“Nixon” is from Stone’s trick-crazy period, where the cuts are frequent, the camera is wild, and we’re constantly changing from black-and-white to color. Sometimes the images are sharp, sometimes they’re grainy; sometimes the color has that soft mushiness of a cheap TV show and new footage is frequently intercut with news footage. Frequent visitors to my site know I bemoan John Williams’ more recent scores as being overwrought. But if Nixon is going to be Macbeth, then Williams is exactly what this film needs to go with Hopkins skulking about like a potty-mouthed Darth Vader.
So what is Stone’s attitude toward the man himself? I mentioned “Shrek” a while ago and now I’m going to come back to it: Nixon is an ogre, big and mean and difficult to love. He does many, many awful things in the course of the film, but he does many good ones as well. “Nixon” does not for an instant say the second cancels out the first but, like Shrek, I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the mean old bastard. I was moved when he and Kissinger got on their knees in front of Lincoln’s portrait and prayed. Maybe “Nixon” is the best kind of film, reminding us that no matter how bad someone is, he is still a man, he is still one of God’s creatures, fragile, complex, and powered by desires not that different from ours. If Kane can bemoan “I could have been a great man if I hadn’t been rich,” then it is fitting that Kissinger can say that Dick had greatness within his grasp, if not for his faults.
Finished August 11, 2004
Copyright © 2004 Friday & Saturday Night
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