History As Art Stone May Blur Facts In ‘Nixon’ But He Tells One Heck Of A Thought-Provoking Story
Whether Oliver Stone plays it fast and loose with historical fact is beside the point. The filmmaker has been reproached for pitching multiple Kennedy-assassination theories in “JFK” (1991), for confusing rock-star decadence with cultural upheaval in “The Doors” (1991), and for exploiting the bitter legacy of Vietnam in an increasingly vain succession from “Platoon” (1986) through “Heaven and Earth” (1993).
The bottom line in this searching, often infuriating, body of work is that Stone seeks to provoke a search for the truth. Whether one believes what Stone says in the lurching narrative of “JFK” is secondary to the film’s role in provoking people to seek and consider the same raw information that inspired Stone.
Which brings us to “Nixon,” Stone’s most accomplished effort and a movie certain to baffle all those critics who have deplored the filmmaker’s popularly perceived liberal bias. Though firmly anchored in Stone’s faith in the godliness of John F. Kennedy, “Nixon” treats its own widely condemned subject with an affection that is at once confounding and touching.
For Richard M. Nixon, America’s most tormented and most popularly denounced president, is the very stuff of epic tragedy - more so than even the Kennedys - for he carried the seeds of redemption and destruction in the very core of his being. And he used them: first to escape poverty and to rebound from political oblivion, and then to sabotage the very presidency that he had struggled to secure.
This is the Nixon to whom Stone (in a collaborative screenplay including contributions from several Nixon associates) reintroduces us in one of the century’s most troubling, fascinating and entertaining films. If the fact is that Anthony Hopkins looks nothing like Nixon, then the truth is that Hopkins’ portrayal of Nixon is so unerringly true-to-life that, when finally a news-camera image of the real Nixon appears on screen, the authentic face looks like a caricature.
The Stone-Hopkins Nixon is a neurotic, lurching boor, consumed by a bitterness stemming largely from his 1960 defeat for the presidency and haunted by guilt over having survived two brothers who died young. A greater guilt, over having betrayed the righteous teachings of his Quaker mother (played in eerie flashbacks by Mary Steenburgen), remains untapped until the Watergate crisis forces Nixon to confront the foul-mouthed bigot and bully he has become.
The script careens from place to place and time to time, driven by Stone’s passion to tell as much as he can within three hours. There is so much to tell - the shamelessly indignant “Checkers” speech, the uneasy alliance with J. Edgar Hoover, the opening of China, the Watergate burglary - that Stone must be concise and informative. He captures G-Man Hoover (Bob Hoskins) in two brief scenes, one to establish the legendary enforcer’s forbidden sexual appetites and the other to hammer home the man’s cold ruthlessness.
A huge supporting cast boasts such standouts as Joan Allen’s dead-on portrayal of an awkward and inelegant Pat Nixon, Powers Boothe as Alexander Haig, E.G. Marshall and Madeleine Kahn as John and Martha Mitchell, Paul Sorvino as Henry Kissinger and James Woods as H.R. Haldeman.
But Hopkins’ truer support comes, indeed, from the very artistry of Stone’s approach to cinema. Although it makes no pretense of being a documentary (including a disclaimer up front), “Nixon” takes a cue from the best documentary style in allowing the “camera” to call attention to itself.
The effect is rather like watching history come to life at the hands of a biased but masterful interpreter.
xxxx “Nixon” Location:Newport Highway Cinemas Credits: Directed by Oliver Stone; starring Anthony Hopkins, Joan Allen, Powers Boothe, Ed Harris, James Woods and Bob Hoskins Running time: 3:15 Rating: R
Other views Here’s what other critics say about “Nixon:” Rod Dreher/Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel: Who would have thought that bombastic Oliver Stone, of all directors, could make the life of archscoundrel (or, depending on your point of view, tragic martyr) Richard Nixon as thrill-packed and fun to relive as Gerald Ford’s? Stone’s assaultively dull, epic-length psychobiography of the disgraced president is thoroughly puzzling. For starters, where’s the crying demand for a Nixon movie at this point? … Is there anybody aside from political-science grad students and C-SPAN junkies eager to subject themselves to more than three hours of the same old same old? Maybe there would be, if Stone had some some fresh insights into Nixon’s dark, tormented character. But there’s nothing new here, just a visually exhausting, narratively discombobulated rehash of what we’ve known for years. John Hartl/Seattle Times: No one who lived through the 1950s or the Vietnam/Watergate era can fail to be fascinated by what Oliver Stone has done with the American political figure who outlived most of his rivals and defined that period. But if you were born after President Nixon resigned 21 years ago, will you even be able to follow “Nixon”? The movie makes many possibly unwarranted assumptions about the audience’s knowledge of Watergate, McCarthyism, Cold War politics, and especially the early stages of Nixon’s career. And what will you make of this graceless, petulant, paranoid, unlovable creature, whose proclamations about using “the old Nixon charm” can have his own aides rolling their eyes? How did this man, who had all the personal charisma of Ed Sullivan, ever become president?