Descent into devastation
The Assassination of Richard Nixon, dir. Niel Mueller.
Sean Penn is a great actor. Perhaps too great. How so? you ask. Well, the truth is that a film is rarely a vehicle for a single body, and Penn’s performances burn so brightly that they have the ability to consume everything around them. In The Assassination of Richard Nixon, Penn plays Sam Bicke (yes, it does sound like Travis Bickle, and the similarities to Taxi Driver don’t stop there)—furniture salesman, ex-husband, and would-be assassin.
Based on a true story (inspired by the story of Samuel Byck, who, in 1974, attempted to hijack a commercial airliner and crash it into the White House), Assassination traces a year in the life of a very unhappy man. A man who feels the weight of social injustice with such personal vehemence that life becomes an impossible burden. Penn leaves no doubt as to the strength of his character’s feelings. When Bicke pushes buttons on a TV remote control, you imagine he might be blowing up a building—which is an extraordinary feat of performance, but ultimately cripples the film. Or at least gives it a limp.
As a portrait of a devastated man, The Assassination of Richard Nixon is nearly flawless. It tackles the inextricable and frightening mix of personal and public disappointments that can misshape a life. Beaten by circumstance and insecurity, Bicke sees everything around him as dishonesty and opportunities denied—everything from little lies in furniture sales to big lies in the White House.
Bicke chronicles his disappointments with life and the elusive American Dream by recording his thoughts on tape—it’s like a self-improvement course in personal destruction.
Contrasted with these are actual self-improvement tapes given to him by his boss (Jack Thompson), full of truisms and corporate garbage: ‘The salesman who believes ... is the salesman who receives.’
This structural trick works handsomely, further darkening the hole Bicke has dug himself. In reality (and in the film) Bicke sent the tapes to Leonard Bernstein, a man he thought of as representing a rare purity. What Bernstein made of them would be interesting to know.
The difference between a good man and a bad man can be so very slight: a loan application denied, watching a particular news report, access to a gun. While Assassination doesn’t pretend its protagonist isn’t descending rapidly into extreme paranoia, it does suggest the system is partially to blame.
The Assassination of