"That's our tragedy, you and I Mr. Frost. No matter how high we get, they still look down at us. "
You could be forgiven for having been completely unaware of the interviews between talk-show host David Frost and disgraced ex-President Richard Nixon before the publicity blitz of this film. However, director Ron Howard and screenwriter Peter Morgan would want you to think that it was one of the most important moments for politics, journalism and basically American culture in modern history, and are willing to spend two hours to convince you of just that. Whether or not you end up believing them is one thing, but you can't doubt their tenacity and the fact that they very nearly succeed is thanks in no small part to the committed cast, particularly (and unsurprisingly) Michael Sheen and Frank Langella, who serve as the titular acting duet.
Langella may be the one getting all the attention for his stooping, roaring performance as the proud, dying lion that is Richard Nixon, and it is easy to see why. Mimicry being what mimicry is, he naturally and effectively disappears inside the role, and the entire film seems built to serve his performance (even pointing it out as Frost is criticized by his team for allowing Nixon to dominate the early interviews). However, it is Michael Sheen who quietly steals the film away from him, not only bringing the much needed pathos to a film that could otherwise have just been two arrogant men talking to one-another, but also imbuing the film with a surprising lightness of touch. In particular, the early scenes establishing Frost's character - the loud suits, the self-assured flirting, the ridiculous celebrity embellishments - are very funny in Sheen's capable grasp. It seems at first that he may just be doing his Tony Blair again, the role that made him famous in both The Deal and The Queen, but so sleight is Sheen's hand that you won't notice as the cocky smile weakens and the shifty eyes deepen that he has turned the character completely inside-out.
While the film is all about Frost and Nixon, however, with a cast featuring such heavyweight character actors as Sam Rockwell and Oliver Platt, there is some great acting from the sidelines as well, and it all serves as a welcome distraction from the weight of Peter Morgan's screenplay, which is almost as self-aggrandizing as David Frost himself. Morgan is a good writer, and as he has proved with "The Queen" and "The Last King Of Scotland", he is extremely adept at making engrossing stories and compelling characters out of episodes of history that wouldn't immediately seem to lend themselves to theatricalising. Along with Ron Howard, himself a consistently strong, adept filmmaker, he has created an absorbing, well-paced, somewhat bullshitted tale (apart from the misjudged documentary structure it has given itself), successfully finding character arcs in what is a very talky piece as the publicity-hungry Frost soon begins to realize that his selfish reasons for wanting to conduct the interviews - fame and fortune in America - pale in comparison to what his team, and the entire American public, expect of them - the trial Nixon never had to face over the Watergate Scandal.
However, Morgan is ultimately unable to escape from the inherent problems that the story itself brings with it. The film obviously fancies itself a call for the necessities of journalism on this age of Fox News, or a topical parable about a despised ex-President marred in scandal being brought to justice. But there is no ignoring the fact that the Frost/Nixon interviews were merely a relatively inconsequential event here being treated as if they were life-and-death.
Also, I'd like to quote the article "6 Movies Based on a True Story (That Are Also Full of Shit)" from Cracked.com:
"The Hollywood Version:
Richard Nixon. He was paranoid, angry, sweat like Patrick Ewing during his televised debates and was basically the most despised president in U.S. history. Oh, and then he ordered felonies to be carried out to help him get re-elected and then covered it up.
Yet no one could ever get an admission of guilt out of ol' Tricky Dick, a schemer and manipulator who was pretty much the presidential version of Snidely Whiplash. But, if the movie Frost/Nixon is to be believed, along came David "Dudley Do-Right" Frost, a British journalist who, through a series of televised interviews, made like Tom Cruise and got Nixon to admit to ordering the code red.
In Reality...
While David Frost was an admirable fop who tried his damndest to get Nixon to admit to his culpability in the whole "stealing information from the Democratic Party" thing, the movie glosses over the fact that it wasn't so much Frost's triumph as it was a Nixonian PR move that led to his finally admitting the role he played and offering a half-hearted apology to the American people.
In the film's version of the final interview, Frost uses his tricky journalistic tactics to ambush Nixon into an admission of guilt. Nixon is trapped, and Frost has won. Huzzah! Pip pip, cheerio and such!
In reality, it turns out that the "apology" was carefully scripted by Nixon and his people well ahead of time. They realized that if he went through the entire interview series without changing his stance, he'd have gained nothing and would be viewed as the "same old Nixon," out to do the classic politician image rehabilitation.
So Nixon delayed the final interview for two months, allowing him to carefully script exactly what he'd say, and how he'd say it. In other words, the whole thing was just another Nixon ploy. When Frost/Nixon came out earlier this year, many critics were surprised that the disgraced ex-President was the most sympathetic character in the film, and commended for it's daring decision to humanize a monster. Kind of seems less daring when you realize the script was based on a story that unfolded exactly the way Nixon scripted it."
Movie News
1 Comments
1 Comments