SECRET HONOR (1984) ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: Robert Altman
Philip Baker Hall
Richard Nixon, a bottle of Scotch, a Bible, a clock, four video monitors, the portraits of a half-dozen ex-presidents (plus Henry Kissinger), a piano, a tape recorder and a loaded gun. A movie based on a one-man play that doesn't claim to stick to the facts, but uses Nixon, in an imaginary conversation with himself, to try to get at the ghosts and demons that drove him to power and disgrace. Philip Baker Hall doesn't try to "do" Nixon, either, (his model seems to be George C. Scott in "Dr. Strangelove"), but he delivers a devastating portrait of a man who sold his soul long ago and has never stopped making payment. He talks to the paintings. He barks like a dog. He raves and rages in an endless stream of vitriolic expletives, switchbacks and non-sequiturs, self-justification and self-loathing duking it out for what's left of his tormented psyche. The effect is literally damning.
Philip Baker Hall
(1931-2022)
