Nixon
Christopher Wilkinson, and Stone
Isn’t it only a matter of time before Stone or one of his successors gives us a Stalin for Christmas? Such an epic compendium of 20th-century great-man theory would explain how, sure, the man was a mass murderer and had his share of personal problems, but, hey, “he had greatness within his grasp” (the key advertising slogan for Nixon). And, poor guy, he never had all the love he needed. (It’s probably because Tricky Dick’s bossy mom was such a tough customer–even as played by Mary Steenburgen–that we invaded Cambodia; compare Born on the Fourth of July, which indirectly blames the crippled hero’s mother for his going to Vietnam.) After all, isn’t “he” (Joseph, Tricky Dicky, Charles Foster Kane, etc) just like “us” (Oliver, Steven, Orson, etc)? And isn’t Stalin therefore worthy of our awe, our pity, our compassion, and our unbounded interest–unlike his countless victims, many lying in unmarked graves, who are too boring and uncommercial for words and therefore nothing like us?
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A good many key moments in Nixon are Wellesian low angles of Nixon (Anthony Hopkins) in the White House standing under paintings of other presidents and making pithy remarks about them. The last and most important of these moments occurs under the painting of John F. Kennedy, when Nixon says, “When they look at you, they see what they want to be. When they look at me, they see what they are.” (A footnote to this line in the published script credits the phrasing to journalist Tom Wicker.) Sorry, but when I look at Nixon I see a sleazy politician, and when I look at Kennedy I see a sleazy politician with more money and a better haircut. I’m willing to concede, however, that when Stone looks at these presidents he sees something else. Why not? Like them, he’s in the business of make-believe.
Despite his desire to be linked to uncommercial and intellectual artists like Welles and Eisenstein, Stone remains a clodhopping exploitation director. Nevertheless he has a keen sense of journalistic occasion that has served him well. This time he uses it to ask us to shed a tear or two for a crooked, tacky politician who wouldn’t have blinked twice if any of us had been run over by a fleet of trucks–and Stone asks us to weep not out of Christian charity but because he blindly worships power and needs his daddy figures despite their flaws. (In Platoon and Wall Street, when the bad father is discarded he’s replaced by the good one; the idea of living without fathers, like other grown-ups, seems beyond Stone’s range.) He invites us to forgive Nixon for his monstrosity, arguing that we’re equally monstrous ourselves.
