Hello and thank you for being a DL contributor. We are changing the login scheme for contributors for simpler login and to better support using multiple devices. Please click here to update your account with a username and password.

Hello. Some features on this site require registration. Please click here to register for free.

Hello and thank you for registering. Please complete the process by verifying your email address. If you can't find the email you can resend it here.

Hello. Some features on this site require a subscription. Please click here to get full access and no ads for $1.99 or less per month.

Nixon (1995) - Great Actors in Nonsense Material

This film has a massive cast of A-listers, from Sir Anthony Hopkins to Mary Steenburgen, Ed Harris, Paul Sorvino, and a stellar Joan Allen as Pat Nixon. They all deliver some of their best work as the various heroes and villains (mostly villains) of the Nixon era.

But it's all overshadowed by Oliver Stone's hammy reinterpretation of events and personalities. He can't help himself. Hopkins disappears into the role, but he plays Tricky Dick as a sort of werewolf, deeply wounded but also full of inhuman rage. Joan Allen's Oscar-bait performance as Pat Nixon is reduced to this drunk in a housecoat, when the real Mrs. Nixon was steely and humble. Paul Sorvino hits it just right as the egomaniacal and childish Henry Kissinger. James Woods similarly nails Haldeman's icy prick style.

Overall, the film reads like Stone's cheap ripoff of a great Greek tragedy. We're meant to feel sorry for Dick Nixon, and maybe we should, but Stone takes us on this journey with baffled wonder. "Aren't we supposed to hate Nixon," he essentially asks. For those of us who came of age after The Age of Nixon, we're left without that essential bafflement. Stone and his Boomer-era peers may feel conflicted about admiring and pitying their hated Nixon, but the rest of us feel no such conflict about seeing him within the broader historical context of the era.

People were expecting another JFK - another film about a determined boy scout bringing The System to its knees - but they got this stage play about the sorrow of a great man ruined by insecurities and societal tumult.

Offsite Link
by Anonymousreply 1October 13, 2022 4:58 PM

Another example of mixing drama with cartoonish storytelling.

In this deleted scene, Sam Waterston plays CIA Director Richard M. Helms, a shady figure even Nixon feared and kept at arm's length. Waterston is amazing in the part, but the script is just ludicrous here. Helms quotes Yeats, yells about Cuba, implies involvement in the JFK assassination, and briefly has black irises for some reason. Stone goes overboard here in personifying The Beast in the form of this one shady character. Helms was a true son-of-a-bitch with a lot of secrets in his head, but he wasn't the devil.

Offsite Link
by Anonymousreply 1October 13, 2022 4:58 PM
Loading
Need more help? Click Here.

Yes indeed, we too use "cookies." Take a look at our privacy/terms or if you just want to see the damn site without all this bureaucratic nonsense, click ACCEPT. Otherwise, you'll just have to find some other site for your pointless bitchery needs.

×

Become a contributor - post when you want with no ads!