‘Secret Honor’ (1984)

Remember the classics

Richard Nixon is perhaps the most interesting of all political figures of the 20th century. Beyond the questionable sainthood that history has bestowed upon FDR the decisive leader, Eisenhower the war hero, and John Kennedy the man of the people, Nixon is almost Shakespearean in his flaws and tragedies; a man who alternately inspires sympathy and hatred.

“Secret Honor,” adapted from a one-man show about the former President, does not attempt to exonerate Nixon in any respect. In fact, with its opening disclaimer of portraying “a fictionalized character as a real person,” the film may imply that he was capable of unmitigated insanity, even more so than is implied by his harshest critics. But, at the same time, the film understands there is something tragic and misunderstood about him.

As the film opens, Nixon has long since resigned from the presidency, and sits in his home in defeated silence. Finally, he enters his study and fumbles around with a tape recorder and microphone, with the intentions of defending his public image and acting as his own lawyer in front of an imaginary court. As he records, he collapses into a series of tirades about working under Eisenhower, living in the shadow of the Kennedy legacy, a deep-seated hatred for Henry Kissinger, and everything else that he has never been able to explain in public. Then there is his family: a domineering mother, a brother who was recorded on tape cussing out Martin Luther King Jr., and a nephew who joined a hippie commune. “They could have taken me down on their own,” he recounts with a painful laugh.

That painful laugh is what “Secret Honor” is about. Nixon has always seemed to be the fall guy of American politics, and the American people have always been looking for an explanation from the man himself without being blocked by a curtain of lies and attempts to save face. The film is an “attempt to understand,” as the opening title card eloquently states. The attempt isn’t always easy. Sometimes, it becomes difficult to follow Nixon as he rambles his way through his political career, and graphically curses the various objects of his misery, supposedly revealing the real reasons behind all the obscene political fakery: the fight against communism, how the Vietnam War was borne of a Bohemian Grove conspiracy, and what role Watergate “really” played into it all. But with all the anger and alcohol circulating in his system, sometimes it’s even doubtful if the character of Nixon believes what he’s saying is true. Luckily, by positing itself as fiction instead of the conspiratorial truth (as Oliver Stone’s political epics—including his own bloated biopic, Nixon—sometimes read) the film is not bound by what it is that Nixon is saying, but how he says it: in a bitter tone of speech that meditates on the greatness that so deviously eluded him.

Philip Baker Hall reprises his role in the stage version of “Secret Honor.” The transition from stage to screen is usually a difficult one, because of their inherent disparity; the former demands exaggeration, the latter demands depiction. Hall falls somewhere in between that; somehow implying that his portrayal isn’t a literal representation, but could just as easily be one. Hall has supreme mastery over his emotions, and can believably make instantaneous leaps from submissive acceptance to explosive defiance, and transform bemused laughter into quiet tears.

It’s true that Hall only kind-of-sort-of looks and sounds like the real Nixon, but then, the President had oddly distinctive features that finding just the right man, physically speaking, would have been borderline impossible. “Secret Honor” might even be hinting at potential criticisms, by giving Nixon a line, complaining about being called “Tricky Dick” by the press, as well as the political cartoons that feature “the big jowls and the stubble.” Hasn’t modern perception of the man already been poisoned by years of gruff, acidic parodies? There’s no need to subscribe to imitation, or even portray how the public remembers him; Hall is the essence of what Nixon represents, and what he has become: the personification of disgrace, trying to bolster his image into the minds of those who have lost faith in him—not least of all himself.

Despite only having a single set and a single actor at his disposal, director Robert Altman makes his own presence fully known with the use of a dynamic camera and a detached third-person observation to the proceedings. One of the most interesting aspects of this treatment is how Altman treats the microphone as a separate character, giving it an odd amount of the camera’s attention. Perhaps that’s the way it should be; in recording all of his private fears and animosities, Nixon may find himself faced with his deadliest political enemy.