Day 12: "Nixon"

"...he's the darkness reaching out for the darkness. And eventually, it's either you or him."

Richard Nixon wasn't that bad as President. It's a statement you'll rarely see and for good reason. His economic decisions contain the very bad to the somewhat good. But his social domestic policies have still stood the test of time because of how efficient some of them are. Yes, his good accomplishments don't outweigh the bad but he did some good stuff. His foreign policy was pretty successful in alot of ways. Nixon was so effective that by the end of the film, Henry Kissinger remarks sadly that Nixon was destined for greatness but fucked everything up.

Oliver Stone doesn't go into any of the domestic politics. For a film about a US President, you don't get a sense at all of Nixon's domestic policy which was very significant. You also have no idea of the type of Moderate and Middleground Republican that Nixon was. But as with all of Oliver Stone's films, there is a lot of foreign policy, particularly with the Vietnam War. Oliver Stone, a soldier who came back from the Vietnam War and was outraged at it's handling by his government, treats Nixon sympathetically. You'd expect something more visceral which you can probably get in Stone's "Platoon."

"Nixon," from a screenwriting standpoint, is a masterpiece in my eyes. Instead of making it about politics—which Stone does in "W."—the film is about Nixon's personal life. As the script goes back and forth in time, it covers his life during the Great Depression, his college years, a quick pass over his Vice Presidency, his peculiar relationship with his wife, his paranoia and hatred of the media, and the power system that has been dubbed, "the beast," and is out of his control. The writing is more like a tragic Shakespeare play, or something from Ancient Roman history. The dialog is cryptic, and sometimes perplexing, but nevertheless it works. Dialog like this tends to only work in novels and sometimes can be problematic when adapting to film but it works here. An example of it not being as successful would be Scorsese's "Last Temptation of Christ."

The directing is even better. The editing has Stone's signature erratic touch. I'm a big fan of it. If you were to look away for a few minutes then you would have already missed too much. In "Nixon" he moves from B&W to color continuously. In archival footage, Anthony Hopkins is inserted so that the continuity isn't breached. It's effective. One of the early newsreels are clearly an imitation of the "Citizen Kane" newsreel, and the shot of the White House gates is also a notable homage to Xanadu.

There's some brilliance here. I was particularly impressed at a certain point when we see Nixon's mom talking, then cut away, and when it cuts back, we still hearing Nixon's mother talking but her lips are no longer moving. Nixon's mother is almost employed here as a ghostly figure that haunts Nixon. Her uber-religious beliefs clearly left a mark on Nixon and the story somewhat touches upon it. The scene with Mao is also very well orchestrated.

Anthony Hopkins' portrayal as Nixon is pretty damn good. He gets the voice done pretty well, and although he looks nothing like Nixon himself he makes a much better Nixon than Frank Langella did in Frost/Nixon and Langella looked a whole lot like Nixon. Hopkins has a wider ranger as actor than Langella, and Nixon is much more nuanced and reactive.

Nixon is one of the best biopics ever made probably because it does try to cover a man's entire life. Other biopics choose a point to start or what to skip. And even as one of the best biopics of all time, it plays more like a political thriller or a crime film where deliberations are being done to read the situation from all the angles. Nixon is not as good as "The Godfather" but it is, to me, one of the greatest films ever made.

The best films detail the lives of corrupt humans. Well maybe we shouldn't say "corrupt humans." Maybe they're simply men in positions of power and influence that happened to response like men, flawed and impulsive, to the challenges they face. "Citizen Kane," "The Godfather," "There Will Be Blood," and "Scarface" are just a few examples of men with wider goals, and larger ideals but when it comes to morality they lose scope and clarity. Ethics become blurred and a new code of conduct emerges. These films are the most daring. They don't sympathize their subject completely but give enough room so that we empathize with them. These films stand the test of time and stay with us because they connect with our own failed states of morality. Of these ambitious films, "Nixon" is up there with all of them.