A movie that deserves a re-watch, and a re-watch, and a re-watch...

Rating: 10/10 (16 October 2016)

"All the President's Men" is about two journalists who try to uncover details from the Watergate scandal.
"All the President's Men" was brilliantly directed by Alan J. Pakula. He really did an amazing job at directing. He created a realistic movie. And he looked out for the details. When a character is further away from the camera, the voice of said character is way more quiet than the voice of someone standing right in front of the camera for example. Or when a plane flies by, and the characters have to yell, so the other one understands them. But the realism doesn't end there. He used some techniques to immerse you into the movie. An example of this is when the camera is focused on two different things at the same time. Mostly with the one thing being right in front of the camera and the other being in the background. The technique is not used a lot on today's standards, but directors like Quentin Tarrantino use it once in a while. But normally they choose to focus on two characters. In this movie Alan J. Pakula decided to make the camera focus on one character, but the other thing is completely random. Well, not completely random. The other thing was most of the time a distraction, to show how hard it is to concentrate at the given time. This only makes you feel like you are there right with the characters and it gives a very immersive feel to it. Another cool detail was the use of wide angle shots. This was used to make it feel like you were being watched, which fits the theme of the movie perfectly.
He is also a very good visual director. Like I've just said, he uses a lot of wide shots. These shots were always beautifully composed. There were a couple of scenes I liked in particular. The scenes where Woodward goes to meet his informant. The use of lighting and color were on point. The wide shots looked stunning. But not only the wide shots. In the close ups the shadows were used creatively, which gave an amazing effect. Another scene that visually stood out to me was the scene in the elevator. The characters partially hidden in shadows made the shot look very good. These were just the ones that I personally found amazing to look at, but that's mostly because I very much like the use of shadow in scenes. Alan J. Pakula also used long takes in which the camera managed to capture every character in a beautiful way. You'd expect that, when the camera is moving, not all characters would be positioned in a good spot, but because of the brilliance of Alan J. Pakula, this is what happened. The pacing was also really good.
Now that that's out of the way, let's go over to the actors. There were two protagonists in the story Bernstein and, the previous named Woodward. Woodward was played by Robert Redford. I think that this is his best performance that I've seen from him, even though the Oscars seem to disagree with me. He absolutely deserved an Oscar for this role. His dedication to the role payed of and he felt so natural. The same goes for his colleague, Dustin Hoffman. He too deserved an Oscar, or at least a nomination, for his natural performance. But these were just the main performances. The supporting cast was really good. The members of the CREEP really showed fear in their eyes and were very convincing.
The screenplay was also fantastic. It was written with such care. The information that you needed to figure out everything was there, but just not told right in your face. The dialogues were realistic. First we see men talk things through, before something relevant to the plot happens. It doesn't go straight to the point as in your average movies. No, they take time to set the scene up. The dialogue is also intriguing and you want to know what the person is going to say next. I've read in the trivia section of IMDb that Hoffman and Redford learned each others lines so they could interrupt each other during a conversation. And they did. It paid of very well. this only made the movie getting more realistic. The characters were not developed in a way that they tell you: "oh his parents died". (This is not in the movie, just an example) In "All the President's Men", they do this in subtle ways. You can see immediately that Bernstein is a perfectionist and that Woodward is a realist. Their characters are developed by actions and subtle things, rather than someone with a big red arrow above their head yelling from the roof which character traits each character has. I've said that the screenplay was written with care, and with this I mean that they really watched out with what the characters said in which scene. If the character said something else, the scene would've lost it's power, which is not a good thing.
If you don't get it: I love this movie. I would definitely recommend this movie. The acting and directing were absolutely on point. The attention for detail is remarkable and the writing is intriguing. This movie is going up on my favorite movie list. This movie get's a 10/10