# Nixon (1995)

### reviewed by
Michael Redman

    Nixon
    A Film Review By Michael Redman
    Copyright 1996 By Michael Redman

    **** (out of ****)

While there may be some question concerning how much of Oliver Stone's film is truth, there can be no debate that it is one hell of a movie. Richard Nixon was an enigma to his friends and family as well as to the country and Stone shoves our face in his version of the answers.

The acting is as dynamic as you would expect from Anthony Hopkins, Joan Allen, Powers Boothe, James Woods and dozens of others including an unexpectedly strong, albeit minor, appearance by Larry Hagman. The sets feel authentic. The era seems right. Nixon's life flashes before our eyes...

And flash is what it does. Like Stone's "JFK", the film is a patchwork of remarkable vignettes. Filmed in numerous formats -- color, black and white, extremely grainy, over-exposed -- the pseudo-documentary approach invades our minds and becomes history.

What a chore this must have been to direct and edit. What scenes to film in which of the numerous film types? What hallucination to include in which flashback inside which other flashback? The final result is such an assault on the senses that those decisions may not have mattered. The choice to construct the film in this manner might be only the crucial one. Weighing in at over three hours of visual onslaught, Stone's image becomes ours almost involuntarily.

In Nixon and "JFK", Oliver Stone presents our history as mythology. Even if the warrior is fatally flawed, it is still the story of a hero's struggle. As evil as many people believe Nixon to have been; according to Stone, the president thought he was fighting the noble fight. Beaten down time after time, Nixon picked himself back up to slay more dragons.

The Kennedy assassination and Watergate are perhaps the defining moments of our nation's history in the last half of this century. The events that became legends created the American mood for decades. Each of those few minutes of history changed the country's collective soul dramatically.

Kennedy is viewed as the knight in shining armor shot down as he was saving the country. The great hope of the liberals destroyed before he could fulfill his destiny. The lesson for the country? The good die young so don't try.

Watergate was the downfall for the conservatives' hero. Even sleazy politicians fail. Nixon's lesson for us? The people in charge lie. Don't trust anyone.

The reality that Kennedy wasn't completely noble and Nixon, not totally depraved doesn't much matter. The truth of history is academic; the myths are what stir the country.

[This appeared in the 1/4/96 "Bloomington Voice", Bloomington, Indiana. Michael Redman can be contacted at redman@bvoice.com] -- mailto:redman@bvoice.com This week's film review at http://www.bvoice.com/ Film reviews archive at http://us.imdb.com/M/reviews_by?Michael%20Redman

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