Secret Honor (1984)

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1. 

   Wise Jake

   The story of a boy who just wanted to grow up to be Abraham Lincoln. 10 years 9 months ago
2. 

   Siskoid

   In 1984, Robert Altman staged and captured on film Philip Baker Hall's one-man play Secret Honor, in which he plays Nixon having a breakdown some time after his losing the presidency. We can only be glad he did. Though Altman brings his own mise en scène to it, with security cameras that evoke the hypersurveillance of the era and places us somewhere between a prison and Nixon's mind palace, the Baker Hall's performance is pretty much everything. He reflects on his life, on his triumphs, his mistakes. He finds excuses, invents(?) conspiracies, plays his own lawyer, and contemplates suicide. He's defiant, but pathetic. And Baker Hall does it with that stammering naturalism he does so well (or WOULD do so well, since this is the piece that actually put him on film makers' radars - including Paul Thomas Anderson's - so we have Secret Honor to thank for the capture of many memorable performances). The text is a fiction, of course, but rooted in various biographical details. The playwrights were basically trying to weave a tapestry that could hold up to both the events and the personality behind Tricky Dick, and they succeed. 2 years 9 months ago
3. 

   armyofshadows

   Very uninteresting if you aren't extremely fascinated with Richard Nixon. The film plays like theater- some lines feel forced, especially the wealth of "uh"s and "um"s. I can't think of a reason to recommend this film- Frost/Nixon was a much better dialogue, I think, better than this monologue. 8 years 6 months ago

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