04.04.1996

History not set in stone

Andrew Mackay reviews 'Nixon', directed by Oliver Stone (1996, general release)

The former US president Richard Nixon was one of the most controversial figures of our time. He died only recently, and anyone over the age of 30 is likely to remember his presidency. I was 11 and living in the USA when Nixon resigned from office, and I still remember his live appearance on TV to announce the end of his presidency.

Stone’s film examines Nixon’s life from childhood up to his resignation. His poverty-stricken background is highlighted, as is his fierce desire to win at all costs. In politics, this is shown when he wins a congressional election by smearing his opponent as being “pink down to her underwear”. Like the Nixon of history, Stone’s Nixon rides the crest of 1950s McCarthyism and uses it in pursuit of personal power.

However there is a difference between the Nixon of the film and the Nixon of history. This is invariably true of dramatisations of real events. At times Nixon and the Nixon of history run closely together, but the Oliver Stone trademark of the conspiracy theory surfaces repeatedly. I have little doubt that the US establishment has a lot of things to hide, but whether they are the things that Stone wants to emphasise is a different matter entirely.

Stone himself says that his film is based on an “incomplete historical record”, and this is true, not least because of Nixon himself. Most of his tapes recorded as president have never been released into the public domain, though the Watergate tapes terminated his presidency.

Looking at Stone’s Nixon as a character, it is clear we are dealing with the world of cinema rather than the world of history. Anthony Hopkins as the actor portraying him does not convince. This is not because of bad acting. Hopkins simply does not look like Nixon, and he has difficulty reproducing that inimitable accent, which would give even American actors a problem. Hopkins’ portrayal of Nixon is sympathetic in part. This may spring from a desire to rehabilitate him politically, but I doubt it. The needs of the cinema require that leading characters are complex and many-sided. A bad film ignores this requirement, but Nixon is not a bad film.

Over the film hangs a sense of a corrupt establishment and society. For example, it is taken for granted that the 1960 election, which Nixon narrowly lost to Kennedy, was fixed by the Democrats. It is this sense of political and social corruption that in my view makes Nixon a radical film, in spite of the somewhat sympathetic portrayal of Nixon himself.

For me, the key scene occurs about halfway through the film. At the height of protests against the war in Vietnam, Nixon meets protesters near the Lincoln memorial and tells them he wants peace but there are many things involved in trying to keep things under control. One of the young demonstrators tells him that he sounds like he is trying to keep control of a “wild animal”. Afterwards, Nixon says aloud that he did not have an answer for the young woman who told him that.

The truth is that Nixon was the servant of a wild animal called imperialism and in the end this destroyed him, despite his best intentions. In spite of a length of over three hours, anyone active in politics should see this film. It helps us to understand our century, before a new one begins.

Andrew Mackay