Day 206 - All The President's Men

Saturday November 12, 2011

All the President's Men (1976) directed by Alan J. Pakula

As of this writing, I am flying above Iceland on my way to Athens. After some airplane chicken and mash potatoes I decided to watch the acclaimed All the President's Men, which I assume is the true accounts of the two Washington Post reporters Woodward and Bernstein who uncovered the Watergate scandal. The interesting thing about this film is that it doesn't really try to dramatize or romanticize the story; it is basically straight up investigative reporting the whole way through which can be a little tough to digest. There is no humor, extended monologues, witty banter or deep character development, but it is perhaps the most extensive and thorough movie I've seen about the journalistic process. 

When news of Watergate breaks, it is seen as a minor event as the true depths of the conspiracy are not yet known. The two reporters Woodward (Robert Redford) and Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) are assigned the story and they quickly realize that there is something much bigger going on, so the two go through painstaking lengths to uncover the scandal bit by bit. Once the outline of the story is in place, they must fill in the gaps and that can only be done through sources, so they make phone calls, go door to door to interview people, crossing names off the list. This process is the heart of the film as it shows how important sources are to a story. A story does not become news until it can be verified and confirmed, otherwise you are just speculating or flat out making things up which are dangerous accusations against any reporter. Nothing can ruin a journalist's career more than printing a story that turns out to be false. 

Finding a source for this story turns out to be incredibly difficult for obvious reasons. Nobody wants to speak to them about the issue so they must go through dozens if not hundreds of people before they can get somebody to tell them something they can use. This process is fascinating to me because what compels people to tell these guys anything? Bernstein in particular seems like a real pain in the ass yet he manages to get people to tell him stuff seemingly against their will. For instance, he goes to a woman who is clearly bothered by his presence multiple times. She flat out tells him, "I don't want to say anything to you" over and over yet he manages to find a way inside her home sitting on her chair drinking her coffee. She sits across from him and says "I'm not going to say anything more" but he somehow pries answers out of her. It's kind of like how a kid keeps nagging his mom for candy until she finally gives in because she knows he'll never stop asking. In this case though, the woman could simply throw Bernstein out of her house and never answer the door. I suppose it isn't that simple and that reporters don't have magical control over people. They simply encourage people to tell them stuff they want to tell anyways for whatever reason, in this case, to do what is right. 

I wonder if this really happens or not, but a tactic reporters in the movies like to use is to say stuff like, "I'm going to say this or that and you simply nod your head yes or no" or "I'm going to point my finger at a name and if you don't say anything, I'm going to take that as a yes." It is a clever ploy in playing to the source's fear of giving information even though he or she really wants to give it. I'm guessing that the reporter knows that this can only work if the other person allows it to. They use this tactic over and over in the film.

Overall I found the material of the film really dry and at times hard to follow because of how dense it is. There were times I didn't know who they were talking to or whom they were referencing. There isn't much to grab on to other than the story. It's not as if I was rooting hard for the two because we barely get to know them other than through their work. However, I did find the step by step journalism pretty interesting as we got to see how reporters do their thing, but even that can get a little tedious if you're not up for it.

Grade: B-