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Thus, his Nixon is not too unlike his intricate J.F.K. in style, treatment, and ultimate deductions. But it takes more than a vivid imagination to convincingly rewrite history. Oh, that it were that simple. This flashback-enhanced escapade follows Nixon from childhood through Watergate.
Mr. Stone's work is terrifically ambitious, wonderfully photographed, and flawlessly acted. Taking on the dramatic challenge of the decade, Anthony Hopkins is Herculean in his attempt to inhabit the title character's much-speculated soul. And this is where it gets political: One cannot possibly view this movie without bringing a certain amount of subjective baggage to the doings. Throwing in a little King Richard just for good measure, Hopkins's semi-Shakespearean take paints the former President as a tragic figure in classical Greek terms. The whole brooding thing takes the form of an epic limerick.
The pathetic portrait may miff Conservatives; liberals could be infuriated by what they deem to be an overly humanistic interpretation of the scandal-ridden chief executive.
Mixing a delirious concoction of self-styled Marx, Freud, and Darwin, the director, who co-authored the screenplay with Steven J. Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson, colours the curious canvas with the story of that poor Quaker boy from Whittier, California. Despite humble roots, he scratches his way to national prominence, eventually to do battle with his sociological antithesis, John F. Kennedy.
Stone does an interesting thing here. Just as Spike Lee is forever positioning Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X as the Sun and the Moon of his dramaturgic universe, moviemaker Stone latches onto Kennedy and Nixon as opposite sides of the same political coin. Kennedy representing the Eastern intellectual establishment, Nixon as champion of the crafty disenfranchised. In one drink-sodden moment close to his public embarrassment, a wretched Nixon looks up at a painting of J.F.K. and soliloquises: "When they look at you, they see what they want to be. When they look at me, they see what they are." It's sophomoric and melodramatic all right, but it works to move you.
The best supporting performance comes from Joan Allen as a supremely dedicated Pat Nixon, characterised as part shrewd, part saint, and the only one who truly knows the real Richard M. (One suspects the real story may have died with her). James Woods puts in an Oscar-worthy stint as H.R. Haldeman, Bob Hoskins is appropriately weird as J. Edgar Hoover, and Paul Sorvino is not without laurels in his rather game stretch as Dr. Henry Kissinger.
Since the movie supplies no real new information as regards Watergate, it instead tries to sate our curiosity by gossiping, detailing the arrogance within Nixon's sanctum sanctorum. It also gives Mr. Stone the opportunity to introduce day-to-day historical events, dot some i's, and cross some t's. And like all good propagandists, Oliver Stone knows that casual interjection of the mundane makes far-fetched supposition all the more credible. Toynbee, this is not.
With a Gatling gun approach to historical theorisation, certainly some of it is bound to be right. Doubtless Nixon's terrible loss of two young brothers to tuberculosis took its toll. Likewise, being parented by a strict Quaker mother (Mary Steenburgen) who claimed omniscient powers also played a part in the President's development. But Richard Nixon anguishing incessantly over comparisons to the golden boy glow of J.F.K. seems more like dramatic convenience than historical accuracy. Presented as deeply paranoid, he sees himself as the people's much-disliked booby prize. They couldn't have Kennedy, so they'll kick around Dick Nixon instead. This theme becomes repetitious. At three hours and then some, the sands of time begin to trudge a tad.
Trying to capture the essence and not the caricature, Anthony Hopkins can't help but stumble onto an occasional bit of exaggeration. Occasionally, a smidgen of British intonation swings into the verbal fray. But viewers won't be witnessing the English actor's impression of either David Frye or Rich Little doing Nixon. However, that connection does jog the memory, reminding this auditor of a media, and eventually a society, which went frantic in its mutual caricature of Tricky Dick, the conniving politician who outsmarted himself.
Full of pluck, the cad was chased to the bell tower by the incensed burghers, and still he wouldn't concede. He wails that he ended the war in Vietnam and opened the door to China. It's to no avail. Save for a few lieutenants and his immediate family, even his staunchest party members abandon him. Thus, Stone's President Nixon, while part dictatorial monster and part brilliant statesman, is also delineated a martyr, dying on the cross of the American Presidency. Piecemeal, an incensed body politic has a feeding frenzy; his integrity is the main course.
This effort is thick with filigree and nuance. Though no one can beat a dead horse quite like he can (in this case, a dead President), Oliver Stone is an exciting film director. His pronouncements, grandiloquent though they may be at times, are whipped our way in a colourful kaleidoscope of marvellously punctuated outbursts. The finely edited mixture of pseudo-documentary black and white (whose granular look should come to be known as Stonementary) with colour is visually and viscerally entrancing. It's a shame that hardly any of its presumption is definitely known to be true. Perhaps that's a fitting irony worth taking into account if you're thinking of electing Nixon to be your next movie-going experience.
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