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In the movie ‘Nothing But the Truth, the journalist Alan Alda plays a scene in which he reads the discounting opinion from the Supreme Court that caters to the rights of journalists in protecting their anonymous sources. I was led to have the impression that these speeches were true and indeed they were but I was shocked to learn that the case on which the movie was based was not actually taken up by the Supreme Court. Actually the speech was delivered and prepared by the film’s writer and director Rod Lurie. With opinions like those, he would have made an excellent Supreme Court judge. For all intents and purposes, the speech was rooted in American idealism to the extent that it stirred up a patriotic feeling for me.
The movie drew inspiration from Judith Miller, a reporter for the New York Times who spent eighty-five days in jail for standing against the nomination of a source during the Valerie Place scandal. During the case, the first aide of Vice president Cheney has blown up the cover of a CIA agent attempting to discredit the Agent’s husband who went to investigate if Niger sold uranium to Saddam Hussein. He didn’t find any evidence for such claims. The story of uranium was a part of the Bush and Cheney’s web of lies over the weapons of mass destruction which was used to trigger the Iraq war.
This might seem complex but once you get the basics, it is easy to view Lurie’s plot as a representation of Miller, Valerie Plame, and Joseph Wilson. Granted the names and specifics have been altered. In this scenario, Lurie’s reporting, accuracy, and objectivity were highly scrutinized. Lurie is clever, however. He asks which of the two ideals is more important and focuses on this issue. It would have made the complication of the film extremely overwhelming to try and uncover the real story behind Miller.
I am just about positive there are some readers who wonder why I do not address the actual movie? Why is there a political aspect to this? In case you are one of those people, do not bother with the viewing of “Nothing but the Truth”. Instead of delighting you, it will induce great discomfort and anger. It is an established fact that Bush lied in order to get to Iraq, and this film touches on some of the consequences.
While Lurie has a political parody on his mind, it is not his only concern. The movie is primarily about the affected people, and is actors are good at interpreting characters, not archetypes. Kate Beckinsale is Rachel Armstrong, a journalist from the “Capitol Sun-Times” newspaper. Vera Farmiga is Erica Van Doren, the exposed intelligence officer. Matt Dillon plays the role of the prosecutor, Patton Dubois, who was definitely supposed to be U.S. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who is now deeply invested in the fascinating story of our beloved former governor of Illinois. Alda is the expensive Washington attorney that the newspaper employs to sue Rachel. Angela Basset is the newspaper’s editor who is being urged to beef up the report but attempts to maintain her ground. This is intriguing: Floyd Abrams acts splendidly as the federal judge; in life, he was Miller’s lawyer.
Armstrong and Van Doren are both mother suburbanites from Washington whose kids are in the same school. They are familiar with each other. Having the examined leak, the reporter straight up questions the agent if it is accurate. The agent responds with a phrase that Justice Scalia does not think civilized folk employ in public. It is savage.
Everything else aside, Dubois, the prosecutor, called Armstrong as a witness to his investigation of the leaked information and she did not disclose her source. This is something which is peculiar at the outset and can have deeper legal ramifications than Dubois’s original. This put her in a harrowing ordeal of staying in jail for a long duration of time where she stayed there not just longer than her fellow inmates but even sisters. One thing however is very profound. She says this horrible decision and now decision has set her husband David Schwimmer rather on a merry-go-round.
The way she is being taken care of seem to go beyond reasonable punishment. Dillon, as Dubois , is clearly a sent this is the angle of the villain but the truth is he is just doing his work in the same sense which claim Dillon that he is an actor that is being placed in what is now a the good man of the film. Alda comes off aggresive as someone who will not shy from showing off his incredibly expensive Zegna suit, but he gets so deeply involved that he does it pro bono. But these ladies motivations, dire ones, are tehere are the things that lie at the core.
Lurie is a prominent screenwriter and is liberated by fiction to achieve two very fascinating objectives. (1st) He articulates the concerns in question with impressive lucidity; (2nd) He demonstrates that there’s a finer set of reasons for a reporter to conceal a source that may be more plausible than we think. What is most gratifying about “Nothing But the Truth” is that the finale which will be eye-opening to nearly all viewers is not a gimmick, but plausible, and indeed resolves some inconsistent testimony.
Nothing But The Truth is a beautifully constructed film dealing with people and themes, of which there are more before the film industry as a whole turned into a fuss factory. It treats its viewers with respect, there is real tension, the suspense is earned rather than exploited, and there is a message to be delivered. In the normal course of things, it would have had a blockbuster release and likely gotten award nominations. But the economic crisis wiped out its distributor and a release period has been missed, so its life must be on DVD now. It is well above the category of “straight-to-DVD” and I trust that the audience realizes that.
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