‘Be careful how you write it…’
Everyone’s got cinematic blind spots as I’ve noted many times before. The recent death of Hollywood legend Robert Redford brought into sharp focus the fact that I’ve barely scratched the surface of his filmography. Redford was not just one of the leading men at the vanguard of the New Hollywood era, he was also a celebrated and Oscar winning director and the founder of the prestigious and influential Sundance Film Festival. As an actor, Redford’s most iconic role is up for debate, but as I’d never seen All the President’s Men before, his death at the age of 89 felt like the perfect time to dive in…
Alan Pakula’s film tells the story of how intrepid journalist duo Bob Woodward (Redford) and Carn Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) broke the story of the Watergate scandal that eventually brought down the presidency of Richard Nixon. Elsewhere, Martin Balsam shines as Robert Simons, the managing editor of the Washington Post, and Jason Robards is also excellent as Woodward and Bernstein’s first point-of-contact at the paper.
What struck me immediately watching this film is how much it has echoed throughout cinematic history. Zodiac, The Post, Spotlight… pretty much every film that takes place in or features a newsroom takes it cues from All the President’s Men. Pakula, working on a script from William Goldman, ensures that the working environment of the two leads never feels anything less than utterly authentic, and this provides Redford and Hoffman with the canvas to paint something truly beautiful. You don’t really see acting like this anymore. The two are charismatic, obviously, but besides the fact that Redford is one of the most beautiful men to ever walk the planet, these two feel real in a way that modern day movie stars often fail to replicate. The way that the two of them interact – terse, breathless, but always respectful – ensures that even though this is essentially a film that is all dialogue, a film that is perhaps closer to a stage play than a cinematic experience, it remains absorbing throughout.
All the President’s Men laid the blueprint for every newsroom drama that came after it, and it contains one of Redford’s most assured and memorable performances. The man was a titan of American cinema and he will be missed. Rest easy, Robert.
