Nixon (Election Year 2-Disc Edition) DVD Review
Posted by Jeremy Thomas on 08.24.2008
Disney offers a timely release of Oliver Stone's epic biopic, but how does it stack up over a decade later?
Directed by: Oliver Stone Written by: Oliver Stone, Stephen J. Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson
Starring: Anthony Hopkins - Richard Nixon Joan Allen - Pat Nixon James Woods - H. R. Haldeman J. T. Walsh - John Ehrlichman Paul Sorvino - Henry Kissinger Powers Boothe - Alexander Haig Ed Harris - E. Howard Hunt Bob Hoskins - J. Edgar Hoover E. G. Marshall - John N. Mitchell David Paymer - Ron Ziegler David Hyde Pierce - John Dean Kevin Dunn - Charles Colson
DVD Release Date: 8/19/08 Running Time: 212 minutes
Rated R for language.
Oliver Stone is one of the most divisive film-makers working today in terms of provoking opinions about him. Some consider him a bold, visionary genius, creating films that fearlessly challenge the modern power structure, both in Hollywood and in Washington D.C. Others call him a crackpot film-maker who films his fact-based films with ridiculous conspiracy theories and is completely too full of himself. Whichever side one stands upon, it’s impossible to deny that he’s one of the more intriguing auteur film-makers of the last several decades. His films, from Platoon through Wall Street and Born on the Fourth of July, and especially after with JFK and Natural Born Killers, make no effort to shy away from controversy and contain some of the most memorable career-making performances Hollywood has seen. He has quieted in the current decade, going with less political fare such as Alexander and World Trade Center to varying degrees of success and fame. With the current election year, combined with Stone’s upcoming George W. Bush biopic W.,, the time is ripe for an expanded DVD release for one of his more well-known films. Released in 1995, Nixon garnered a lot of media attention and praise, but failed on a commercial level. It got an extended edition in 2002, including twenty-eight minutes of footage, and that version has now received a re-release this year with additional features, called the Election Year Edition.
The Movie
The film stars Anthony Hopkins in the titular character of Richard Milhous Nixon, the thirty-seventh President of the United States. It begins with a group of people, including E. Howard Hunt (Harris) and Gordon Liddy (Diehl), planning a break-in of the Watergate Hotel. The film then jumps ahead to the after-effects. Nixon is at the height of the Watergate crisis, and takes the (now) not-so-secret tapings of White House conversations to the Lincoln Room with a drink. He starts listening to the tapes, an old, sad man who knows how doomed he is, and the tapes provide a background for the movie to start moving around in time in order to present the president’s life in retrospective. The film covers, in its three and a half hour time span, the entirety of Nixon’s life. We see his youth in Whittier, California, living with an honest, hard-working father (Tom Bower) and Quaker mother (Steenburgen), and his growth as a young man, all the way through his attempts to play football at Whittier College. He see his relationship with wife Pat (Allen), his ascension to power as a U.S. Representative for California and his failed run for the presidency in 1960 against Kennedy. The events of his presidency are covered, including his battles with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover (Hoskins) and his dependence on the people who helped put him in power, all the way through his downfall. Nixon is depicted as an inferiority complex-driven man, desperate to become great but never quite achieving it when he finds the opportunity, and his downfall is almost Shakespearean in nature.
One of the great strengths in Nixon is the acting. Anthony Hopkins gives what has been to date the performance of his career as the late president. People love to praise his turn as Hannibal Lector, but it is here that Hopkins truly mesmerizes in a movie that is his from start to finish. While he may not physically resemble Nixon as much as certain actors have their biopic subjects—Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison in Stone’s The Doors certainly comes to mind in that respect, or Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash in Walk the Line—Hopkins adopts Nixon’s mannerism in a way that allows his physical dissimilarities to be easily overcome. He provides a lot of balance in making Nixon seem less like a monster then you might expect in a movie by Stone; Hopkins certainly throws a good touch of King Lear and Macbeth into Nixon, and allows him to be someone who, despite the man’s reputation as an evil monster of a President, you can sympathize with. Hopkins’s Academy Award nomination for this role was exceptionally well-earned, and it was a travesty that he lost, even though it was to Nicolas Cage’s great performance in Leaving Las Vegas. This is the best performance of Hopkins’s illustrious career, and it goes a long way to making the movie enjoyable for the sprawling length.
Besides Nixon, the star-studded cast is also excellent. Joan Allen is terrific as Nixon’s wife Pat, similarly robbed of her best Supporting Actress Award that year. Allen makes Pat the rock of the relationship, keeping Nixon afloat for as long as she can and weathering through the stormy tides of their relationship. When Richard goes back on his promise to stay out of politics after his 1962 loss in the California gubernatorial election so he can run in 1968, Pat’s response is one of disappointment and a seeming willingness to leave him, but she allows herself to be convinced to stay, even though she clearly knows that her husband is putting one over on her. It’s the kind of quiet, solid performance that Allen has made a hallmark out of, and it deservedly put Allen on the map. Paul Sorvino immerses himself completely in the part of Henry Kissinger, becoming unrecognizable and bringing the Secretary of State to life on the screen; James Woods and J.T. Walsh are incredibly solid as Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman and advisor John Ehrlichmen. Powers Booth and David Hyde Pierce are similarly solid; Bob Hoskins makes J. Edgar Hoover a growing, lecherous worm of a man in what is perhaps the weakest performance among the principals. It’s certainly not a bad performance—far from it, it’s quite strong. But compared to the quality surrounding him, it stands out as less then great. Mary Steenburgen and Ted Bowers provide great, if brief, performances as Nixon’s parents as well.
Ultimately, as great as the performances are, this isn’t remembered as an Anthony Hopkins film, but an Oliver Stone film, and for good reason. It begins with a disclaimer, noting that it is “a dramatic interpretation of events and characters based on public sources and incomplete historical record. Some scenes and events are presented as composites or have been hypothesized or condensed.” This is a change from his previous work such as the similarly-themed JFK, where Stone took the same licenses and was burned in the press for doing so. It shows Stone’s growth as a film-maker, and it’s important to remember the ‘dramatic interpretation’ aspect throughout the film, which Stone also co-wrote along with Stephen J. Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson. The film takes several of these composite moments, sparing fact for dramatic license, and at the time of Nixon’s release it was spurned from as varied a group as Nixon’s daughters to Walt Disney’s wife Lillian, one of the rare moments she ever criticized her husband’s company. The dramatic license doesn’t seem as glaring thirteen years later, as we’ve seen many of these since and at the end of the day Stone is creating a piece of entertainment, not a dry biography. If there are flaws, it’s that the movie is too long. Stone tries to be too expansive in the movie and touch on too many subjects, and the film seems to dip by late into the second act. The time-slipping narrative does work and Stone is able to make the pieces flow nicely, although a better editor would have gotten Stone to cut it down to an even leaner pace (the original cut was a staggering four hours). The end result is that it’s too easy to get lost between the non-linear flow of time and the massive amounts of information being thrown out.
Another problem with the film is Stone’s dependence on the idea of a shadow government and the men of power manipulating the strings. Whether such men exist or not is a debate for another time that I won’t get into here, but in using them, Stone threatens to drag the film down at times by the same things that were problematic in JFK. It worked better in that movie, because it wasn’t a biopic of Kennedy himself. Here, in attempting to advance his beliefs about this faction of people in power, Stone distracts from the ultimate point of the film, which is to present Nixon’s life as a man who craved greatness, was touched by it—even had the chance to become it—but failed.
Film Rating: 7.5
The Video
Presented in a 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen enhanced for 16:9 televisions, Nixon is by and large a nice-looking film. While there are some minor issues with edge enhancement that makes some scenes softer then they should be, for the most part the video transfer is nicely done. The film is done in a moderate color palette and the DVD carries them all through clear. The darker scenes don’t suffer, as blacks are appropriately filled out and contrast is kept strong. It’s somewhat difficult to judge graininess, as some of that is intentional due to the director’s choice of filming techniques so I won’t knock down based on that. There have been better video transfers before, but this is just fine.
Video Rating: 7.5
The Audio
The audio track, a Dolby Digital 5.1 English presentation, holds up very nicely. Everything is leveled across the speakers pretty well, with front speakers getting the majority of the action. Dialogue and ambient sounds are easy to hear, even over the impressive and sweeping score. The mix is a pretty strong one, and it would take a keener ear then mine to notice anything that’s really problematic. Subtitle options are English, Spanish and French.
Audio Rating: 8.0
Special Features
Audio Commentary with Oliver Stone #1: Love him or hate him, Oliver Stone is an intelligent man who’s fascinating to listen to, and he provides two separate and complete commentary tracks. The first commentary focuses on the details of making Nixon, and it’s a great track for aficionados of film-making. Stone is an auteur, and his movies carry a powerful voice; it’s fascinating to listen to his thoughts on the process, and to see what he went through in order to make this movie.
Audio Commentary with Oliver Stone #2: The second track isn’t quite as interesting, but still presents some good information for those who really want an exhaustive study of the movie. Stone provides a good focus on Nixon’s life, and the politics and world around it. This is more of a historian’s track then a movie-maker’s track, though Stone still provides some good details. There are times that, after listening to the first, then this, it seems like too much, but it never quite reaches that, and the information really is interesting.
Deleted Scenes: (58:13) The deleted scenes, book-ended by a lengthy introduction and conclusion by Stone (who also provides insight to each scene), are like most deleted scenes better left out of the movie. This has nothing to do with whether they’re good or not—they’re quite well put-together and acted. However, at the movie’s staggering three and a half hour length, there’s simply not anything crucial enough in here to merit inclusion. Most of it is extended scenes of stuff already in there, and the extra information isn’t needed. The real wealth here is Stone’s commentary, providing strong insight and good discussion of each scene, as well as the entire movie.
Beyond Nixon: (35:17) Created by Stone’s son, this documentary covers Nixon outside of the film as a historical character, with brief touches on the film itself. It’s remarkably even-handed, even allowing political columnist Robert Novak to blast the film for its creative liberties. The short has several scholars and people from Nixon’s life talking about him, from University of Texas professor Sanford Levinson to John Dean, Nixon’s White House counsel who’s portrayed in the film by David Hyde Pierce. For those interested in the man behind the myth and movie, this is a film that provides a good amount of detail, even if it’s not quite complete.
Charlie Rose Interviews Oliver Stone: (55:10) At this point, the information on the film almost feels like overload, but they’re not done yet as we get the full Charlie Rose program where Rose interviews Nixon about the movie. What’s most impressive is that we don’t have a lot of repetitive information between all of these, and Stone provides more information about the movie during this program. Rose is an excellent interviewer, and he brings out the best in Stone here in what is one of the best of the features. He’s also very even-handed as always, and discusses some of the criticisms of Stone’s film so that Stone can discuss them.
Original Theatrical Trailer: (4:33) This trailer is quite long compared to the usual two-minutes-or-less ones, which is appropriate considering the length of the movie. It’s always nice to see the trailer on the DVD, especially in older films to see how the movies were marketed during the time of their release.
Sneak Peeks: We get trailers for Season One of Dirty Sexy Money, Season Four of Lost, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas, the upcoming thriller Blindness, Blue-Ray Discs, and a Miramax Films trailer showing all their recent award-winning films.
Special Features Rating: 9.5
The 411: Anthony Hopkin's amazing portrayal of President Richard Nixon, backed by strong performances throughout his talented supporting cast, makes Oliver Stone's Nixon well worth watching. It is the performance of Hopkins's career, and it keeps the film going, even when it seems ready to collapse under the weight of it's own running time. Stone was on his way to maturing as an auteur film director, and while he still makes choices that hurt the movie, he delivers a good film that present Nixon in a surprisingly balanced way--one that gives hope that his upcoming film W. will do the same for the much-reviled Bush. A good-to-great transfer onto DVD keeps the film strong, and an insane level of special features provide as much insight as anyone could possibly ask for to make this a great DVD to own, particularly for fans of Stone, biopics, or political films.
