Review of The Assassination of Richard Nixon (2004) by Ginny   — 19 Apr 2009

Depressing tale of a naive Job-like salesman caught in a downward spiral only made sensible by an ill-fated turn to radical idealism. Sam Bicke wants to join the Black Panthers, but when what seems to be a kind of general paranoia empties his life of family, friends, and job, his aimless but radically-oriented anger spurs him to think of toppling Nixon.

Sam's inability to function well in daily life makes this a pretty unlikely prospect, and this points to one of the difficulties of the film: are we supposed to see Sam as an exception to be pitied, a figure whose nearly autistic social persona is constitutionally unable to navigate the modern American economy properly? Or is he an everyman whose turn to a complete rejection of "the system" shows how close just such a turn is to the surface of our daily lives? The film has very little sympathy for Sam's character, which means that ultimately what matters is not who Sam is, whether "us" or someone else, but the fact that the whole social, economic, and political landscape that envelops Sam seems to be on its own downward spiral.

Sam's own fall from normalcy is only a by-product-- he's an unfortunate, and the film seems to ask us to think that despite his naivete, he's right about quite a few things. But he's got no way out, and the film seems to feel generally claustrophobic about the prospects of everyone caught up in this economy, whether hopelessly naive or not.