Nixon [VHS] [1996]
Nixon
List Price: £5.99
Price: [wpramaprice asin=”B00004CSHO”]
[wpramareviews asin=”B00004CSHO”]
[wprebay kw=”stephen+pierce” num=”0″ ebcat=”-1″] [wprebay kw=”stephen+pierce” num=”1″ ebcat=”-1″]
Find More Stephen Pierce Products
Nixon [VHS] [1996]
Like the man himself, great but very flawed,
First of all, I give the film itself 5 stars – the Director’s Cut, at 3 and 1/2 hours, is a true epic in scope and depth, an excellent (often highly dramatic) portrayal of many things – Nixon himself, America going through intensely difficult social/cultural changes, the power structure of America, as well as many more elements of history and human nature which could take up more space than I have here, and that it is best that the viewer discover for themselves.
This is potentially Oliver Stone’s best film, and a tragic shame that it has been so overlooked, especially in the U.S. (Stone says as much on a commentary track). Performances all round are fantastic, especially the exceptional Anthony Hopkins. The film is at times difficult, but giving it patience, thought and attention will hopefully yield very worthwhile benefits.
The film receives some worthy extras. On the film disc, Stone features on TWO solo commentary tracks for this film – so much does he have to say and discuss about the film, its background and many related issues. Fascinating listening and worth returning to again. On the extras disc there is an hours worth of deleted/extended scenes, again with optional commentary by Stone, and an hour long interview with Stone by Charlie Rose.
All of this should automatically garner a 5 star rating, but it is the presentation of the film itself which loses a star, probably two if I was feeling more critical. The film is presented in its original ratio of 2.35:1, but is presented non-anamorphically. This in itself isn’t a disaster as the main print is very good, but the extra footage is of significantly lower quality (some of it looks like it comes from a video source!) and hence when it is zoomed the picture looks, at times, awful. Nixon has some great photography, especially some of the wonderfully low lit scenes in the Whitehouse, but the presentation of the picture doesn’t do it justice by half. I feel that for a film of this quality proper restoration and integration of the extra footage should have been undertaken. Sadly that isn’t the case. Secondly, the film disc comes with both Dolby 5.1 and DTS 5.1 tracks. ‘Great’, I thought, as a big fan of DTS. However, during playback of the DTS track there is VERY audible distortion during at least two scenes that I can clearly remember, when Nixon is shouting – this is incredibly amateurish on the part of those mastering the disc, and both the picture and sound problems are a serious let down to the efforts of the filmmakers, and a serious disappointment to a lover of the film.
However, I would still suggest that this 2-disc set is well worth purchasing. It’s the only available director’s cut, the extras are very good indeed, and you can get it very cheaply through z-shops. Remedying the problems would probably mean splitting the film onto two discs to allow encoding space for an anamorphic picture, a proper remastering of the sound and restoration of the ‘new’ footage, but I’m not holding my breath for that particular 3-disc set! Ultimately though, unless you are fanatical about picture and sound quality, this is a superb piece of cinema which deserves to be seen, even more so in this cut, and I heartily recommend this set.
Was this review helpful to you?
|Dense, complicated drama, worth the 3 hour running time,
Oliver Stone’s exhaustive biopic of the American president might have seemed excessive (over three hours long, covering his life from childhood to death), if it weren’t filmed in such an audacious and imaginative way as this. All the triumphs, defeats, heartaches, fears, doubts and mistakes of the man are covered and hardly any are washed over or ignored. The Watergate scandal is inevitably covered the most here, and keeps the fascination burning throughout. All the cast are brilliant, particularly Anthony Hopkins as Nixon himself, who makes the role his own and commands great screen presence in every scene he’s in. You will be captivated and fascinated throughout, with the pace of the film never lagging, always moving forward.
Was this review helpful to you?
|Citizen Nixon,
‘Nixon’ comes off as a greater success than Stone’s ‘JFK’, in part due to the subject of the film itself. President Nixon always had an awareness of his place in history and did much to construct and protect his public image. Oliver Stone’s mixture of drama and documentary footage allows the audience to disengage somewhat from the subject and contemplate the historical legacy of this much maligned president. Stone has been obvious in his references to two great fictional American icons, Citizen Kane and Willy Loman of Arthur Miller’s ‘Death Of A Salesman’. The story of the film is close to ‘Kane’ in its investigation of the trappings of power, but Nixon’s personal character has all the eager despair and bewildered arkwardness of Willy Loman. Probably the last American President who best representated the American Dream through his rise from a lowly grocer’s son, Nixon nevertheless remained paranoid about his position in the halls of the elite and like Loman felt the over bearing need to prove his abilties.
Unlike Stone’s ‘JFK’ information and detail are not as important as mood and nuance. Shooting from the bottom up, Stone tries to artifically create the ambience of power but instead the low-lighting, sinister looks and b&w flashbacks creates a pseudo-narcotic atmosphere. An obvious allusion to Nixon’s alleged pill-popping.
Time and time again Stone has been attacked for the historical inaccuracies of his movies. However most American historians contemptuous of the purported ‘scientific’ basis of history espoused by Marxist historians, would be the first to confirm that history isn’t a minor fact obsessed ‘science’.
Was this review helpful to you?
|