#secrethonor

CSS TRIBUTE / Secret Honor

Secret Honor - Robert Altman (1984)

As much as I love Robert Altman, I sometimes feel that I’ll never see all of his films.  Even with a comprehensive list and plenty of experience with his catalog, I am on occasion given recommendations that have somehow managed to completely slip by my radar.  One of these recent discoveries, and one I’m surprised I’ve not heard of up to this point, is a film that seemingly breaks from all of the known Altman stylistic traditions, so it immediately had me intrigued.  That film is the adaptation of the famous one-man play about Richard Nixon known as Secret Honor. 

Richard Nixon (Philip Baker Hall), in the wake of his disgrace following the Watergate scandal, finds himself in the study of his New Jersey home with a random assortment of objects : closed circuit television cameras and a monitoring system, a running tape recorder, a bottle of Scotch, a piano, and a loaded handgun.  Nixon decides, in this moment, to give an honest and frank account of not only his political experiences (scandal and all), he speaks candidly of his personal life, including memories of growing up, political figures that he worked with and was inspired by, his relationship with his wife Pat, and occurrences during boyhood that shaped him into the man he became.  His accounts are occasionally interrupted by edits he gives to Roberto, an unseen curator for the memoirs.  Accountability is often pushed to the side for blame during his candid remembrances and ramblings.

The way that Philip Baker Hall uses the framework of a real (infamous) person in a fictional context allows for a strange sense of candidness despite not everything depicted being hard truth.  The foundations and road map have already been laid for both him as an actor and us as viewers by history, and all that Baker Hall has to do is embody his characterization of a rambling man with a list of demons that cannot coherently complete a thought.  The fact that the film touches upon so many conspiracy theories and political conspiracies further blurs the line between truth and reality.  The spectrum of these events covered is vast :  the Bohemian Grove, Cuba and Fidel Castro, the Kennedy family, the Middle East and the Shah, Alger Hiss, the Red Scare, Vietnam and more all get their time in the hot seat and under the scope of a man falling to pieces.

The awareness of the camera in the room, as well as Roberto on the receiving end of the recording, heavily informs the Nixon characterization.  The freakouts that occur with any malfunction of the closed circuit equipment are jarring the way that they snap Nixon back to reality, as if his words lose validation, even though he ultimately despises what that validations stands for and the method in which it is obtained.  The way he hangs portraits of figures that mock him, even in image form, makes it seem as if there is some sort of masochistic urge to his political journey : Dwight D. Eisenhower, Henry Kissinger, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln all have equally positive and negative impacts on Nixon, and he is not afraid to expound upon them (especially in the case of Kissinger).

That signature Altman wandering camera that sometimes focuses on Nixon, sometimes focuses on Nixon’s image on the screen, and sometimes wanders off on its own to stare at objects in the room is used masterfully (as it always is in the hands of Altman).   The score is truly used as an appeal for viewer emotional response during the personally reflective moments, almost to an exploitative level (despite that being the sole route to sympathy found for Nixon in the film).  Altman manages to flip his normal script by immaculately focus on a single subject rather than his standard fare of ensemble casts.  In terms of the writing and performance, extremely frank and crude language is used at times to further humanize a man who has been demonized

Philip Baker Hall essentially plays several people in his Nixon portrayal.  There is Nixon the failed politician, attempting to shift and spread blame, as well as finally look good to the media.  Then there is Nixon as the up and coming politician, trying to balance making himself happy in that realm with upholding the honor and love for his family.  There is also Nixon as an older man reflecting on simpler times in his life, when he was unaware of how the world was shaping him into the man he became, even to a chance appointment as Senator after answering a newspaper ad.  It is highly possible that this is where P.T. Anderson got his inspiration to include Philip Baker Hall in the run of movies he was cast in, as this performance seems to be a precursor to many of the moments he was later written in to for Anderson’s films.