All the President's Men (1976)

Alan Pakula decided to make a movie about the Watergate scandal and what is so brilliant about All the President's Men is how tight it is. Instead of trying to give a perspeciuous representation of 'what really happened' Pakula opts for the paranoia, the uncertainty, the confusion, the gradual dawnings. The two main characters are investigative journos and it is exclusively through their eyes we follow the story and the revelations. They follow the trail of what is initially a story about some people breaking into the Democratic party headquarters. What some have seen as a flaw of the film I consider as a virtue: there is no neat picture. A thousand details are in the air and it is almost impossible to navigate clear-headedly among them. One gets confused. One could say that the film is just as much about journalism as it is about the Watergate scandal. There are telephone calls, clandestine meetings, follow-ups and attempts to see what the whole thing leads up to. The investigation is conducted in a spirit of curiosity but also in a gradually expanding awareness about the political impact of the work. I was so relieved that this is not the kind of film that tries to assemble a bunch of high-energy action scenes. Instead, we are taken to frenzied or bored editor conferences (with an avuncular executive editor, not the kind of portrait of newspaper people we are used to), hurried discussions and lots of snippets of phone calls. Strenuous and tireless work, waiting, alert reactions whenever something important happens. Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman are great as the two reporters. The portraits don't get overly heroic. All the President's Men expertly conjures up the feeling of rottenness in politics and it does so by taking a look at the people that surround politics without being the center of it: journalists, administrators, book-keepers. This was a very different film than I expected it to be, much less macho than I feared it would be. In the best way possible! Before watching it, I thought it would be a prolix dramatization of the Watergate scandal and that it would somehow dig out the most dramatic events of that story. The real film is not like that. Its very specific angle - the work of the journalists - actually felt like a meaningful way to think about the Watergate scandal, and also prevents the film from seeming dated.