With the impeachment of a president very much on the horizon as I write this, it was interesting to go back to the Nixon presidency with this movie. Many years ago I read the book of the same name by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. It recounted, as you would guess from the title, the last, pathetic days of the Nixon presidency - and it did so in great detail. The movie, as you might expect, is less detailed than the book. It tends to move the story forward quickly through the use of short narrations offered by various characters and highlights only certain incidents, but it still offers a compelling portrait of Nixon, his family and his officials in the White House as they desperately seek ways to avoid the inevitable ending to the administration.
Lane Smith was superb in the role of Nixon and without doubt was the highlight of the movie. To me (and, admittedly I was only 11 when Nixon resigned, so my "memories" of him are largely from historical news footage) he really did become Nixon. The portrayal was eerie and fascinating - and even sympathetic. Yes, I started to feel sorry for Nixon as I watched this. He was such a complex man, and he had a sense of sadness looming over him - he was paranoid and isolated and introverted, and yet at the same time he was drawn to public life and had a seemingly desperate need to be liked and admired; to be popular. And yet in spite of being perhaps the most visible person in the world, he seems to have spent so much of his life and even his presidency alone. The impression I got from this movie (not an unfair impression from what I've learned about the man over the years) was that his only real confidante - the person to whom he was closest and who was most desperately loyal to him - was his daughter Julie. Otherwise, he kept even those closest to him (including his wife Pat and daughter Tricia) at a distance. Nixon comes across as a tragic figure in this, and at times, with its focus on Nixon's personality and with Watergate closing in on him, this movie is actually very heavy. I appreciated (about halfway through) the truly funny scenes between Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev, as the Soviet leader takes Nixon on a hair-raising car ride with a Lincoln Continental the U.S. president had gifted him with. That lightened things up a bit.
It was interesting watching Nixon's White House officials (especially Chief of Staff Alexander Haig, who was admirable portrayed by David Ogden Stiers) try to hold things together just to keep the government functioning with some sort of cohesion, and Nixon's lawyers are shown becoming increasingly frustrated as the impossibility of their task of defending him becomes increasingly clear. Viewers should be aware that this is really a study of Nixon the man rather than the Watergate scandal. There's actually very little about Watergate itself - just about the aftermath and the desperate attempts to find some way to get Nixon off the hook for his actions and decisions. For those with an interest in Nixon as a man and in the end of his presidency, this is a movie that should be watched. (7/10)
