Award-winning documentary “Our Nixon,” part of the Virginia Film Festival, drew a mixed crowd of students and Charlottesville locals to Newcomb Theater Sunday afternoon. Touted by Miller Center researcher Ken Hughes as a “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern perspective on Nixon,” the film presents never-before-seen footage from the home videos of Nixon’s three closest aides, H. R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and Dwight Chapin. The amateur tapes of the mens’ White House experiences chronicle their deep friendship and eventual humiliation after the infamous Watergate scandal.
Although the Nixon administration will forever be associated with Watergate, “Our Nixon” manages to highlight the less scrutinized aspects of the presidency. Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Chapin, all young aides in the Nixon administration, obsessively recorded landmark historical events they experienced firsthand. Their home videos include up-close coverage of anti-war protests, Nixon’s famous trip to China and the liftoff of the Apollo 11 rocket. Little did they know their footage would be confiscated as evidence during the Watergate investigation, forgotten for decades until an ambitious producer and University of Kentucky law professor, Brian Frye, happened upon the reels after a conversation with his colleague.
Frye brilliantly integrated news footage from the Nixon presidency with the raw, small-gauge film content. Along with director Penny Lane, he sifted through more than 500 reels of film, selecting illustrative footage of the thrill and exhaustion of a career in the 1970s West Wing. Though the sometimes-indistinct Super 8 movies could have perplexed viewers if handled by a less skilled producer, Frye masterfully included presidential public service announcements, retrospective interviews and television broadcasts as narrative landmarks. The context he provides makes the documentary accessible to political enthusiasts and less informed viewers alike without diminishing the intimate quality of the haphazardly shot home movies.
Reflecting on the inspiration for the documentary in a post-screening discussion, Frye mused that “Our Nixon” distinguishes itself from other Nixon comprehensives through the intensely personal treatment of the subject matter. The documentary doesn’t focus on Watergate as much as it does the three aides’ pathway to the scandal and its devastating consequences in their lives. It chronicles their camaraderie with clips of weddings, staff vacations and Easter celebrations on the White House lawn. Viewers watch the men eat together, laugh together and travel together, revealing the countless hours they devoted to their roles in the administration. Spectators even hear Nixon confess to a freshly resigned Haldeman that he loves him “like a brother,” the sentiment hanging uncomfortably over the theater. Ultimately, Frye manages to portray the all-encompassing culture of the West Wing in the early ‘70s with astounding realism, giving audiences a taste of the environment that spawned the government’s blatant disregard for the law.
Most haunting of all is the blissful ignorance clouding every grainy shot. The men behind the camera have no idea that they would be publicly disgraced, incarcerated and forced to rebuild their lives apart from Nixon, the man for whom they had devoted their careers. Poignantly, Nixon makes a casual remark halfway through the film, affirming that their administration is succeeding, “because we’re honest.” “Our Nixon” captivates because it immortalizes a time when that statement could have still been true.
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