A Honra Secreta

If you ever get a chance to see this film, grab it! Phillip Baker Hall doesn't simply portray Nixon, he inhabits him. The familiar hunched shoulders and odd poses employed by every Nixon impersonator, in Hall's hands seem less like imitation than brilliant artistic choices, revealing the inner struggles of a remarkable, tormented man. No disrespect to Anthony Hopkins, unquestionably a very talented actor, but his Nixon doesn't hold a candle to Hall's.

This is of course a work of fiction, but like the best fiction it lies in order to reveal a deeper truth. Nixon never made the tape we see him creating through the course of this film, but what is revealed through it is both psychologically and historically honest. The portrait that emerges is unsparing and sympathetic. Nixon emerges as a hero in a Greek tragedy with the same grandeur and the same tragic flaw.

Fans and critics both of Richard Nixon will find their judgements challenged by this complex, revealing portrait. Even someone who has never heard of Nixon couldn't help but be fascinated by this powerful, complex man.

Note to PT Anderson fans: According to Anderson, this was the performance that convinced him he had to work with Hall. It's no accident that Anderson's first full-length film, Sidney (or Hard Eight), was a showpiece for Hall's amazing talent.

A great film, if you can find it. I first saw it nearly ten years ago, and it still is fresh in my memory. This is a one man show (Hall is the only actor in the film) and an adaptation of a stage performance. The simple premise: Several years on from his disgrace, Nixon is in San Clemente and sits down with a bottle of Chivas and his old friend, the tape recorder, to spill his guts before he commits suicide. Hall is captivating in the role and his descent into drunken madness is a masterful performance. One of Altman's best. A bit of a history lesson, but one that is more interested in theater than in truth. Still, great theater reveals its own truths and there is plenty here to chew on.

A fictionalized former President Richard M. Nixon offers a solitary, stream-of-consciousness reflection on his life and political career - and the "true" reasons for the Watergate scandal and his resignation.

This comes down to one thing: an examination of the acting skills of Philip Baker Hall. Since the direction is so limited, it really cannot say anything good or bad about Robert Altman (who had already made his name by this point).

Hall's Nixon is something of a madman. He fluctuates through every range of emotion within 90 minutes, at times flipping between anger and suicidal tendencies. What a wild ride. Of course, the film is clearly marked as fiction... so we should not assume this person was in any way related to the real Nixon.

The best film ever made on Nixon, or any president. A film which is an entire monologue by Philip Baker Hall, one of the best character actors of our time. While, like Anthony Hopkins, he doesn't LOOK like Nixon, his performance helps you look beyond it. As he staggers around the oval office, cursing his enemies and talking to ghosts, staring into his monitors, you get the resonance of the real Nixon, and you even begin to feel sorry for him. It opens the myth of Nixon wide to reveal a man beneath the icon, and is a simultaneously thrilling and dramatic film. Altman's film has been out of print for at least a decade, but it far surpasses Oliver Stone's film and is worth watching for anyone who ever wanted to appreciate Nixon as anything other than a monster.

"Secret Honor" is an actor's wet dream.

This screen adaptation of a one-man play stars Philip Baker Hall as Richard Nixon on the dark night that follows his resignation from the office of President of the United States. The film makes clear from the outset that it is not a representation of facts but rather a fictional exploration of the thoughts and feelings that may have been torturing Nixon at the time. Hall has the screen to himself and gives a fierce, if rather one-note, performance. The material isn't very deep and doesn't give Hall a lot of room to explore, but I suppose it succeeds on its own modest terms.

Robert Altman made this film at the apex of his disenfranchisement from the mainstream Hollywood system. He filmed it at the University of Michigan with the assistance of Michigan students, and the tiny budget and minimal resources show. It's not remotely cinematic, though Altman makes a solid effort to make it so. Though the action is confined to Nixon's private office, Altman frequently pans his camera over to a bank of security cameras that Nixon has trained on himself, so that much of the time we're watching an image of Hall on a T.V. monitor rather than Hall himself. The message is clear -- Nixon, and by extension any politician, is constantly performing, even in his most private moments. Once one takes the oath of the presidency, he can't ever stop being the president. How good a job would any one of us do under similar circumstances, and how harshly do we have the right to judge our leaders?

Admittedly, much of my lack of enjoyment of "Secret Honor" is my own fault. It made me realize how little I actually know about Nixon's presidency, which was over in the years just before I was born, and I wasn't able to understand many of the film's references. As is often the case, my knowledge of the more distant past is greater than events that have occurred within my lifetime.

Grade: B