It’s a film that exists in the nitty gritty, built on tiny details disguised as throw-away one-liners. All the while amounting to — as the film’s logline aptly brags — the most devastating detective story of this century (the 20th, obviously).
I’ll be transparent. In my 9-5 job, I’m a journalist. I write about food and culture and I talk to chefs and restaurant owners and write features about local personalities. Point being, I’m not exactly breaking Watergate. But whenever I’m feeling journalistically solemn, I turn on All The President’s Men. Not because it motivates me to go talk to unnamed sources in shadow-filled parking decks, not because it makes me want to forgo sleep in pursuit of the truth, but because it reminds me of what the foundation of storytelling is all about: details.
It’s about focusing on everything in great, great detail. It’s about Robert Redford’s Bob Woodward and Dustin Hoffman’s Carl Bernstein sifting through heaping mounds of library slips, seeking one specific name. It’s about calling every single name in the White House directory until you find the guy you need. It’s about embracing the benign, the menial, the tedious. Because, all those things, once their parts are summed, become capable of toppling the highest pillars of power.
And you know what I love about this movie? What makes it really, truly special? It’s that the film itself is as detailed as Woodward and Bernstein’s reporting.
I cannot overstate how procedural this film is. Every step in the process, every little detail is clear. In a literal sense, the film is shot entirely in deep focus. You see everything. It’s strategic. A television newsreel will play in the foreground while Redford and Hoffman type away in the background clear as day. But in a procedural sense, no nuance is spared. At one point Redford’s character needs to phone a White House official. Rather than the story just skipping to the phone call — or even to his retelling of what the call yielded — we watch the whole thing. We watch him ask a secretary if he can call the White House direct. We watch her say yes. We watch as he dials every single digit in a rotary phone, and then (finally!) we watch the call take place.
It should be boring. It really should be. It should be tedious and trite. But it’s not. And there are really two reasons for this. The first is a William Goldman script that is as airtight as a spacecraft’s cockpit. And the second is Robert Redford.
This man is the pinnacle of stardom. “Holding the screen” is perhaps a term far too undefined and far too overused, but Redford exemplifies it. It’s not just that he’s beautiful (he is), it’s not just that he has charisma (he does), but his face is simply a fascinating one to stare at. No one looks like Robert Redford. Watch a Timothée Chalamet movie today and you’ll recall 1990s Leonardo DiCaprio. Watch a Leo movie today and you’ll be reminded of Jack Nicholson. But Redford stands alone. There’s never been one like him and there hasn’t been one since. So when he’s doing anything — literally anything — we’re interested. At one point he’s just saying names — “Gonzales, Martinez, Sturgis, and Barker” — and yet it’s fascinating. You’re leaning forward in your seat from start to finish. Not because you’re awaiting some climactic takedown of the president, but because you’re so enthralled by the process — by Redford’s delivery of such a process.
Some films seek to make the ordinary extraordinary. All the President’s Men accomplishes the opposite: it makes the extraordinary seem ordinary. There are so many scenes of Redford or Hoffman doing the dirty work of their investigation, hunched over tables, trying to decipher crumpled up notes. But then the camera zooms out. And the edges of the screen are filled by the other citizens of the earth. We see students studying in the Library of Congress. Some older folks reading a book. We see the building’s circular floor plan, each bench and each bookshelf crafted carefully to play its role in the greater whole.
The film isn’t about what the puzzle is going to look like. It’s about solving it. It’s about looking into the eye of the day-to-day presumptions of the human experience and daring to turn over rock after rock. “In all these neat little houses on all these nice little streets,” Redford says to Hoffman, “it’s hard to believe that something’s wrong in some of those little houses.”
All The President’s Men
1976
dir. Alan J. Pakula
138 min.
Screening Thursday, 12/18, 6:00 pm & Sunday, 12/21, 12:30 pm @ The Brattle
Screening on 35mm
Double feature w/ Three Days of the Condor (Thursday only)
Part of the series: A Tribute to Robert Redford
