A movie that made everyone want to be a journalist, "All the President's Men" is about Watergate. What makes the movie so different is how current it was. The scandal started in 1972, the book was written in 1974, and the movie came out. The story chronicles the Pulitzer Prize-winning story broken by journalists Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) and Bob Woodward (Robert Redford), working for the Washington Post.
The movie (as far as I know) is supremely accurate. Because the journalists were still alive and retained their sharpened memories, they were obviously consulted in several parts along the process of writing the screenplay and filming the movie.
Also interesting about the film is how accurate the depiction of a modern (it was the '70s, so more or less modern) newsroom is. It is a film filled with secret parking-garage meetings, people running through the newsroom at a break-neck pace, and finding our main characters in the very real world of dead-end leads and misleading information. As an aspiring journalist, and someone who has worked in a newsroom before (though not as big or prestigious as the Washington Post obviously).
The "State of Play" of the 1970s, this movie perfectly blends journalistic themes with Washington intrigue. The ending, with the typewriter clacking quickly, shows us how things ended up with Watergate. The last thing we see, "NIXON RESIGNS," resounds through the credits. All of the noise stops, and history is made.
All in all, the movie was satisfying and interesting, but that may be because it was pretty much all about what I'm interested in. Nonetheless, the movie is a gripping, serious portrayal of one of the defining events of the last century, and for that it should be commended.
No comments:
Post a Comment