Luke
stu-kicks
Tash Jayasinghe
CibbuanoNixon
October 23rd 2006 10:25
Nixon (1995)
Following on the dynamic and successful 'Natural Born Killers', and drawing on the historical tapestry that fed 'JFK', Oliver Stone turned his conspiratorial sights on former U.S. President Richard Nixon... with surprising results. Instead of damning a target as easy as Nixon, Stone instead chose to portray the fallen President's eventful story as a tragedy. Keen to remind us of what Nixon did for America (and, as a byproduct, the rest of the world), but equally keen to push our faces right into the controversy and grit of the administration, the film gives us a fairly balanced and moving account of Watergate and the man’s career leading up to it.
From the start the style is uncompromisingly fast, tracking back and forth between different points in Nixon's life, and using different film stocks to portray a sense of history and it's coverage by the ever-watchful eyes of the media. This somewhat flashy style, coupled with a creepy replication of the period's paranoia (an atmosphere that permeates almost every scene) and a good dramatic score, does well to pull the audience through it's 3 hours-plus quite effortlessly.
Nixon is portrayed as a man who takes the hits but keeps on going regardless of whether he's going to win or lose (as exemplified in a football flashback). Here we are given the unlikely tragedy of an unlikeable man - and it works! We see a man who scapegoated himself on the world stage of history only to see his one true 'friend' Henry Kissinger (Paul Sorvino, barely unrecognisable under a false nose and perfectly replicated voice) sell him out and walk away with all the credit for the better results of the Nixon administration. Stone doesn't let this, or any other single thread, drive the film though - he knows better than to oversimplify things, and he expertly introduces each of the major players of the era through recognisable faces and well-constructed scenes (witness Bob Hoskins' introduction as FBI chief Hoover, via a horse track - here we see a man who pulls strings and plays games for gain, not caring for the cost of pawns).
As, perhaps, evidenced above - Stone is not one for being too subtle either, he is always keen to get his message across as clear as possible, as we see in a rather telling scene where Nixon accidentally pulls a doorknob off and remarks that the White House is literally 'falling apart'. I'm afraid I can't really fault this, as obvious as some of his nods to the audience might be, there is more than enough in his films to warrant him abandoning subtlety altogether.
Anthony Hopkins seems a rather strange choice to play Nixon, and he never really quite looks the part as far as I'm concerned, but his performance is powerful and nuanced enough to break my attention from this. It was good to see Hoskins, Sorvino, James Wood, etc, etc, filling out the lesser roles (all of which play a very second fiddle to the lead, which is always the case in biopics I suppose) and I'm glad I caved and picked up this video. I'd always felt Nixon was quite despicable, but by the end of the movie I felt quite sorry for him! It really got right under the skin of it's subject.
TRIVIA: Anthony Hopkins got himself another Best Actor Academy Award nomination for his efforts here.
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