All The President’s Men
The work of most journalists does not lend itself well to film. It just isn’t visually interesting. There is a lot of waiting: waiting for phone calls to be returned, waiting for editorial notes, waiting for fresh stories to come off the AP Wire from other, better journalists. There is also a decent amount of sitting at a desk and writing. Neither of these things lend themselves to engaging cinema most of the time. As a result, movies about journalism and news gathering tend to focus on either embedded journalists in the thick of the action, like Tina Fey’s character in Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, or on investigative journalists breaking open conspiracies or coverups both real, as in Spotlight, and fictitious, as in State of Play. These investigative journalism stories have a unique construction that makes them a micro-genre unto themselves: equal parts detective story and political thriller. Perhaps no film has had a bigger impact on the way these stories are told than All The President’s Men.
All The President’s Men is about the Watergate scandal and, in particular, how The Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward teased apart that conspiracy with dogged determination and the help of (codename) Deep Throat, perhaps the most infamous press informant of the modern age. The film is based on a book by the same name, written by the central journalists themselves, but covers less ground, possibly due to the time constraints of a feature length motion picture.
By all accounts, this is one of the most historically accurate pictures ever made, with only minor deviations such as small tweaks to how Bernstein and Woodward got along as a team and how they, as a team, interacted with their immediate superiors at the paper. These changes mostly stem from choices about what true events are shown, rather than bending the truth of the events themselves as is done in other historical films, in order to keep the film focused; on the core duo, their mysterious contact, and the unraveling of the actual mystery.
The one place that this laser-like focus ends up hurting the film is in the ending. The movie just, well, ends. With Bernstein and Woodward being the only lens through which the unfolding events are understood, the options for a conclusion are limited. There isn’t really a climax in tensions or a natural end to the action. The film can’t build to a single, damning front page news story being published, as The Washington Post has been covering each new revelation uncovered by the reporters as they are verified and corroborated. Instead, the film just cuts away from a final, subdued meeting with Deep Throat to a black screen where white text recounts the various arrests that followed, accompanied by a soundtrack of typewriter clacks.
Other than the underwhelming ending, All The President’s Men is supremely well made. Unlike many groundbreaking films that are rightfully lauded for their innovations but flawed in their executions, All The President’s Men holds up. It even might still be the best movie about journalism despite the many newer and better polished films it inspired. It just nails the mood of a bullpen, the feel of its setting, and the stress of the investigation in a way no one else really does.
The acting is great, especially the way Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford, who play Bernstein and Woodward, bounce ideas and theories off each other as they begin to put all the pieces of the puzzle together. While all the cinematography is fairly solid, the bits outside the brightly lit bullpen and interviewee’s homes really impressed me. It reminded me of the noir classic The Third Man, albeit in color and with fewer Dutch angles. The use of harsh shadows, voyeuristic long lenses, and lots of empty space in the frame captures that sense of mystery and foreboding perfect for this kind of story.
Despite being about a moment of corruption and conspiracy by those in power, there is an element that is actually hopeful and reassuring about America. No one is afraid to print the story because of retribution from the government. The bad actors get exposed and punished. Not only can the press hold those in power accountable for their actions, as the fourth estate, but also that those with moral conviction still exist within government who are willing to take risks to ensure that the truth gets out, like Deep Throat. Yes, Watergate shook America’s faith in government, but All The President’s Men reminds us that America is still a country where those transgressions are able to be exposed to the public and no one, not even the president and his top brass, is immune from consequence.
All The President’s Men is one of the best movies about investigative journalism made to date, perfectly mixing the sleuthing of a true crime story with the high stakes and subterfuge of a political thriller. It is even very historically accurate, minus some minor details, for those that value those things. The only wrong step is in its abrupt and anticlimactic ending. With so much more detail that could have been provided about the further unraveling of the Watergate conspiracy, as is covered in the book, I couldn’t help but wonder if All The President’s Men had been made now, instead of back then, whether it wouldn’t have had the potential to be an absolutely mind-blowingly good miniseries docudrama a la Chernobyl. Still, what we got is stellar for the runtime it is.
Would Recommend: If you are into journalistic political thrillers, dramatisations of famous historical events, or where those two overlap.
Would Not Recommend: If you are a Richard Nixon superfan.