Movie out of the mutant Beltway: "Mark Felt" (2017)

Only one time in my life did I sit through two showings of the same movie on the same night. That movie was "All the President's Men." Quite logical that I should be so mesmerized as I was majoring in mass communications at St. Cloud (MN) State University. I remember we were assigned the book "The Boys on the Bus." It all seemed fascinating but it came from a Beltway world that wasn't going to be relevant for us students in Central Minnesota.
The Beltway was/is a unique beast. Nothing to learn from reading about "Maximum John" Sirica. Nor the mysterious figure known by the moniker "Deep Throat." We found some levity in references to the porn movie at the time. It was a time when movies like "The Poseidon Adventure" and "Harry and Tonto" made light of prostitution. The great trumpet player Maynard Ferguson sang about how "Linda Lovelace made me a star" in new lyrics penned for "I Can't Get Started." I heard Maynard in concert singing "Linda Lovelace knows I'm a star." Later he employed proper taste and sang about how "Stan Kenton (his early teacher/influence) made me a star."
We don't see the giggly reference to prostitutes much anymore, as we realize so much of porn is exploitative in a dark way.

Out of the shadows as old man
Mark Felt became known as "Deep Throat" because we lacked his real name. Years passed before the mask came off. Finally we saw the consummate G-man Felt as a very old man, self-consciously old, posing in the doorway of his daughter's home.
His daughter gives a backstory in the movie "Mark Felt" which I watched this afternoon. Thanks to our Morris Public Library for having the DVD available. I'm 63 years old and have memories reverberating all over the place, not just about Watergate but about the ilk represented by Felt's rebellious daughter. She ran off back in the day to join a commune. I knew kids who were programmed like that in the early '70s. The memories are not pleasant. While I was not perfect myself, many of my peers grated on me with their values/behavior involving various vices. They rationalized these vices. Or maybe they just didn't give a rip.
Years later as if in a magical transformation, my peers became most mainstream/conventional in their values/lifestyle. I imagine many of them joined the tea party movement. Indeed, mine is a generation that in many ways I find inscrutable. Are these creatures just following some sort of zeitgeist? There's the old phrase "man without a country." Maybe I'm a "man without a generation."
 
Scandal loomed in our lives
But I was as fixated on Watergate as anyone. I even had the immense pleasure of spending part of the 1972 summer in Washington D.C. I was with a group that dined on the rooftop of the then-new Kennedy Center. The stirrings of Watergate were most contemporaneous. Perhaps I passed by some dudes on the sidewalk who ended up as principals.
Now we have the movie about Mark Felt, directed by Peter Landesman and produced by Ridley Scott. There's nothing subtle about how the subject matter seems to parallel what we're seeing with the Trump administration. A house of cards set to fall? My late father always said "analogies are dangerous." Good overcame evil (or mendacity) in the Watergate episode. But can we always assume good will prevail? We have no idea at present how the uncharted territory of the Trump administration will turn out. Frankly I'm scared right now.
Pat Buchanan says that Woodward and Bernstein of the fabled Washington Post were just "stenographers." I'd give them more credit than that, but they were agents helping a scorned man, Felt, seek vengeance or might we say justice. It's a story as old as the hills: getting passed over for promotion. J.Edgar Hoover croaks. Richard Nixon appoints an interim chief who he feels will grease his own intentions. It's not Felt, it's Pat Gray. Felt still has power with his immense knowledge, and indeed the movie's theme could be "knowledge is power."
We have that silly burglary. Gray tries tamping down the investigation, seeking to enlist Felt in the process. As the movie plods along, I'm genuinely irritated by the poor lighting. It's as if I'm watching "Lincoln" all over again, and the drab tone of that movie is due to no electricity in the mid-19th Century! Hey, turn on the lights, it's 1972! I was waiting for a brightening, perhaps as a symbol for when the good guys won and Nixon resigns. It could be symbolic like when the color appears in "Pleasantville." Remember that? But no, "Mark Felt" is hopelessly, irretrievably drab. Nuts!
I suspect young people will have a hard time watching all the way to the end of this movie. We don't see enough of Felt's wife. She certainly doesn't seem happy.
Felt ends up taking a hard line (even illegal) against domestic terrorist groups, maybe subconsciously (?) venting against his daughter's rebellious inclinations. Such different times, the early 1970s. Didn't Kathleen Soliah go through the kind of transformation I cited earlier, from wild-eyed hippie type/rebel to suburban mother? Maybe God created me just to be an observer.

Movie about reporters was better
Felt was indicted for his overzealousness but Ronald Reagan pardoned him. Felt wrote a book called "The FBI Pyramid." Frankly I'll take "All the President's Men" over "Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House." The distinguishing feature of Watergate was the primacy of the press, my beloved field. What a relief to see normal lighting.
Will the current "Man Who Brought Down the White House" be Rick Gates?
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com