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Rating: Washington, summer 1972: the “break-in” at Watergate takes place. The young and inexperienced journalist Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) must write an article on this insignificant news, when he discovers that the building was not broken into by just any thieves.
A few days later the turning point: in a notebook of one of the burglars, a name is found that leads to the White House. Without this name, the story of Watergate would have ended in a bubble of soap.
Slowly, Woodward, together with his colleague Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman), becomes aware of a $25,000 check made out by the “committee to re-elect President Nixon” to one of the Watergate burglars.
From this moment on, conducting a tiring investigation "from below," the two will come to understand what was behind it. At the end of the film, the break-in will appear just as a simple “prank.”
A film that caused a scandal, and at the time even outraged the Democrats. Today, Moore can quietly make his “Fahrenheit 451.” In 1974, Robert Redford, after buying the rights to the book from which this film emerged, had to sweat seven shirts to find a producer. For many, even today, it was wrong to tell the world about the dirt behind Watergate because it definitively tarnished the already quite tarnished myth of America.
Obviously, the writer thinks differently.
In his research, Woodward will use an informant who went down in history: “Deep Throat.” Memorable is his phrase: “I do not like the press, because I do not like superficiality.” This point will be revisited by Ron Howard in “Frost-Nixon: The Duel.”
Alan Pakula also takes a few minutes to describe the character differences between Woodward and Bernstein, and shows how, during the investigation, their characters reverse.
A masterpiece, but only if:
1. You love modern political history;
2. You consider a film as a book from which to learn something;
3. The (boring) search for truth attracts you as much as truth itself (as in “Zodiac”).
Otherwise, forget it: you would fall asleep.
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