All the Presidents Men

This is the first film in my collection that is included in the AFI top 100 films of all time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFI%27s_100_Years%E2%80%A6100_Movies_(10th_Anniversary_Edition) It's ranking is number 77. It's my film and I mention the connection to the AFI top 100 because I have known too many people who dismiss it as boring. For me, it is anything but boring.
For those not familiar with the film it's the story of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the 2 journalists at the Washington Post who worked together on the Watergate story that eventually lead to President Nixon resigning from office. Playing the roles of Woodward and Bernstein are Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford both of whom I am not worthy of even critiquing when it comes to their acting ability. The films supporting cast is equally terrific and includes a terrific performance by Jane Alexander who won a best supporting actress Oscar.
There really is very little reason to critique the film. As I have mentioned, the American Film Institute already believes it is worthy of being considered one of the 100 greatest films in the history of American Cinema. What I do want to do is to just point out some of the things that make this event in our history so significant.
First of all this film depicts a stark change in the role our nations media plays in politics. There is a thought in the film that had the Post placed one of it's senior political writers in charge of the story the story may have died without many of the dots being connected. Woodward and Bernstein were young and idealistic and what they found is that the story continued to evolve in ways that their peers didn't want to think about. If you believe the difference between Clinton and JFK was media coverage then you must understand that Watergate was that change in media coverage. And while no one regrets the revelations that the Watergate stories brought about it's interesting to see now that our media seems to have positioned itself at an opposite extreme in which it continually is feeding off of negative press. Perhaps that's an over statement from a cynical twenty something, but I do believe there is no denying that the media has come to love a negative story in ways we could not imagine back in the days before Watergate.
I also think it is interesting to watch this film and consider the place of Mr. Nixon in history. I had a professor who was a presidential historian who believed the presidency could be broken into two extremes: Teddy Roosevelt and Howard Taft. He then added that Nixon was too far off the charts to include. What we see depicted in this films is that Nixon had such a solid foothold on the presidency that his actions seemed inconceivable to his contemporaries. There was no democrat who was going to give him a serious challenge in 1972. So why do it? There is no good answer to that question but it shows that as a president Nixon believed that whatever the president does is okay so long as he believes it is in the nations best interest. And in 1972 he believed it was in the nations best interest that he stop at nothing to insure his re-election.
I thought about this while watching online a segment between Jon Stewart and Bill O'Reilly in which Jon Stewart said his chief complaint with our current president is that he sees the congress as his equal while Mr. Stewart believes the president should be throwing his weight around more. I do not intend to debate the above statement but I would always turn to Nixon as a reminder that our President should adhere to the provisions given to the president in the constitution and not be tempted to believe they are above that. I don't personally see Stewart as encouraging the President to behave in similar ways to what Nixon did but as a democratic society I would encourage all that the closer we stay in line with the constitution the closer we will stay in line with the ideals of democracy.
Getting back to the film, it is certainly worth a view. I purchased it with an eye on using it in the classroom someday and while I still hope to do so I must say that I was surprised a PG rated film could have so many F-bombs. Oh well, it's still an incredible film and one that must be watched while weighing the cultural changes that have stemmed from the Watergate investigation.