NIXON
A film review by Ralph Benner
Copyright 1996 Ralph Benner
Doomed to the humiliation of resignation over the two bit Watergate burglary, shattered and dangerously close to the emotional brink, Anthony Hopkins as Oliver Stone's NIXON stands before an appropriately sorrowful portrait of JFK and says, "They look at you and see what they want to be. They look at me and see what they are." It's a powerful, stinging moment because it's catheterizing: the words channel not only into Hopkins but also into us as if insertions of excruciating self-recognition. The complexities of Richard Nixon were and remain his pathology of lies and fabrication of enemies, which held hostage an entire nation. Though the only solution the anesthesia of his departure, the legacy of the politician who built his career on dirty tricks and the surreptitious continues unabated: the GOP owes its current fair fortunes on Nixon's devious, sleazy methodology. While Senator Allscum D'Amato subs as the Nixonian dirty deed plotter for the time being, Robert Dole sobbing at the Lyin' King's funeral is a most defining, foretelling moment.
Anthony Hopkins isn't the first choice most of us would have made to play our 37th president. And, as we now know, when Stone and Hopkins started filming, the Welsh actor was deep in prosthetics and voice duplication. Didn't work because no matter how good an actor Hopkins is, he couldn't rise above the weight of caricature. Lest we forget, we've already had that anyway: for example, in the TV miniseries BLIND AMBITION, Rip Torn mimicked the president so uncannily, so incorrigibly that while he drafted us into watching him, we wondered if he realized that his acting had turned into a masquerade of old plaster. A super-scummy mechanical contraption, we became as exhausted by Torn's preparations -- I swear that we were able to see them being processed -- as he seemed to be. Granted, taking on the role of a famous contemporary, particularly the infamous, is a harder challenge for an actor than trying to bring to life a famous figure who is historically out of our time. Creating a character who can't be traced through the omnipresent media can give an actor the edge; he can take chances in bringing the personage to life in his own way without having to repeat exactly what we already know, which, right now, is the most popular form of "acting." For instance, Derek Jacobi stunned viewers with his title role in I,CLAUDIUS; watching him stutter, squint, shake and fumble, grow from presumed idiot to master politician, one felt that not only can history come alive but that TV performance can also become art. Like Rip Torn's Nixon, however, Jacobi's Hitler in INSIDE THE THIRD REICH is a victim to all the media-produced history available. It can be said that because there's a plenitude of material -- in Hitler and Nixon's cases next to impossible to digest -- the roles seem safe only when the actors lip-synch the parts. What happens when actors do this is that when they imitate the more notorious media-framed impressions, they become the imagery of our worst, most superficial suspicions about the people they're only playing. It's not acting, in search of a fresh perspective or new insights, it's kareoke as verdict.
Is the art of respectable representation of the famous in danger of turning into the art of trashing? If Torn's performance in the parody-by-accident, bizarrely cast BLIND AMBITION begs the question, maybe there's no other way to play other than "dress up," which provides a safety net for audiences so they can somehow believe no one could be like that or permit such the atrocities Hitler did -- a mechanism to relieve themselves over the horrible fact that they voted for them. TNT's KISSINGER AND NIXON, wanting to play it straight, reinforces the dilemma: drenched in prosthetics, fat pads and speech affectations, Ron Silver as Henry and Beau Bridges as Tricky Dicky soak up the good intentions and what seeps out is slightly elevated Mad magazine; it's a drag show in suits. The TV pic is further robbed of its seriousness because the script can't cover in two hours (and probably not even in six or eight) the verbosity and pompous megalomania of Kissinger. Most harmful is that KISSINGER AND NIXON lacks establishment of fact and clarity of after-effect. If healing is time's greatest virtue, one of its dangers is that we forget how the duplicitous shenanigans of statesmen can put a trusting nation in the vise: Henry and his boss were two of the biggest prevaricators of their political time who, while playing games with each other, kept us as emotional prisoners. KISSINGER AND NIXON doesn't flush us with that kind of fear; instead, it turns an elected sociopath and a German Machiavelli into pop-up cartoons.
If only it were that simple -- to laugh off the damage they inflicted. But the tragic travesty of Watergate can be comic: Of the movies and television that have reconstructed the fiasco, my favorite is Michael Lindsay-Hogg's NASTY HABITS, set in a Philadelphia nunnery and based on Muriel Spark's satire THE ABBESS OF CREW. It's a delicious little mockster that didn't do very well back in 1977, having come after the overrated, chiaroscuristic ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, which used an unnamed Judas to make us feel good about the press. (As timely as it was, a catharsis of sorts, its grungy-grim dramaturgy is, now, unwatchable; it's as paranoid as its target.) NASTY HABITS, however, is extremely watchable; attacked by many for being an offender of Catholicism and therefore a sacrilegious format to mock Nixon, it's a classy burlesque that wouldn't be nearly as effective as it is without Glenda Jackson. Her Nixon is a performance tilted to disturb on various levels, the most obvious being the worrisome Nixon loner imperialism, his unearned haughtiness, his terseness in speech and manner. Neither heavy handed impersonation like Torn's nor the effervescent demon of Jason Robards Jr.'s portrayal in WASHINGTON BEHIND CLOSED DOORS, Jackson gets the hard-boiled covering of Nixon down so pat that sometimes, briefly, Nixon's impenetrable persona seems to suddenly appear. It's a little alarming, and meant to be, because at times, when Nixon was publicly emoting, he scared the hell out of us in that we hadn't a clue as to what he was really feeling. Having been deceivingly shallow and contrived for so long that when he did display emotions we had to wonder what new tricks were being employed. NASTY HABITS is too short to get into psychology, but Jackson isn't afraid to show us the slippery side, and she achieves this through crisp, ultra-sharp enunciation that is like hot ice. Male actors playing Nixon go for the piercing cold too, but Jackson's scenario isn't "just the usual confession," it's hypnotic.
Hopkins as Nixon is a real reach into the man that all the other performances have shied away from, and primarily, one might assume, because no director had the guts to try for a definitive study. This is the surprise of NIXON: that Oliver Stone of all possible directors attempted to do it. Scene for scene, it's his most balanced, even honorable work. The caveat is that it's as balanced and honorable a portrait of Nixon that Stone could accept as the kind of prejudicial, provoking artist that he is. Because of JFK, Stone has made it easy for his detractors to attack him for alleged distortion and out and out fantasy, and, not unexpectedly, the Nixon daughters have issued a statement of public condemnation over NIXON. Not unlike Dole carping about violence in movies he never sees, or the Christers screaming about Scorsese's LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST before they ever viewed it, the Nixon girls, at the time of the statement, hadn't seen Stone's three hour etude. If or when they do, there's a slim chance they're feel embarrassed by rushing to premature conclusions. Stone's script, annotated to support the wormiest of claims made, won't pass muster with them, but watching their father through Hopkins is likely to cause flashes of hurtful memories when they hear this Nixon warn about "the lie" and "the cover up." And deep pain when they watch Hopkins achieve an intense, extraordinary dimension built from torment, especially when his Nixon asks Paul Sorvino's Kissinger to knee with him and pray; when Hopkins is consoled by Joan Allen's Pat just before they climb the White House steps to the presidential quarters for one of the last times; and when Hopkins verbatims Nixon's farewell to the White House staff. It is not possible to be unaffected by these progressions into dissolution.
Hopkins validates the famous Nixon imagery; Stone's "fairness," though, isn't the same as fact. Before the movie starts, we're told that the screenplay is based on what's published, that much of what is available is contradicted by an equal amount of material, and that the play condenses, composites and conjectures. Well, that's more honest than he usually is about his subjects, yet that doesn't stop him from theorizing without much solid support: that Nixon got involved with attempting to execute Castro, but the mess backfired and JFK was assassinated as punishment. And that that is the reason why Castro has been left alone: like J. Edgar Hoover, Castro knows where the bodies are. There are slimy insinuations that Nixon was involved in Bobby Kennedy's death, and in the shooting of George Wallace. (Stone must have read the predictions of computer pioneer Edmund Berkeley.) The director's not above putting accusations of crimes into Pat Nixon's mouth: she reminds Nixon that she knows what he did to Alger Hiss, who unwittingly made Nixon nationally recognized. As Stone postulates, NIXON becomes a badly edited Reader's Digest version of Fawn M. Brodie's RICHARD NIXON: THE SHAPPING OF HIS CHARACTER: lots of smeary quotes, gossipy tidbits, truncated flashbacks, but no shaping.
That's what makes NIXON a less than satisfactory picture: there's so much peripheral garbage thrown in that you end up fighting to stay interested -- you can feel yourself pushing away all the Adobe After Effects in order to get to the man. The graphic pizzazz in NATURAL BORN KILLERS might have been all right for the twentysomethings fed on MTV, but it not only doesn't belong in NIXON, the filler takes away from Stone's limited respectability. Cautioning about the psychology of deception, of envy, of enemies, and how they almost always backfire when used to maintain power, Stone is striving to produce a rather admirable examination. But he's only got himself to blame for not getting the kind of positive reaction he wants, because I doubt anyone begged him to infuse NIXON with an overload of junked up technology. What hasn't been intended by Stone is what seems clearer now than during the turmoil of Nixon's immediate and post presidency: that the myth of Nixon's cavernous complexities is just that. Through fuzzy-of-meaning flashbacks, which include scenes of Nixon's parents Frank and Hannah, Stone tries to establish the origins of Nixon's behavior, but as one watches, and notices what's missing -- like when at seven he slammed a hatchet into the head of a six-year-old boy after he refused to give Dick a jar of pollywogs; or Dick's disappointment in not being able to attend Yale (that, had he attended, might have abated instead of exacerbated his vengeful hate of the rich) -- it's apparent that the director can't get to any root causes and linking manifestations because he can't see where they are. All of us are thicker and fuzzier psychologically than we'd be willing to admit, but with Nixon, once you "get it," much about him falls into place.
The star-studded cast is, overall, unobjectionable, with Madeline Kahn as big mouth Martha Mitchell very funny. (There are other laughs in the movie, but those few of us who managed some chuckles did so with inexplicable discomfort.) There's a wonderful bit of E. G. Marshall as John Mitchell in shadow; David Hype Pierce's John Dean a semi-serious equivalent to Sandy Dennis' ditzsy Dean in NASTY HABITS; Sorvino looking a little too tanned but getting Henry's speechiness down quite well; and last but not least, Joan Allen as Pat. Here's a first lady we still know next to nothing about, and even if Stone claims that sufficient research has gone into the part, and backed up by advisers who supposedly knew the "inside story," this Pat is conceived as the public wants to see her. She's the public "silent majority," mutely suffering for her husband's sins, but privately she's a chain-smoker (the real Pat died of lung cancer), drinker, embittered by a lack of love, affection and sex. And a sort of secret liberal needler: You really want to believe it when she tells Hopkins' Nixon, "I know why people hate you." If Kahn is close to looking like Martha, Allen's resemblance to Pat is spooky. In their understandable protectiveness, the Nixon girls will tell us neither their mother nor father were drinkers, but the evidence is strong that they were. (Considering the pressures, you can't condemn them; and Nixon blames Pat's stroke in 1976 on Woodward and Bernstein's THE FINAL DAYS.) Many of us regret that Pat Nixon never spilled the beans. No one could have been more authoritative.
The passing of Richard Nixon has been an excuse for some, like Kissinger, Alexander Haig and that weeping Dole, to wax a certain kind of poetic mendacity about the late president's achievements. But thanks to the myriad of books, articles, movies, miniseries and, most damning of all, news film and those tapes on Watergate, eternal reminders of the sad fact that a stultifying break-in snowballed into the self-destruction of a president, Nixon will never be allowed to escape his true heritage. No adversary could have concocted a more just finale: everything we ever suspected about Nixon was confirmed almost daily during the prolonged crisis, especially that he was liar, obstructionist, and, maybe most dangerous of all, paranoid. Could Nixon have survived despite these sins, if he had destroyed the tapes, as Pat in NIXON suggested? Most of us probably doubt it. While some evidence would have been more difficult to attain, the arrogant act of burning them would be tantamount to guilt and, inevitably, he'd have been re-crucified by the press, who, some are sure, would have found ways to muddy up his foreign policy triumphs -- China, mainly -- by calling them betrayals to his hatred of the Reds. (Nixon's domestic policies were disguised liberalism.) Our national hate for Nixon goes back to the late 40s, and, though we have forgotten, even Eisenhower detested him, having twice wanted to remove him from the Republican ticket. But by the time Nixon was finally elected president in 1968, with indeed the horrible help of the assassinations of the Kennedys, we were swirling in the maelstrom of Vietnam, unable to convince ourselves that the war was, one, strategically unimportant, two, our fault, and three, immoral. Nixon's close victory came about because his stalwart anti-Communist stance -- which was a political expedient and leftover from the old McCarthy days -- still resonated; enough fear-loaded voters fell for his lie about a "secret plan" to end the war and agreed with him that the press was to blame for our mounting losses. (Anti-Communism, the press and the hippies were used by a sick nation to forgive itself for Kent State.) Shortly after he was reelected in a landslide in 1972, the still-raging war had two fronts: in the jungles of Vietnam and at home, in the offices of the President. When the burglary of the Democratic National Party offices was irrefutably linked to Nixon, every lie converged and nineteen months after his January, 1973 inaugural, he resigned in disgrace. What didn't go away, and remain rampant as ever, are the tools scumbags use to lord over those who elected them or read them: when a former Nixon propagandist, blinded by the black blizzard of Watergate and suspiciously forgetful of Nancy Reagan's shadow governance, calls Hillary Rodham Clinton "a congenital liar," what's being sanction by the New York Times are promulgation of agenda and, make no mistake about it, a columnist's and a New York senator's infectious misogynistic obsessions to destroy a first lady who was once a part of the legal legion investigating Watergate. They're creating enemies who needn't be, just like Nixon who, according to that columnist on an A & E Biography, "redeemed himself" in the end. Only a patent liar, a virtual son of a male bitch, could mouth the biggest lie of all.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews