There’s no shortage of starting points from which to tackle 1976’s All the President’s Men, a timeless journalistic procedural that, if watched today, says as much about journalism over 40 years ago as much as it does about journalism today. “I think if Watergate happened today we wouldn’t even know about it,” said James Carville in Discovery Channel’s 2013 retrospective “All the President’s Men Revisited“. Whether you believe that’s the case or not, the idea of Watergate is now more of a punchline than anything else, “-gate” now becoming a suffix used by 24-hour media services to punch up the latest scandal, used for hashtag memes rather than any measure of actual reporting.
Now I’m not as cynical when it comes to today’s journalism as Carville, but I’m not necessarily too far behind. The idea of true investigative journalism has been placed on the back-burner. The public needs information right now so they can form an opinion and find someone (or thing) to hate until they hear otherwise and today’s media is more than happy to oblige.
There’s a point in All the President’s Men where Jason Robards as Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee tells reporters Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) that, after all the effort we’ve seen from the duo as they investigate and write about the Watergate scandal, half the country still hadn’t even heard of “Watergate”. This is the main reason I disagree with Carville… if the Watergate scandal were to happen today, everyone would know the word “Watergate”, however more than half the people wouldn’t have a clue what it was about, yet they would most certainly have an opinion on it.
That scene I just mentioned is one of my favorite moments in a film filled with favorite moments. It’s a scene where Bradlee’s words could have been read with a sly smile, and a nod to the audience as if to say, See, we know how important all of this is. But Robards, Redford and Hoffman are straight-faced, today’s all-knowing self-importance is nowhere to be found within the film’s 138-minute running time. Redford realized how interesting the story of Woodstein was when he purchased the rights to their book, but Woodward and Bernstein never originally intended for themselves to become the focus of the story while today’s journalists can’t help themselves when given the chance to become just as, if not more, important than the story they’re covering.
All the President’s Men is about the search for truth through hard work, determination, paranoia, frustration, doubt, let downs and exhilaration and, what’s even more impressive is it never even offers us a pay-off outside of a few headlines hammered out just before the credits silently begin to roll. This is a movie that understands the importance of its subject matter and also realizes so does the audience. That silence that leads off the film’s end credits lets us stew in the film’s reality just as much as Bradlee’s words sting us, hanging in the air before he sends Woodstein off to 15 minutes of rest, and then it’s back to work.
As I’ve already alluded to, Redford shepherded this project from start to finish, he bought the rights and he saw the intrigue in focusing the story on Woodward and Bernstein and not necessarily the Watergate scandal itself. Yet, he also realized there didn’t need to be background setup for the two characters, their work alone defined them. In fact, it was this approach to the story that director David Fincher used as a model for his 2007 film, Zodiac, saying in an interview, “I did want [Zodiac] to be emotional, not just facts like Court TV. But I wasn’t interested in spending time to tell the back story of any of these characters. I just wanted to know what they did in regards to the case.”
And while the focus remains on the investigation, it’s through their techniques that we actually get to know these characters. We know how all of this ends now, just as audiences did then, but it’s the stumbling blocks, small victories, sources unwilling to go on record, the late night meetings with Deep Throat (Hal Holbrook) in an abandoned parking lot and the fear of surveillance that lets us into Woodstein’s world, allows us to get to know these guys, if only peripherally, and keeps the paranoia high.
[slide url=”2014/10/all-the-presidents-men-poster-” number=”6″ orientation=”horizontal”]
A lot of the credit is owed to director Alan J. Pakula who was on something of a career high in the seventies having directed Klute (1971) a year earlier and another outstanding political thriller in The Parallax View (1974) shortly after. Pakula trusted his actors and let Redford and Hoffman roam free, the two acknowledging they memorized one another’s lines so they could shake up the dialogue, keeping scenes fresh at every turn and it works wonders. Redford is steady and determined while Hoffman is jittery and nearly on edge at every turn, bringing a manic sense of immediacy to each and every moment.
The scene where Bernstein is pulling napkins, Kleenex and toilet paper from his pockets as Woodward watches and says, “Do you have anything I can get down?” is a wonderful exhibition of Hoffman’s talent and his ability to deliver a neurotic, authentic and sympathetic performance. It’s captivating to watch.
Robards as Bradlee is like a father figure in the newsroom, the man the two need to convince and appease. His presence in the background before he’s ever introduced is felt as director of photography, Gordon Willis opened up the newsroom so nearly every square inch was in focus.
Willis, whose work on numerous films from The Godfather to Woody Allen‘s Manhattan has wowed audiences and inspired filmmakers for years, passed away earlier this year (May 18, 2014). His camerawork in All the President’s Men is one of the first things you notice as your eye will be drawn to the deep focus, split focus, shadows and light he used to bring a film filled with scenes that could otherwise be referred to as redundant — filled with typing, note-taking and closed office conversations — and turn them into tension-filled, edge-of-your seat moments.
Fincher’s Zodiac wouldn’t look the way it does if it weren’t for this film and, most likely, neither would Ben Affleck‘s Argo. As a matter of fact, when it comes to Zodiac a lot of the talk was how Fincher and his crew built a near replica of the “San Francisco Chronicle” newsroom for that production, well, the same goes for All the President’s Men where several studio sets were used to create an exact replica of the “Washington Post” newsroom after it was determined shooting in that actual newsroom would be too disruptive. In the end, the “Post” newsroom was replicated down to the wastebaskets.
All the President’s Men was approached with an eye for authenticity and even Ben Bradlee has called it “remarkably accurate”. Screenwriter William Goldman says, “This was an important story for all of us. You very rarely get a shot at something that might be wonderful,” but that’s what they ended up with and even legendary in some cases as Goldman’s screenplay originated the oft-used phrase “follow the money” and that scene I mentioned above between Bradlee, Woodward and Bernstein was also something concocted by Goldman, and just look at how great it works. No, All the President’s Men isn’t told exactly how it happened and there have even been questions raised to some of the more specific details of Woodstein’s book, but you can’t deny the end results.
Like I said, I could have approached this from many angles as the storytelling, filmmaking and performances are utterly top notch. We’re watching a story that is little more than just two guys asking questions and following the leads wherever they may take them and yet it is endlessly riveting. Before the film fades to black, and just as it began, a teletype machine hammers away, only this time much faster and more deliberate than the opening. Pakula leaves us with the results of Woodward and Bernstein’s work preceded by footage of Richard Nixon being sworn into office and and it’s deafening.
[yt id=”bMVz5C38yi0″ width=”965″ time=”67″]
