During the late 1970s, Robert Altman started to get weird. 3 Women was wonderfully strange, and certainly more enigmatic than many of the films this maverick had released before, but nothing prepared me for the unhinged brilliance of Secret Honor when, thanks to Criterion, I was finally able to see it. I had become aware of the film sometime during high school, when I became obsessed, more or less simultaneously, with Richard Nixon, Philip Baker Hall, and Robert Altman. Obviously, then, Secret Honor would have to be some sort of Holy Grail for me.
When I finally saw it, my obsessions with Nixon and Hall had waned, but my Altman fixation had only grown. How did I find this film? I found it miraculous. I simply cannot believe how awesome a filmmaker Altman truly is. He's masterful with ensembles (see Gosford Park, Nashville, and Short Cuts), but here he shows himself king of the one- man show. Philip Baker Hall is magnetic as a fictionalized Richard Nixon and puts Anthony Hopkins's swell performance to shame. Hopkins may have gotten the syntax and speech patterns down, but Hall, and his thoroughly beaten physical demeanor, seems to embody Nixon more fully. Hall is a fantastic actor, but Altman must have been doing something right to pull this performance--which is tragic and absurd in equal measures--from anyone, no matter how talented. It's the perfect pitch to play the film, as playing Nixon with too much or too little pathos would have killed the movie.
The staging of Secret Honor is also a marvel. It takes place in one room, which instills a wonderful sense of claustrophobia, and this room is absolutely cluttered, it seems, by objects that haunt Nixon. It's an amazing design and fits the story perfectly.
Secret Honor rests among the greatest Altman films--McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Nashville, the Long Goodbye, 3 Women, and Short Cuts--because it's not only a terrific film but also because it shows how masterful Altman is with a range of styles. It's simply brilliant.
When I finally saw it, my obsessions with Nixon and Hall had waned, but my Altman fixation had only grown. How did I find this film? I found it miraculous. I simply cannot believe how awesome a filmmaker Altman truly is. He's masterful with ensembles (see Gosford Park, Nashville, and Short Cuts), but here he shows himself king of the one- man show. Philip Baker Hall is magnetic as a fictionalized Richard Nixon and puts Anthony Hopkins's swell performance to shame. Hopkins may have gotten the syntax and speech patterns down, but Hall, and his thoroughly beaten physical demeanor, seems to embody Nixon more fully. Hall is a fantastic actor, but Altman must have been doing something right to pull this performance--which is tragic and absurd in equal measures--from anyone, no matter how talented. It's the perfect pitch to play the film, as playing Nixon with too much or too little pathos would have killed the movie.
The staging of Secret Honor is also a marvel. It takes place in one room, which instills a wonderful sense of claustrophobia, and this room is absolutely cluttered, it seems, by objects that haunt Nixon. It's an amazing design and fits the story perfectly.
Secret Honor rests among the greatest Altman films--McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Nashville, the Long Goodbye, 3 Women, and Short Cuts--because it's not only a terrific film but also because it shows how masterful Altman is with a range of styles. It's simply brilliant.