Review of Nixon (1995) by Gene C — 06 May 2005

[b][size=5][font=Century Gothic]I think the greatest thing about Oliver Stone's masterpiece, [i]Nixon, [/i]is that almost everyone I know who had gone through the sixties and the seventies despising Richard Nixon, came away from this film with an unexpected feeling of admiration and empathy for the man. Indeed, in this film, Richard Milhouse Nixon emerges as a great figure who in the very end becomes the American Phoniex. Watching Nixon as he goes through those last hellish days in office, hanging on even though there's nothing left to hang on to or hang on with, reliving the great milestones of his life as he sits in the dark, alone, drinking scotch and eating seconal, the viewer finds that he is sucked into the vortex of one of the most extraordinary political lives in the American experience. Stone's innovative editing, (vertical editing he calls it) is developed in [i]Nixon [/i]much further than in [i]Natural Born Killers, The Doors,[/i] or [i]JFK. [/i]As a matter of fact Stone's editing actually brings the deeper psychological impact of each scene out as forcefully, and sometimes even more forcefully than the action that is supposedly happening in the 'linear time world'.

The use of camera angles, going from color to black and white, from a deep focus to a very soft. grainy focus, to some quick edits in which some character's inner desires or fantasies are quickly.

cut to then cut away from, kind of fast and dirty is unique. I've never really seen this aspect of the drama, that is the[i] subconcious[/i] aspect, so brilliantly and continuously presented. It's like pyschological, dramatic counterpoint, and it hardly ever completely disappears.

The cast for this picture must be any director's wet dream. There are so many unforgetable, utterly stunning performances that one loses count. James Woods as John Erhlichman, Powers Boothe as General Alexander Haig, Mary Steenburgen as Hannah Nixon, Hyde Pierce from [i]Frasier[/i] as John Dean, (a rather bold bit of casting against type), Larry Hagman, Madeline Kahn's absolutely searing portrayal of Martha Mitchell (the last movie role she took before her untimely death) and I could go on and on.

This is probably my favorite film, or at least one of the three.

A final word should be said for the a capella choral arrangement of the song, Shanendoah, that closes the movie and runs over the final credit roll. This has got to be one of the most satisfying astute musical choices in a film in the last twenty years. Absolutely perfect.

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