Secret Honor

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.

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.

Made 11 years before Oliver Stone's "Nixon", with Anthony Hopkins, Robert Altman's direction of Philip Baker Hall in his gritty portrayal of Richard Millhouse on his last night in the Whitehouse, rehashing out all his problems over a bottle of scotch. Fumbling and bumbling around the office with tape machines and casting vague hints into the real motives and players behind the whole debacle. A very watchable and interesting film for anyone interested in Nixon/Watergate. A better film than Oliver Stone's version in spite of a much smaller budget.

Any individual is a puzzle, and Richard M. Nixon was no exception, rather living proof. To those who know him and his story (wether through a variety of books or personal experience or even through Oliver Stone's excellent "Nixon") this is a magnificent epilogue that instead of tying all loose threads together, reopens wounds and reformulates old and tired questions.

The film is a mix of fragments of a complex and important life (one that helped shape the modern world) and an equally complex mind. Since only a very long (and impossible, given the obvious budget) running time could grace this with a tight sense of structure, the performance becomes the binding element, which is the key element of this picture. Whether you are interested in history, Nixon himself, character suffering, paranoia, film or acting, this is a must-see, if only for the brilliant performance by Philip Baker Hall. His portrayal of Nixon blows Anthony Hopkins's away in terms of accuracy and is a mighty challenger in terms of acting alone. He may be less sympathetic than Hopkins, but such was one of the real Nixon's flaws (in interviews the real Hall is quite charming!).

Turning a play - especially a one-man-show - into a film is quite a challenge, but Altman, through simple yet effective means (notably the use of security-camera monitors and portraits), cranks up the intimacy and paranoia, ending the film in an uneasy and dark manner that would never be conceivable on stage.

In fewer words, suffice to say that this unusual little film is in truth a giant in movie-making resourcefulness and talent. Unmissable.