare at each other before taking each other in their arms to have a slow dance. The camera shows the woman, actress Olivia Williams, from the side, at a distance. Strands of wavy, dark hair partially obscure her face. Then, it cuts to Costner with an intimately close zoom directly on his face. It is almost the opposite of the controversial “male gaze.” Costner wanted to give the audience an opportunity to gaze at him. Olivia Williams’s character is incidental, a mere prop.
Moments like the statue fiasco and the romantic scene where audiences were clearly supposed to fall in love with Costner demonstrate why Chicago film critic, Gene Siskel, ridiculed The Postman as a Costner-ego trip, suggesting that the filmmaker should have named it, “Dances with Myself.”
It is unclear if the cloying sentimentality of the movie is entirely Costner’s fault or one of the problems with Eric Roth’s screenwriting (it’s safe to assume that Hegeland is blameless). For example, one of the schmaltziest scenes features Costner riding away from a small town, and a young girl suddenly breaking out into a rendition of “America the Beautiful.” The entire town joins her in song. Perhaps, that was an unfortunate Costner addition to the movie, but it could have easily come from the same writer as Forrest Gump.
It is understandable that critics found the mountain of cheese, along with the apex of Costner’s ego, insurmountable when trying to appreciate the film, but also unfortunate. Despite its lamentable excesses, it has moments of beauty, and its political relevance is more profound than ever. The right wing was not nearly as destructive in the 1990s. Viewers looking for a political fable with powerful applicability to November’s high stakes election should, believe it or not, consider revisiting Costner’s mail route, and pondering his wise juxtaposition of multiracial, democratic liberalism with the violence and torture of patriarchal, reactionary fascism.
A political slogan that Costner’s character improvises to give hope to townspeople clamoring to ask him questions about the future of their fractured country is, “Stuff’s getting better. Stuff’s getting better every day.”
Given the crisis of American life in which an authoritarian movement threatens the future of democracy, a Republican Party undermines the public good, and violent militias enjoy legal protection from elected officials, the ever-improving “stuff” now includes Kevin Costner’s most political statement, The Postman.
