Who could have possibly thought that Oliver Stone would surpass the level reached by "JFK", one of the greatest political thrillers ever made? Yet his "Nixon" is not only the harrowing political biography of the most controversial and unpopular President of the United States, but also the gripping psychological study of a tormented man who got too much to prove. It's also a terrific movie served by an impressive casting: Anthony Hopkins, Joan Allen, James Woods, Bob Hoskins, Ed Harris, E.G. Marshall, Madeline Kahn and an unrecognizable Paul Sorvino as Henry Kissinger. And it's definitely one of the best movies of 1995, which is saying a lot.
"Nixon" borrows a lot of elements from "JFK" on the editing department, swinging back and forth from childhood memories to the present, from the Watergate scandal to its dark premises. The film is complex, almost confusing but never gratuitously because Nixon himself happens to be an enigmatic and larger-than-life character. Roger Ebert even compared the film to "Citizen Kane", establishing an interesting parallel between Richard Nixon and Charles Foster Kane. Nixon does remind of Kane in his excesses, his capability to be disdained by the establishment yet respected within his inner circle, and his heart consumed by an unconscious desire to be loved while trying to hide a torment deeply rooted in his childhood.
The comparison is even truer because like Kane, Nixon hides a terrible secret, although the missing eighteen minutes from the White House recordings would unveil something more unpleasant than the mysterious 'Rosebud'. Behind every great man, there's a secret, but in Nixon's case, there's also a woman. And as Pat Nixon, Joan Allen delivers a subtle but pivotal performance as the woman who evolves in her husband's shadow but in her own supportive way, acts as the only guardian angel of a man who sold his soul to a certain Machiavellian view of power. She believes in his talent to win the election, but not the hearts, people would never love him because she knows how uneasy it was for her to love him.
The chronicles of a man who could never be loved, that could be indeed the subtitle of Nixon's journey in the White House, in his whole political career actually. Indeed, Nixon won two elections, opened China, signed a nuclear treaty with Russia, ended the longest war America ever knew, but as great achievements as they were, Nixon's dark side eclipsed them: Vietnam, Cambodia, Allende, the Watergate. In his most lucid moments, Nixon even recognizes that his road to success was paved by dead bodies, he could go to college because his older brother died of tuberculosis, Jack Kennedy was assassinated, then Bobby, his luck carried the seeds of his doom. This is when the comparison with "JFK" stops, it's not an investigation but a character study.
And as Dick Nixon, Anthony Hopkins never tries to make an impersonation but rather creates his own personification of an eternal outcast, haunted by the ghosts from the past, a man who always had to forge his carapace, by building his own legend through his modest Quaker background "in the poorest farm of California", always using it as an alibi to justify that he's one of the 'little people'. And when an outcast experiments the power, and tastes its irreplaceable savor after the post-War republican wave, he can't renounce it. Nixon knew he was born to rule the most powerful country of the world, like a personal revenge: "Only if you have been in the deepest valley, can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain." This taste for revenge is his inner demon.
I'm not comparing two characters, but "Nixon" kind of reminded me of "Downfall" in the way the White House is showed, as a sort of bunker where the state's ugliest secrets are covered, a shadowy and gloomy place waiting for the enemy (here the media) to come to the leader. And one by one, like a sinking ship, every faithful soldier is drown in the scandal, and Nixon, as the Captain, is the last to leave. Ebert wrote about Bruno Ganz' performance as Hitler: "Admiration I did not feel. Sympathy I felt in the sense that I would feel it for a rabid dog, while accepting that it must be destroyed." In a lesser measure of course, I think this could work as the right answer to those who believed that Stone, a notorious left wing, created empathy toward Nixon.
Stone never used his patriotism at the expenses of intelligence. Nixon is responsible of his downfall but a whole system is to blame, Nixon was flawed but his enemies weren't nobler. And that's what Stone brilliantly denounces. In many scenes, Nixon reminds the Press of its lack of objectivity, its obsession and outspoken hatred. These words are still relevant today; Nixon is the quintessential incarnation of the 'person we love to hate'. Indeed, with his victory sign trademark, his sweating and angry look contrasting with Kennedy's shining smile, from his "I'm not a crook" to his dog Checkers, from his resignation to "The Simpsons" (he even inspired through his middle-name the name of Milhouse) to hold-up masks, he's in his way, an icon of popular culture, or unpopular if you prefer.
Nixon appears as an individual whose republican obedience veiled his true idealism, his fascination for Lincoln, the President who ended the Civil War, or Kennedy as a beloved figure. People look at Kennedy and want to be him, but when they look at them, they find Nixon, less than a low self-esteem; it's a sentiment of total waste that invades his heart when he look at Kennedy's picture during his last night in the White House. Nixon's tragedy is America's, and maybe that's why he was loathed, because people don't want to look at themselves.
