Sometimes it’s easy to take for granted that certain genres of movies exist.
We have seen so many mockumentaries, slasher films, Adam Sandler movies, that it’s easy to forget that they had to start from somewhere.
Going through the movies for this project that I hadn’t seen before, it strikes me what a novel movie this must have been when it first came out. Not a movie based on a novel, I mean, but like a unique experience. This had to feel especially, uh, novel since the whole Nixon debacle was fresh in everyone’s minds when it did come out.
But I might go as far as to say that unlike other new genres, this one turned the whole idea of what is a narrative on its head. It is fitting, though, since it’s a movie about a couple of men who turned the whole world on its head, along our expectations about how a president would act (another thing we take for granted).
So here we are with 1976’s All the President’s Men, written by William Goldman and directed by Alan Pakula.
Usually this is where I talk about the message of the movie; however, before I can get to that, there’s something else that I need to get to first.
As I mentioned this isn’t just a simple genre change. A new kind of horror film or comedy film might break some rules, but it still shares many things in common with all other narrative movies. They’ll all still follow the five-act structure (or the three-act one if that’s your cup of tea), where we see a character go on a journey, they change and the story follows a thematic pattern.
This is the case in almost all fiction, but it’s not the case in documentaries. And since the AFI top 100 list doesn’t include documentaries, this is not something we’ve had to deal with thus far.
However, despite All the President’s Men not being a documentary or even a mockumentary or found footage movie, its new genre, one often referred to as Investigative Journalism, is supposed to feel just like a documentary, and it thus has the structure of an investigative one.
We do not really see the characters change, except maybe getting better at their jobs.
We do not take a deep dive into their relationships.
We do not get a typical story with typical acts.
Instead we follow Woodward and Bernstein as we would see them in real life, getting closer and closer to solving the case, sometimes taking wrong turns, but focusing on just the key beats of figuring out the Watergate scandal.
Instead of character change and development, we get changes and development within the case.
This makes for a way different objective within this movie than just about any other movie on the list.
Despite the structure and objective of this film being so different, all movies can’t escape having a central message, and this one, through the great filmmaking and writing, has a profound one: with enough work, the truth can be brought to life.
We see this literally, as the characters keep getting closer and closer to this truth, through many techniques, including flirting and bluffing, get closer to the truth.
This is also represented symbolically, as the newsroom is in complete light, and the outside world is shaded in darkness.
Deep Throat’s identity is completely hidden and his words are cryptic, until the protagonists get closer to the truth.
And this culminates in the truth finally coming to light at the end, and all the follow-through of the case being typed very clearly onto pages as Nixon is caught and eventually resigns.
Some may argue that this is the best investigative journalism movie of all time.
I’m not sure if I agree–there’s movies like Zodiac that take the genre and are able to blend in with more cinematic conventions like relationships and even moments of sheer horror.
But whether or not it’s the best, this movie stands as very important because it was the first to do it (or at least the first to do it big).
Redford was obsessed with making it as real as possible, and both he and Dustin Hoffman add that realness to their characters.
And this makes it fit so perfectly with its theme. A movie all about bringing truth to life, sticks so closely to that actual truth.
The real Woodward and Bernstein were in danger of stepping out of the shadows, much like Deep Throat, but this movie celebrates their courageous journey into the light.
If the press should be anything, it’s honest, and all other reason’s aside, this value is one we can appreciate no matter how many investigative journalism movies were created after.
Thanks for reading!
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