Like the man it portrays, Nixon is endlessly ambitious. Oliver Stone is playing for big money here. It's significant that the movie begins with a homage to Citizen Kane and ends with what amounts to a blatant steal from The Godfather Part II, as Stone is clearly hoping that his magnum opus (the film runs three hours and eleven minuets) will enter into film history as one of the greatest movies ever made. That the film fails to live up to its admittantly high goals is not a surprise- Stone is trying too hard. He tries to make Nixon the definite biopic, and a study of power along the lines of the film mentioned above, and some kind of statement on the dark side of the American dream, and an expose on the inner workings of the government, AND a quasi-sequel to JFK, in which we learn even more conspiracy theories.
The movie works best in its scenes of Richard Nixon, the man. Anthony Hopkins does not look much like the President and at times has trouble loosing his Welsh accent, but his performance carries the film. It is clear from the historical record that Nixon was an exceedingly complicated and troubled man. One article I read about him claims that most of his problems originated from his cold mother, who never gave her son the love he needed. As a result, Nixon was paranoid and untrusting, shying away from most personal relationships, and the same historian argued that his fall from grace might have been prevented if he had only one personal friend, instead on none. There is no way of knowing if Hopkins' psychological portrait is accurate, but it seems plausible and as drama is compelling. "Why do they hate me?" Hopkins Nixon asks his wife, and we feel sorry for him. Nixon can't understand why John F. Kennedy, whose rich father essentially bought him the Presidency, was so loved, while Nixon's own rise from a poor family was ignored. Like Charles Foster Kane, Nixon desperately wants to receive what he is unable to give- love. In fact, looking back on the film, the movie probably portrays Nixon as less ruthless and hateful than he actually was in real life.
If the movie had just been content to be a biopic, this would be a four star review. Unfortunately, the movie goes wrong when it veers away from Nixon, the man, into Nixon- the Man of His Time. Stone begins the film with a title card that informs us that the film is closely based on historical fact, with "speculations" where no confirmed record exists. Actually, conspiracy theories. We get lots of them in this film- a cabal of businessmen that were associated with Nixon plotted Kennedy's assassination, the CIA was responsible for Vietnam, and of course, what was on the famous eighteen erased minuets on the taped recordings of his Oval Office conversations. As I said in response to JFK, I don't mind if filmmaker uses actual events for a fictionalized story (Jackson did it in one my favorite movies of all time, Heavenly Creatures) but I get really annoyed when they pass it off as real history. To be fair, there were actual conspiracies inn the Nixon White House (that's why he resigned) but I doubt there was anything like the comically exaggerated charges found in this film.
Stone style gets in the way of the story, too. He uses a variety of techniques and styles, grainy 16mm, black and white, real historical footage, real historical footage with Hopkins inserted in (badly), quick editing. These cinematic tricks are distracting and somewhat amateurish, taking us out of the story. Stone rips off a lot from The Godfather, both thematically and visually, rich down to Gordon Willis style cinematography.
In the end, what might have been a really extraordinarily biopic is thwarted by its own ambition. I am giving a the film a limited recommendation for Hopkins' and Joan Allen's exceptional performances and Stone's sympathic psychogenic portrayal, but the rest of the film is flawed and heavy handed. Ironically, a film that was impressive in its own right wears out it welcome due to its near obsessive need to be great- just like it's subject.
Nixon (1995)