Secret Honor

"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

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.

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.

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.

Sometime in the late 70's, the 37th President- Richard Nixon- decided to set the record straight. In his study, alone but for a bottle of Scotch and a loaded revolver, he sets the tape deck to record and starts to tell his tale. So begins a fascinating, illuminating and thoroughly candid monologue that explores what Nixon may have been feeling, what he was thinking; and why his presidency and very name became synonymous with scandal.

Robert Altman's 'Secret Honor'- based on the play 'Secret Honor: The Last Testament of Richard M. Nixon' by Donald Freed and Arnold M. Stone- seamlessly weaves fact with fiction to create a thoroughly believable and strangely compelling portrait of a man too often in film and television resigned to the realm of caricature and cast in black and white. The real Nixon was a man of immeasurable greys, and Freed and Stone's powerful screenplay lays that fact bare.

It is neither an overly sympathetic work, nor is it a scathing summation of Nixon's legacy. It is balanced, unbiased- in fact, surprisingly so, considering Altman's noted and vocal political leanings. It shows Nixon to be one full of contradictions and divided loyalties, a deeply paranoid man not comfortable with people, but still one who craved attention and demanded respect. He is not the villain most films make him out to be, neither is he a saint. Through their barbed, witty monologues, Freed and Stone show us Nixon's character like few other films have succeeded - or even tried- in doing.

Freed and Stone's writing is remarkable because it is so vitriolic and yet so sympathetic you begin to see Nixon not as some political figurehead or legend, but simply as a man; one of fallibility, doubts and self-interest like us all. Oliver Stone would try to do something similar with his 'Nixon' in 1995, but 'Secret Honor' was much more successful at bringing a complete, well-rounded portrait of the man to life.

Of course, 'Secret Honor' also benefits from having the late, great Philip Baker Hall starring as Nixon, delivering a tour-de-force performance that justifiably jumpstarted his career in film. He showcases the self-pity and ego inherent to Nixon's character in a subtle manner, while also imbuing the man with a sympathetic, humane streak. So perfectly does he capture Nixon's mannerisms, his presence, his vocal eccentricities, that it is as if the real President had possessed Baker Hall for the ninety minutes of the film's runtime.

Ranting and raving into his tape recorder, racing through the study in his red-velvet smoking jacket; at times you feel that you're watching some kind of documentary that the 37th President drunkenly agreed to take part in. Baker Hall's is an intense, incredible piece of acting that is not just the finest Nixon we've ever had on screen, it is one of the greatest performances in any Altman film point blank. That is not even to mention the fact that the film is a one man show, and Baker Hall keeps us glued to the screen the whole time.

Filmed on campus at the University of Michigan, 'Secret Honor' is simply, stylishly shot. Pierre Mignot's cinematography is fluid, unobtrusive work that has room for symbolism and visual metaphor, but is never pretentious. Stephen Altman's production design is texturally rich, though in a minimalist fashion. Nixon's study- the only location in the film- is decorated convincingly, containing the staples one might assume the 37th President would have: a piano, photographs from his career, various CCTV cameras; copious amounts of Chivas Regal. Though adapting plays to film can often be difficult in terms of visuals and staging; Altman's crew on 'Secret Honor' did a masterful job.

'Secret Honor' is a masterpiece of cinema, a sharply written, witty character study of one of the most notorious Presidents in history. It is not a politically biased work, though that doesn't mean it doesn't contain criticism of Nixon's policies and time in office. It is a film that is always believable and never melodramatic- an honest examination of the man's character; and as Nixon himself once said "honesty may not be the best policy, but it is worth trying once in a while." 'Secret Honor' is well worth trying.