BEFORE: Well, I've seen Lincoln go to Illinois, and Jefferson go to Paris. If Nixon goes to China tonight, it'll be a thematic hat trick. This one's over 3 hours long, so I'm breaking out the espresso beans and the Mountain Dew. With all the actors in this film's giant cast, linking should be easy - ah yes, Nick Nolte co-starred in "Under Fire" with Ed Harris (last seen in "The Hours"), who's playing Howard Hunt.
THE PLOT: A biographical story of former U.S. president Richard Milhous Nixon, from his days as a young boy to his eventual presidency which ended in shame.
AFTER: I did do a Nixon-themed chain once before, with "Frost/Nixon" and "All the President's Men", but this one slipped by, it wasn't available to me at that time. But the funny thing about Watergate is, I never really retained what was at the center of it all. Every time I learn it, I tend to forget it. But I do know that as a political scandal, it was like a Catholic sin - if you think about sinning, that's another sin. And if you lie about committing the sin, that's a sin too - so you get three sins for the price of one! Nixon got in trouble for planning the Watergate break-in, for the break-in itself, and for trying to cover it up.
This 3-hour epic film takes us from Nixon's childhood through his presidency and resignation, just not necessarily in that order. There are flashbacks within flashbacks, and so much time-jumping that I was never sure what the proper framing device was, or if there was one at all. I get that a man's entire political career can't be expressed linearly in a 2-, 3-, or even 4-hour film, but the use of montage and jump-cuts is so extreme here, I ended up not knowing what happened when. Usually my mantra is "Show, don't tell" but this film shows so much, and tells us so little, that's the rare exception to the rule.
There are even times when people seem to flicker or disappear - they're in one-shot, but not the next - which leads to confusion about whether those people are real, or in Nixon's imagination. It therefore makes it difficult for us to know what was really said when, and who was in the room, which may be the point after all. Case in point - did Nixon hang out with hippies on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, shortly after Kent State? Shots of them rapping with the president are intercut with him standing there alone, so maybe that's just conjecture or poetic license.
Another suspect clandestine meeting occurs in Dallas, shortly before JFK's assassination. Are we tying in Nixon to that whole tangle? Actually, the whole film is reminiscent of Oliver Stone's other film, "JFK", using a mix of new footage, stock footage, re-creations and black-and-white flashbacks - which creates a similar tone, but without one single event to focus on and parse over and over, it's like peeling back the layers in reverse.
Nixon also meets with J. Edgar Hoover (and his boyfriend?) at a horse-track in 1968, to try and get some dirt on Robert Kennedy. (as with Nixon's visit to Chairman Mao in China, the meeting seems to be based around the philosophy that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend") There's some kind of metaphor brewing that would compare the presidential race to a horse-race, but it can't quite put it together. Is the fallen horse supposed to represent an assassinated Kennedy? (Bonus, today's Kentucky Derby day, make of that what you will...)
Nixon was outshined by one Kennedy or another for the better part of a decade - portraying him as someone from the other party who benefited from their assassinations seems a little specious. Either he's a political mastermind who was pulling more strings than any of us realized, or he was a paranoid egomaniac racked with self-doubt, who considered himself an honest man, despite all the dirty dealings he was involved in - so which is it? The more the film shows us, the more enigmatic a figure he becomes.
His fragmented life here comes to resemble a skipping, spliced piece of tape. Was that intentional?
Again, I feel the need to point out that my non-scientific rating system is not based on technical merit, or artistic achievement, but is instead a snapshot based solely on my enjoyment level at the conclusion of the film. I can, for example, appreciate a piece of cinema as a masterpiece for some reason, but the rating may be affected by other factors, as always.
Starring (and this may take a while) Anthony Hopkins (last seen in "Thor"), Joan Allen (last seen in "The Ice Storm"), James Woods (last heard in "Stuart Little 2"), Bob Hoskins (last heard in "Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties"), Paul Sorvino (last seen in "Romeo + Juliet"), Mary Steenburgen (last seen in "Four Christmases"), Tony Goldwyn, David Hyde Pierce (last heard in "A Bug's Life"), Powers Boothe (last seen in "MacGruber"), with cameos from E.G. Marshall, David Paymer, J.T. Walsh (last seen in "Needful Things"), Kevin Dunn, Annabeth Gish, Larry Hagman, Edward Herrmann, Madeline Kahn (also last heard in "A Bug's Life"), Dan Hedaya (last seen in "Joe Versus the Volcano"), Saul Rubinek, John C. McGinley, Michael Chiklis, George Plimpton, Fyvush Finkel and Bai Ling (another Star Wars actress!) Whew!
RATING: 3 out of 10 Studebakers
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