REVIEW - OUR NIXON

Whose Nixon is it anyway? This isn't a film about the legend of Richard Nixon, but it wouldn't exist were it not for that legend. A more intimate depiction of one of America's most notorious leaders than the public at that time were ever permitted, but it's no expose, since there's piss all left to expose about him. It's an alternative viewpoint, a glance at this man from another perspective, told by and through his closest aides. Not a necessary film in and of itself, then, but a valuable component in constructing a thorough and accurate opinion of what Nixon represented to his countrymen during his time in office, and who he really was behind the vapid grin and vanity. In particular, we learn of the nature of the internal structure of his administration, coloured by Nixon's obsession with the disclosure of information - secrets, whispers, lies and falsities dotted every route to every decision made within the White House during this period, it seems. It's intriguing to wonder what his staff made of their roles in his grand folly; Penny Lane's film doesn't pursue any such digressions, though, preferring to adhere to a less speculative approach to what is now just history, and relying instead on the bountiful reserves of heretofore unreleased Super 8 footage from Nixon's central advisory team, and tape recordings that are as revealing as you'd expect them to be. Lest our opinions not catch the mildly disapproving tone of the film's edit, and be somehow swayed by our storytellers' nonsensical devotion to their man, one of these recordings dwells on Nixon's comical yet harmful homophobia - nothing new here, just a reminder that our Nixon, their Nixon, anybody's Nixon was not, and should not be remembered as, a good egg at all.