From Nixon to the Fourth of July

 
From Nixon to the Fourth of July

If I haven’t mentioned it yet, I have been trying to go through the back-catalogue of important contemporary filmmakers, and today I will briefly discuss Oliver Stone. His oeuvre is impressive: Salvador, Platoon, Wall Street, Born on the Fourth of July, Talk Radio, JFK, The Doors, Heaven and Earth, Natural Born Killers, Nixon, U-Turn, Any Given Sunday, Comandante, Alexander, and the much anticipated first non-documentary film about 9/11, World Trade Center.

He has made some great films—Platoon, JFK, and Wall Street—but he has also made some real shite—U-Turn, Alexander. This weekend I watched two of his films that I had never seen before: Born on the Fourth of July and Nixon. And they’re both good. It may be strange to compare these two films or to review them together, but they share a common theme that runs through most of Stone’s movies: communism is good and government conspiracies abound. Yes, they really are the same theme, for most of the government conspiracies involve communism in some form, especially Cuba. JFK, Born on the Fourth of July, and Nixon all involve Cuban/American conspiracies, although the idea is just hinted at in Born on the Fourth of July.

It’s no coincidence, then, that Stone’s documentary Comandante is actually a glowing portrait of Fidel Castro. Part of Stone’s film-making mission is to make American government look bad (especially Republicans) and to make Cuba look good. Nevermind that he never actually takes us to Cuba: the point is that we know its there and our government has used it in a myriad of ways, from patsys to excuses for war.

I’m not criticizing Stone for making movies with disagreeable politics. I’m no neo-con myself, and I sympathize with nearly all of Stone’s sentiments (stopping way short of praising Castro, of course). But political statements and movies don’t always mesh. That’s the problem with Born on the Fourth of July, which was a big deal when it came out. The simple fact is that it’s not that great of a movie (I hope you're getting used to me stating my opinions as facts). It’s well-done, but it’s too heavy-handed. The first half is really good, but then the movie descends into a simple argument against the Vietnam War. If it had remained a movie about a vet’s ability to cope with the war, I would have been much more receptive. Making the main character into a hero makes it much too simple.

Even though Nixon is the lesser-known film, it’s the better of the two. Stone isn’t content to bash Nixon. He gives him his due, I think, and he uses the Nixon tapes as a way to flesh out what happened with Watergate. Some of it is conjecture, sure, but conjecture can make a good movie—just see JFK. Nixon is a complicated figure whose childhood and family relationships all play a role in his descent. Stone doesn’t merely argue that Nixon got a bad rap, either. The film indicates that Presidents or all people in positions of power get embroiled in intriguing situations that we, the public, would probably be better off not knowing about. And that kind of message makes for a decent movie. The editing gets confusing and annoying at times, and we can see the style of Natural Born Killers coming through, which brings the film down. Overall, though, this is the better movie.

Grade for Born on the Fourth of July: 7
Grade for Nixon: 7.5
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