Saturday, April 8, 2006
I don't know if this movie warrants an entry because I've seen it about two fistfulls of times, but it happened to be broadcast on WNET-13 for their Saturday night movie line-up, and I couldn't not watch. Call it perfect timing, because it came on at the same time I began writing an essay on it, which is due out in print, on pages, in a book in 2007. Look for it.
And what a nice segueway to explain my absence for the past three weeks: I was writing said essay, and thus not entries on this insightful blog!
A few observations on the film:
The placement of Woodward and Bernstein among the D.C. structures: The official government buildings are in plain view as Woodstein jot back and forth through the city in their pursuit of story leads and interviews, they are an integral part of the mise-en-scene, and reappear so often that we take their presence for granted. (The Watergate building even appears in a few shots, but only for a second or two before it's gone.)
These are some of the most gradiose buildings in the country, that represent integrity and the foundations of our government, yet they fade into a normal part of APM's atmosphere by virtue of their frequent appearance.
Woodward and Bernstein are the only two characters who actively slough through the dormancy of the city's political purity, and the undistinguished cityscape is a metaphor for the reporters' faceless antagonist. In the film, they are the ones who find flaws in the Presidency and the larger political system at a time when no one else questioned them. Woodstein's presence in the filmed space draws attention to this, emphasizing the their investigative role in the overall narrative.
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