All The President’s Men

Dir- Jay Pakula

During the late sixties, two investigative journalists of the Washington Post took it upon themselves to unwrap and reveal the findings of a case that would ultimately decide the fate of the 37th President of the United States of America.

Directed by Jay Pakula(Klute, The Parallax View), starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman–All the President's Men is a heavy dose of American politics circling the tumult of Nixon's Presidency and the events that led to the infamous “watergate scandal”. The film is equally immersive and straightforward with a realism that happens to show the exact chronological pathway, without diluting anything in between.

At some point it almost feels like a documentary, showing the insights of a newsroom and how does a piece of news gets originated, written and edited in a chronological but chaotic manner. This hypnotic process of print journalism also used in Zodiac(2007) and the Oscar-winning Spotlight(2015) provides the perfect pace setting experience which more than often leads to a soul-satisfying payoff.

However, President's Men is a film that focuses on the journey more than the already known result. It adheres zero compliance to the entertainment section and respectfully sticks to its subject matter. A rare and risky formula for a studio dominated era of the seventies. It works and works efficiently.

There is a scene in the film where Redford's character gets the green light to type the controversial piece. Hoffman's character observes him from afar and proofreads the whole thing. This goes on and on like a tennis streak until Redford interrupts him.

Before he says anything, Hoffman explains that some hardcore stuff needs to be edited out or he will land in trouble.

Redford goes back to his desk, comes again with a bunch of papers and says,“ What you did wasn't wrong, the way you did was”

I think this exchange of dialogues encapsulates everything this flick is about.

Also, a gentle reminder that one of the most iconic and cinematically wholesome scenes was merely a to and fro conversation.