By Jim Lichacz / LA Film Fest Guest Blogger When I learned a documentary film about the Nixon presidency was showing at this year’s Los Angeles Film Festival, I got excited. I lived through the Watergate era, and it formed a key part of my political psyche. I don’t think my kids really appreciate the effect Watergate had on the American political system. With Americans’ confidence in Congress as an institution down to just 10%, I hoped that Our Nixon would offer a chance to reopen the file and get fresh information on what went wrong with a great political system. Our Nixon features home movies shot by three of President Nixon’s top aides including his chief of staff, H.R. Halderman. They were there on the inside from the beginning of the Nixon presidency, and would have kept filming except they resigned from White House staff once the truth about the Watergate cover-up inched closer to the Oval Office. While on the job they were avid filmmakers, shooting everything from state visits, offsite meetings and family events, to vignettes of their surroundings. Their Super 8 cameras captured a who’s who of heads of state, cabinet members and future presidents. What makes the footage unique is that you see these people with their guard down being themselves. Like most cinematographers, seeing what the president’s men shot is as telling as anything we know about them from the media. When their filming begins, you get a sense they were mesmerized by being thrust so suddenly into a position of such great power. As the film nears its inevitable conclusion, you scan the home movies for visual cues revealing their sense of power solidified. They had just won the greatest presidential election landslide in American history, opened China to the West and ended the Vietnam War. The home movies are successfully interwoven with news footage from the period, audio recordings of events made by the White House, archival footage of the filmmakers and, of course, the Nixon White House tapes. Director Penny Lane has said she listened to about 2,000 hours of the 3,700 hours of Nixon Tapes, and the film includes some key conversations from critical moments in his presidency. Home movies from the time are shown on-screen as the conversations unfold. The result is like being a fly on the wall of the Oval Office as the greatest show on earth unravels around you. The question I was looking to have answered is: how does a man born to a working class family who rose to be one of the most successful politicians in American history – how does such a man fall so quickly and so hard? Was there a flaw in his personal character that led to his downfall? The portrait of the man painted in this film goes a long way toward answering those questions. But, this is also a beautiful portrait of the America I grew up in. Free speech was still free, the middle class had a fighting chance, civil rights could still be won and the youth of America had a future. This wistfulness factor contained in Our Nixon adds yet another layer of complexity to an already interesting film. Want to know when “Our Nixon” becomes available? Queue this film with GoWatchIt to be notified when it’s in theaters or online.
