The first thing you see in Secret Honor, Robert Altman's adaptation of Donald Freed and Arnold Stone's play of the same name, is the reassurance that the events depicted are entirely fictional, and that the Richard Nixon (Phillip Baker Hall) we see is simply a character rather than a true depiction of the former president. It makes sense, of course, given that the disgraced former president was very much still alive at the time, but it plays well with the film's general idea of the truth and how we communicate it even when we're by ourselves. Can someone as monstrous as Nixon, one of the most cynical and deluded men to ever hold the office, be honest with himself as he debates the severity of his actions and what got him to that point? Should he even attempt to? Secret Honor is a fascinating one man show, an electrifying portrayal of a man fighting against his own and conscience as he rages at a world that he feels didn't give him what he deserved.
Adapting a source material as low-key as this, a one man show set entirely in a different room, is a fascinating challenge, one that Altman, a director whose work I'm ashamed to admit I'm not massively familiar with, handles very effectively. Nixon's office, where he records his memoirs amidst other rambling, mundane plans such as buying a sympathy gift of his gardener's wife, is shot to feel claustrophobic, a gilded cage for the man who once was able to kill thousands with a phone call. In one sequence, Nixon cowers by his security monitor, white-knuckling a revolver as he tries to get his cameras to work, convinced would-be assassins are right around the corner. As Nixon paces across the office, we truly feel every small detail of it and it's significance to him, from his beloved mother's piano to the revolver sitting on his desk to the looming, seemingly judging portraits of past presidents on the walls, and by the end we feel just as trapped as he does.
Nixon himself makes for a fascinating character, a toxic mix of self-loathing, righteous cruelty, and lust for power. Twitchy, bitter, and boiling with barely hidden resentment, Hall makes someone so odious into someone almost pitiful, as more and more layers of the former Commander-in-Chief are peeled away. His little tics betray his true psyche, from his tendency to let slurs fly as he gets more agitated in describing the American people turning on him to him interrupting a dialogue about JFK to talk about his brother, who he insists was the true favorite of his family. His memoir is less an organized biography and more of an extended airing of grievances, both real and imagined, and he often swings wildly between raging at his "superiors" and the dregs of society. JFK, his own mother, the mysterious "Committee of 100", even everyday American citizens, all are complicit in the betrayal of Nixon. It's this violent refusal to accept the culpability in his own actions that drives much of Secret Honor, even as it swings from mundane to sinister.
The conspiracy element, an often underdiscussed element in conversations around Nixon's downfall, adds to his paranoia, as he rambles about the "Committee of 100", a collection of influential men who effectively groomed Nixon for power before he had even started his run for Congress. It is, effectively, a deal with the devil, with the power-hungry Nixon getting everything he thought he wanted in return for advancing the various pet projects of the Committee. The film, wisely, keeps Nixon's interactions with this Committee, and whether they even really exist to the level he claims they do, largely ambiguous. Perhaps Nixon is correct and that everything, from his bombing of Cambodia to his disgrace and resignation over Watergate, was the work of the Committee, or perhaps they're just another enemy, another thing in his life that used and discarded him when he wasn't up to snuff? The Committee, with it's schemes to prolong Vietnam and discard the Constitution, allow Nixon, racebaiter, war criminal, and the beginning of the end of the New Deal era of American society, to play the hero. His peace deals, Watergate, even his secret meetings with Kissinger, a Judas-esque figure whose portrait literally hangs over Nixon for the entirety of the film, were all in service to stopping a worst fate for the American people. Is he being honest, is he lying, does it matter?
Secret Honor is, despite it's minimalist appearance, a lot of things. Conspiracy thriller, political biopic, theatrical adaptation, but most crucially, it's a character study of a deeply damaged man, desperate for power and the acclaim he's always desired, and the depths he was willing to sink just to conquer the demons that plagued him. It's a fascinating, brutally grim portrayal of one of history's most fascinating figures that leaves you to draw your own conclusions, with nothing but the word of a serial liar as your evidence.
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