Solid, if a bit dated

Rating: 7/10 (6 September 2008)

Alan J. Pakula's 1976 hit film All The President's Men is as good an example of a filmmaker as craftsman as there is. Pakula was never a great director/auteur, a man with a 'vision.' Rather, he was a journeyman filmmaker who tried to best shape whatever scripts came his way. The film is a good one, but it falls shy of greatness because it is a film that is all surface level. Yes, it digs deeply into the Watergate Conspiracy that brought down President Richard Nixon, but it never allows us to get inside its two lead protagonists, the then-unknown and now universally famed Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward (Robert Redford, who also produced the film, with Walter Coblenz) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman), who walked into the biggest journalistic story of the last fifty years. Yes, they were good, solid young reporters, but neither their writing skills nor drive was what separated them from dozens of other reporters. It was just dumb luck, or so the film portrays, for never do we get a glimpse of what makes either man tick. Yes, we get tics and obsessions, sloppiness and manic cigarette and coffee consumption, as well as posturing, but little more, and this is likely the reason that neither star was nominated for an Academy Award, although the film, itself, garnered eight of them. It won for Best Supporting Actor (Jason Robards, as Washington Post Editor Ben Bradlee), Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Sound and Best Adapted Screenplay, by William Goldman. It also got nominations for nominated for Best Supporting Actress (Jane Alexander, as a key informant), Best Director, Best Film Editing and Best Motion Picture.
The downfall of Richard Nixon is so well known that to detail it, in this film's context is superfluous. This is why, however, the decision to focus on the relationship of the reporters was wise. It's the result of that focus that ultimately fails, even if the film is still suspenseful and fast moving enough to provide enough gloss to cover that narrative deficiency. Yes, we get an extraordinary glimpse into the nuts and bolts of how stories were dug at and reported in the old days, including how the Post's rivalry with the New York Times affected reporting and business decisions, before blogging and celebrity news displaced real journalism, yet there is something elegiac about the film. The book was based upon the 1974 book that the two reporters wrote, of the same title.The real stars of the film are not Redford and Hoffman, but its music editor- David Shire, film editor- Robert L. Wolfe, but most especially its cinematographer- the great Gordon Willis. The film is loaded with virtuoso work by all three, such as Willis's above the heads zoom shot out from the rotunda of the Library of Congress where Woodward and Bernstein pore over documents; other zoom outs from the men's car to shots of Washington D.C., as the men's voices banter in the voice-over background; bird's eye exterior shots of the Watergate break-in, where the light inside seems warm and orange, while from outside it is blue, dark, and threatening; the almost Stygian feel that the garage where Woodward meets Deep Throat gets, to the point that even the slightest noise augurs evil; and split screen shots that achieve the effect through naturalistic elements in the frame, rather than being imposed from without. The sound, especially in dialogue, where it overlaps, is a great example of virtuoso reality in an age when such was far more difficult to do than now. Then there are the smaller things, such as the differing looks that the two heroes of the film have versus their older, more seasoned colleagues, the almost automat feel of the recreated Washington Post newsroom, in its harsh geometric arrangements under fluorescent lighting, and other great moments, too numerous to list.
Yet, despite its flaws, this film has to be considered important, and a success, as well as unfortunately relevant in light of the many current abuses of power under President George W. Bush, whose attempt at starting an Imperial Presidency after 9/11, with the consent of the majority of the American people and Congress, makes Nixon's power grab, in the face of rabid hatred for the man, seem almost quaint, if not desperate and pathetic. All The President's Men is not a great work of art, but it is a good and interesting one, as well as a cornucopia of bravura filmic techniques that artisans of the cinema should find invaluable for decades to come, almost as much as journalists and historians will find the film valuable for their own reasons. Unfortunately, the film viewer is the odd man left out in this equation. Yes, the film entertains, but as a tale it leaves one hungrier than when one started it. Oddly, this very same sort of feeling is what likely compelled its protagonists to their calling. Would that the viewer only got as just a desserts as they did.