Nixon!
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of the man is highly sympathetic to him personally. He comes across as a disordered person, touched by paranoia and vexed by fear. But he was also a victim in many ways—though not in as many ways as he believed. His character in power was frightening; his character as a man was fearful and confused and cold but pathetically likeable in the end. Young people who demand an explosion every 10 seconds and a sex scene every 15 minutes will find the movie boring, no question. It is heady, smart, and detailed, and the real action here is very subtle and bound up with intrigue and plot. The picture of life in the White House is unforgettable. It is beautifully filmed, but I can easily see why mainstream audiences wouldn’t just drink it up. It is a profoundly serious movie. Call this film fiction if you want, but something tells me that there is more truth here than official histories admit. Mostly what this film teaches is something about the nature of power. Oliver Stone’s greatest gift is his refusal to treat the American system as something supernaturally protected from the corruption that has been endemic to all regimes in the history of the world. For daring to reject the civic religion, he is routinely castigated as a Marxist lunatic. Watch this and see if that reputation holds up in light of this film, which strikes me as a modern classic.