Frost/Nixon

There are so many reasons to dislike this film.

The documentary-loving responsible historian voice in my head is offended by its cavalier attitude toward the actual sequence of events. Granted, I didn't know this for a fact while I was watching it, but I felt confident in that assessment at the time and it tuns out I was correct. Not only that, but it invents entire exchanges which never happened for dramatic purposes. These things are rather important to me. I couldn't let myself see Kingdom of Heaven because that voice would probably land me in jail for assaulting the poor theater employee operating the projector and then lecturing the terrified movie-goers about the Crusades at gunpoint.

The voice that sounds like Patrick Steward wonders why we aren't watching Sci-fi or playing a video game. I respond that maybe this review blog project shouldn't be a total nerd-fest but then I realize I'm fooling no one.

The militant anti-establishment voice wonders why we should even care. I've got enough context to know that getting caught doing something wrong doesn't make a politician a demon any more than a bullet in the brain makes him a saint. Nothing against Nixon-bashing, it's fun for the whole family. He's still the poster boy for American despotism despite the fact that the United States' system of governance was abused worse under Lincoln. It's just old, isn't it? Why celebrate our one minor and rather belated victory over political corruption over and over ad nauseam when we are clearly losing that war?

There are times, however, when you have to take a stand. You have to say to the voices in your head, "Enough! I'm in charge here!" Just don't say it out loud in a public place because most people find spirited discourse with entities inside your own mind a little disquieting.

The point is, I enjoyed Frost/Nixon despite those problems. It's well-constructed and compellingly presented. It is adapted by Peter Morgan from a play he penned with the same name, and directed by Ron Howard. The source material's influence is evident throughout the film and is one of its major strengths. Frost/Nixon is about a contest of wits, after all, a verbal duel between the titular figures. The film manages to channel some of that raw actor versus actor energy you would expect to find on the stage, but uses cameras to get us even closer. Morgan and Howard manage to make it candid and human when I had pessimistically expected over-dramatization.

I have heard the complaint that Frank Langella looks nothing like Richard Nixon. While I suppose I agree with it, I fail to see why this is a deal-breaker for so many viewers. Do they expect Ron Howard to go to some evil magic university and major in necromancy so he can raise a zombie Dick Nixon from the grave to star in his retelling of the interview with David Frost, but then everything goes horribly wrong when zombie Nixon kills the film crew and turns them into undead slaves who then go out and make even more undead slaves all in the name of President Zombie Nixon?

I think I have a script to write.

Anyway, Langella's portrayal is heartfelt and genuine. He easily surmounts his jowl deficiency while playing the role accurately and honestly. His Nixon is not a monster. He puts a human face on the biggest bogeyman in American politics and he does it with admirable grace.

In the interview which is the subject of Frost/Nixon, the advisers, producers, and even its contemporary viewers were looking to get something out of it. In most cases, they wanted to give Nixon the trial he never received. They wanted him to answer for his transgressions. The film, however, has the advantage of being able to look back on the events it depicts, and the Nixon years in general, with some context. Conveniently, it does this just as another corrupt administration retires to mansions rather than prison cells.

Frost/Nixon is thus free to open up the conversation, to look at the events through a different lens. After all, it wasn't a politician who got the famous admission out of Tricky Dick. It wasn't a freedom fighter or a judge or an ideologue of any stripe. It was a British talk show host and a camera.

I like to see it as a grand statement about the nature of politics. It's all theater, really. The film shines a light on the inner workings of a television interview that meant so much more than an evening's distraction for those who witnessed it. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I do have voices to appease over here.