FILM CHALLENGE: 135) All The President's Men

135) All The President's Men

Director: Alan J. Pakula

Year: 1976

Plot Summary: Reporters Woodward and Bernstein uncover the details of the Watergate scandal that leads to President Nixon's resignation.

Released only two years after the Watergate scandal came to its resolution, All The President's Men tells the story of two Washington Post reporters who risked their careers, the reputation of their newspaper and even their own lives to uncover who was really behind the break-in at the Democratic headquarters.

Making a film about an event so well known and, at the time, in such recent history is not an easy challenge. However, writer William Goldman does a fantastic job of making it an exciting and engrossing drama nonetheless. He does this by focussing the narrative less on the actual mystery aspects of the story, after all everyone already knew the main people involved in Watergate, and more on those people who investigated it. We are given an insight into the determination of these two journalists, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, as they pushed themselves harder and harder in search of the truth. We are presented the scepticism that The Washington Post's editors had in the story and the two young writers as they doubt how much truth there is in the story and consider taking them off the article. And moreover, the film displays how the members of CREEP faced the difficult challenge of doing what is honest and right in face of threats from their organisation.

However, as well as being a spectacularly well constructed story, it's also one that feels very authentic and realistic too. Having studied journalism for the last year at university and doing several placements in newspaper offices, it's incredible to witness just how life-like the movie is in terms of its understanding of how a newsroom operates. Long scenes of characters as they desperately phone up sources, the frantic rush to meet deadlines, the need for on-record sources and the conflicts between what the journalist knows is true and what to editor understands may breech media law are all present in All The President's Men.

While it doesn't deserve to be named among the classic films of the 1970s, All The President's Men remains a realistic and gripping account of what happened behind the scenes at The Washington Post in the build up to their famous article.

4/5

By Daniel Sarath with 1 comment