“Secret Honor” (1984)
This Robert Altman chamber piece would work wonderfully well if double-billed with “All The President’s Men.” Not only does it play out like a direct response to the latter’s evisceration of Nixon’s biggest blunder, but it’s a polar opposite in style and execution. Filmed in the interiors of one study with a cast consisting of only one player — a volcanic Philip Baker Hall as Nixon, of course— “Secret Honor” is a claustrophobic, dense rant for the ages. Donald Freed and Arnold Stone adapt their own play by the same name, but thanks to Altman’s innate cinematic sensibilities, the film is elevated from the mere theatrical to the familiar vibrant and kinetic spirit present in all his films. Nixon gives his take on Watergate, Henry Kissinger, John F. Kennedy, Vietnam and everything and everyone in between that mired his entire presidency in thick veil of scandal. He never fails to remind the listener on the other end of the tape-recorder (“Roberto,” an off-screen character that becomes a comic relief punchline thanks to Baker’s brilliant delivery) of the good he’s done which the public readily forgets, or how there are a vast number of behind-the-scenes players who are part and parcel of the very same controversy. George Burt‘s score and Pierre Mignot‘s restless camera make the 90 minutes fly by, and Altman’s framing (the portrait of Kissinger is almost another character, breathing down Nixon’s neck) keeps the mise-en-scene consistently interesting throughout. But Hall’s performance is the mantlepiece, vexatiously veering off into tangents while making us feel some modicum of sympathy for the most scandal-mired U.S. president in history.
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5blz9p
“Shattered Glass” (2003)
In the internet aggregation age, the long-prized ethics of American journalism has taken a battering, and it now feels like Billy Ray’s “Shattered Glass” was quite prescient. It’s an absolutely terrific, underrated movie. The directorial debut of screenwriter Ray (then best known for “Volcano,” now the man behind “The Hunger Games” and “Captain Phillips”), and based on a Vanity Fair article, the film tells the then fresh-in-the-memory story of Stephen Glass, a fast-rising journalist for The New Republic whose colorful, characterful stories proved after investigation by other journalists and his own editor Chuck Lane to be mostly fabricated. Framed cleverly by a speech Glass gives to high school students, it’s undoubtedly indebted to “All The President’s Men” and will strike some as inside baseball, but Ray makes it a lean, riveting watch, not muddying an already-fascinating story with movie bullshit. But his real trump card comes with his cast. Reliable, oft-underused character actors like Steve Zahn, Hank Azaria, Rosario Dawson and Melanie Lynskey get key roles and visibly relish them, but it’s the leads who walk away with the movie. Peter Sarsgaard essentially made his career as Lane: a tough, old-school reporter better at writing than he is at office politics, and who sees straight through his troublesome employee with one look. And remarkably, the film also has a great performance from often-wooden “Star Wars” star Hayden Christensen as Glass. A great early portrait of proto-millennial entitlement, Christensen plays the role with a sort of perpetual whine, like he’s about to turn around and tell his mom about how unfair everything is.
Honorable Mentions: It’s hard to pin down the ‘scandal’ movie exactly, but among others that we considered but ultimately considered too familiar, not quite right, or just surplus to requirements, were “Silkwood,” “The Wolf Of Wall Street,” “Casualties Of War,” “Catch Me If You Can,” “American Hustle,” “Philomena,” “True Story,” “Charlie Wilson’s War,” “Missing,” “Serpico,” “The Informant!,” “Dick,” “The Girl In The Red Velvet Swing,” “Welcome To New York,” “Oranges And Sunshine” and “Rabbit-Proof Fence.” Any others? Let us know in the comments.
— Oliver Lyttelton, Nikola Grozdanovic, Jessica Kiang
