The Unraveling
Nixon was an ambitious project. With nearly a dozen well known, or at least fairly well known stars including Anthony Hopkins, James Woods, David Hyde Pierce, Ed Harris, Paul Sorvino, and Joan Allen, and a very long script, Nixon is packed with excellent performances and plenty of content. This Extended Director’s Cut adds an additional twenty-eight minutes to the film, giving it a total run time of just under three and a half hours. The story of the film is that of Nixon’s life, primarily his final year as President before resigning, and all of the turmoil, stress, and quite frankly the unraveling of self that he went through in the end when he was so isolated and disliked by so many Americans. The film centers on audio tapes that were recorded within the White House and were a big reason why Nixon decided to resign. From what I gather Nixon fought throughout the remainder of his life to keep these tapes secret. At the time of the film’s release, we’re told at the end that The National Archive has only made some sixty hours of 4,000 recorded hours available to the been made public. That said, Stone’s approach to telling us the story of Nixon’s life is complete with lots of time transitions to when he was younger, and to other key parts of his Presidency, and Stone also made use of historical video. Basically, the present time in the film is right before Nixon decides to resign, and we’re reliving moments in his life as he listens to these audio tapes that he kept so secret, even from his wife Pat.
While not having a real interest in politics, or history, Nixon was overall an intriguing film. I thought it was a little too long however, at nearly three and a half hours, and my interest did fade out several times. Several scenes seemed very similar to each other, but they are pertinent to the story; the scenes I am referring to include Nixon conferring with his close cabinet members about what to do about a situation, like appeasing CIA Director Helms, paying off E. Howard Hunt, and how to deal with the growing public uproar of the American involvement in the Vietnam War. It just seemed to me that lots of scenes were very similar to each other, grumpy Nixon asking his friends about how to fix a certain problem. Otherwise, the film is quite a success, with solid performances by all of the actors and great direction by Stone and his crew. As far as political films go, this should be high on anyone’s list; taking a journey through Nixon’s tumultuous presidential years is quite a dramatic ride as Stone visits the Watergate affair, Nixon’s troubles with the CIA, White House information leaks, turmoil with the Vietnam war and the American public, his near death bout with phlebitis – and several other major events in Nixon’s life, mostly as President.
Election Year Edition in Blu-ray
The Election Year Edition is nicely packaged in a normal Blu-ray case that contains two discs. The first disc includes just the film in its extended director’s cut form, as well as the two audio commentary tracks by Oliver Stone. On the second disc, there are several extra features, which I will break down shortly. Firstly though, I’d like to talk about the video quality of this three and a half hour film which is given much needed breathing room on a dual layer Blu-ray disc. Overall, the film looks great – colors pop, edges are crisp, the details are there and they are pleasing. However, expect many scenes with compression, especially on objects and sets with low lighting and browns or flesh tones. The look I am talking about is something that nearly every Blu-ray I have seen suffers from at least slightly; and while there are certainly worse technical visual issues that you could have, the splotchy look of a compressed scene is still unmistakable and disappointing. That said, you can see the issue I’m referring to right at the start of the film, as Nixon cowers in his self pity in a dark, fireplace-lit room: the faces and the brownish backgrounds look rough. This little nuisance also pops up during brighter scenes, take for example some of the scenes where Nixon is consulting with his cabinet in the White House. The flesh tones on the actors’ faces will have that distinctive compressed look.
For a somewhat older, three and a half hour film, it’s hard to fault the visual flaws of Nixon too much. And, truth be told, the problems I saw weren’t simply rampant throughout the movie, and I can’t honestly say that they took away from the experience very much. On the other hand, for the majority of the film, the visuals are sharp and gorgeous as you would hope for on a dual layer Blu-ray disc. It goes without saying, but the video and audio presentation on this Blu-ray release outweighs what you will get on the DVD version.
Now, getting back to the special features, the extras are exactly the same on this Blu-ray release as they were on the DVD release, with the exception of the “Beyond Nixon” feature – it’s presented in HD, but otherwise everything is exactly the same:
Deleted Scenes – Ten additional deleted scenes with video introductions for each, and an overall video summary by Oliver Stone; actually several of these scenes are included in the extended director’s cut on disc 1.
Beyond Nixon –An all new thirty-five minute documentary by Sean Stone, featuring interviews with historians and politicians speaking about Richard Nixon and the film. The only difference between the Blu-ray extras and the DVD’s extras is that on Blu-ray, this feature is in HD.
Two Audio Commentaries – note these are actually on the first disc; but yes you read that right: not one, but two audio commentary tracks by Oliver Stone. While an interesting speaker, I have no plans to watch this film a third time anytime soon.
Charlie Rose Interview with Oliver Stone – Running fifty-five minutes, the famous interviewer Charlie Rose sits down with Oliver Stone to discuss the film. I’m not sure when this was originally filmed, but this was a more interesting interview than I expected.
Closing Thoughts
I think this Election Year Edition is an awesome release for fans of Nixon, but it could almost be too much for someone who hasn’t seen the film before. I was one such person, and I will say the three and a half hour cut of this movie did seem long, but I can’t fault the great script and actors, there’s just an awful lot of content and not a whole lot of relief from dramatic political themes. There are a good amount of extra features, and the presentation is solid.
