A look at President Richard M. Nixon—a man carrying the fate of the world on his shoulders while battling the self-destructive demands from within—spanning his troubled boyhood in California to the shocking Watergate scandal that would end his Presidency.
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I like the storyline of this show,it attract me so much
Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!
Simply A Masterpiece
As Good As It Gets
I saw this movie many times and the first thing i can say is: a Remarkable Achievement.Unlike others, i have no problem with 3 hours movies. The movie is not long: what is told in the film needs 192 minutes. That's all.The plot is complex, with a lot of information: names, dates, events, Watergate Scandal, Chappaquiddick Incident, Bahia Pigs, Vietnam War, Missile Cuban Crisis...all was connected.So would be better having some knowledge of this turbulent era in order to comprehend how and why things happened.The film also portrays the interesting fact of how politics works from within: the control of big companies, big money, power, betrayal, blackmail. The supporting cast is excellent, the same as and Anthony Hopkins performance. John Williams soundtrack and Robert Richardson's photography are also outstanding.9/10
The most alienating of Presidents Nixon did very little to be the Leader of America. He steadfastly and without hesitation, apology, or even a slight understanding of what was dividing the Country, was a classic egocentric. His way was the only way and the only way you were going to be a bona-fide Citizen of "His" Nation was to follow him or get out ("love it or leave it"...remember that?).That may be a tough and simplistic analysis of a complex Political Figure but it is in the opinion of many, True. The Film displays this as Fact and it is probably not too far off. Here we see a consistently troubled (even in pre-Watergate times and Childhood) Personality that was most likely doomed the minute he became dependent on the Public for success.This is a mesmerizing and dazzling Picture with all the Oliver Stone touches. The familiar Stylist flourishes with abandon and Pride as he presents a "Biography" ultra-dramatized for effect and intent. It sweeps like a vacuum and not a broom as it powerfully draws in and upon a large amount of unsettling History and Psychological diagnosis.Overall, it is compelling and interesting, riveting and revolting, as we watch a National Figure lose his soul, as quoted at the beginning of the Movie, and it is not a fun thing to observe. This is a forever dark and brooding affair much like the title "Character". For it seems, for the most part, Richard Nixon was more like a Characterization of a Person than a Person, both here on screen and in Real Life. The Human Nixon always seemed to be in noncompliance with the "Third-Person Nixon" that he liked to refer to. (the President states..."I would like to apologize for the murdered students at Kent State...but Nixon can't")
Nixon was a great movie. Hands down. Oliver Stone really was able to paint a picture of a real man. A man with his demons, ambition, love, anger and power. It really was quite something to see such a masterpiece on a DVD. I would highly recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys learning about American History and human beings, as the American president, Dick Nixon was an exceptional human being. I can see how he got tangled in everything. I can see how he got in over his head without even knowing it. It was like watching someone swim out to sea and not having enough energy to swim back (an idea from the movie "Gattaca" 1997).Nixon, as a person, was really quite an intriguing man. I loved the way Oliver Stone was able to capture human weaknesses, such as emotional flashbacks, hallucinations and the feeling of human pain. The combination of Oliver Stones' directing combined with Anthony Hopkins' extra-ordinary acting ability really brought up the best of describing who President Nixon was.I liked how this movie focused on the president instead of the Watergate Affair. It really gave an accurate account of the turns of power, the politics and the complicated systems the president of The United States of America has to abide by in order to retain his high position of power.
I want to preface this by saying I'm not lambasting the film for any grievance with the portrayal one way or the other. It is an ordinary portrait of Nixon all told, as has been rehabilitated into public consciousness: a broken man who could achieve anything except the one thing he wanted to, to be loved and whole. His plight is ordinary in the sense that it is deeply human, this is how we have retrogradely dramatized Nixon in order to be able to understand his actions. His downfall, also human: the desire to cling to the controls of a life that is far beyond our scope or any four-year presidential term. The machinery or system keeps grinding out a narrative and we have only a small window to effect any change at all.So we unravel from Watergate, where all control was lost from too much desire for it. We piece Nixon's image in a reverse Kane style; from inside, together with this man looking for himself.If I am lambasting the film, it's for how much it grew out of hand as a film. It is very much Stone doing Nixon; feverish ramblings from personal darkness, powerful but manipulative rhetorics. Shamelessly emotional when it serves a purpose. We're spared nothing in the cinematic onslaught of different footage, dutch angles, slow-motion, light flares, incessant cuts and counter-cuts. No symbolism is too hamfisted: blood oozing from a steak as use of nuclear weapons is contemplated, superimpositions of Nixon's face on Mao's as the analogy is being forced, a gigantic Nixon looking pensive superimposed on the skies the day before Dallas. I believe Stone took on Natural Born Killers solely as a test run for the madness of this. Of course that film was a deliberate mess, pitched as hysterical satire. This is hysterically assembled, helter skelter.On the part of Stone, my view is that control was lost from the desire to be America's objective chronicler. In the early stages I believe the film was intended to be one long reverie and internal monologue triggered by the Watergate tapes. No doubt Stone was familiar with Robert Altman's film on Nixon and understood the project to be fundamentally visual. The idea was that we would visit, from this room where an old weary man is listening to his own voice, different stops in a long life in and out of the public eye, looking from both ends, looking for a narrative and who controlled the telling. In lieu with JFK, I believe part of the film was meant to be an unreliable, paranoid testimony shaped from memory. In lieu with JFK where the film was the trial that never happened, this would be the televised public apology that did. A confessional but one we could trust?But it grew out of hand, as did the man's ambitions.