James Bell January 15, 2009

Taut, entertaining political ‘boxing drama’ from the people who brought you The Queen. What a shame that Richard Nixon didn’t live long enough to discover what great box office he’s now become (albeit as a sort of American Macbeth)!

I found this a totally gripping, edge-of-the-seat experience, that never becomes hectoring or worthy.
Frost/Nixon picks up where All The President’s Men and Oliver Stone’s Nixon left off – President Nixon’s resignation and total pardon for all crimes from successor President Ford. What follows is essentially a reworking of the Ali/Foreman Rumble In The Jungle, with shallow TV bimbo David Frost taking on the political Goliath of Richard M. Nixon in a series of interviews, with both men’s careers, self-esteem and bank balances riding on the outcome.

It’s actually a surprisingly conventional film, in the best Hollywood tradition: taut, entertaining, with a first rate cast giving mesmerising yet un-showy performances. And despite its theatrical roots, it never feels stagey. I suppose there are two ways to do this kind of political movie: the Oliver Stone blitzkrieg of facts, timelines and camera angles, or the straightforward narrative about one key event. Frost/Nixon settles for the latter, and Ron Howard’s tight direction ensures that you don’t need to be particularly familiar with the politics of the time to follow what’s going on.

Obviously, being a political drama, it is pretty talky – and anyone going expecting explosions and nudity will probably be disappointed. (Although, unlike The Queen, this political leader isn’t afraid of a little blue language and bombing a lot of Cambodians, unless perhaps Her Majesty just has a much better publicity team...) But anyone looking for big, cinematic (and of course, in the Bush administration's twilight days, very topical) food for thought shouldn’t be disappointed.

The story has taken some flak over accusations that it misrepresents the facts, and the historical importance, of the interviews, but I certainly didn’t feel it strayed outside the bounds of artistic license. And at least in this case there is a wealth of painstaking evidence and analysis on the subject that is freely available to the public, along with whole chunks on the real interviews on YouTube.

I also feel that to say these interviews weren’t important is to miss the point. This isn’t just a story about politics; it’s a drama about people, power and the pursuit of success. And particularly about how, in a sustained battle of wills, it tends not to be the opponent with the greatest strength who wins, but the one with the greatest weakness who loses.

Kathryn January 14, 2009

**Warning: contains spoilers - Ed.**

Frost/Nixon is the story of the four interviews Richard Nixon gave David Frost in 1977, three years after he had had to resign as President. I had not seen the original interviews so I did not know their content and I have to say this film had me sitting on the edge of my seat as any other good thriller would.

The film is presented as a docu-drama, although it is actually all drama, even the ‘talking heads’ being with the actors not the real people they represented. David Frost is the suave, somewhat shallow chat show host who gets a scoop – a series of four interviews with Nixon – and has to put his whole reputation on the line for it. At first he seems oblivious to his lack of depth and to Nixon’s wiliness, but he realises just in time and in the last of the four interviews he nails his man. Nixon is represented as a power-hungry but miserly man who wishes to clear his name in order to ‘go back east’. He is no good at small talk but is a clever manipulator of words and he tries, successfully at first, to outplay and outpsych Frost. The background to the interviews, the researchers, Frost’s frantic and at first unsuccessful attempts to raise money and get media interest; all these build a picture of what was going on at the time.

Frost’s realisation of what is happening and the way he changes and grows is wonderfully portrayed by Michael Sheen. I have never seen Michael Sheen put in a bad performance, either on screen or on stage, and this, too, is a tour de force. Frank Langella is equally powerful. He doesn’t make Nixon a monster but he does show his weaknesses and some of the reasons why he was such a powerful, and flawed, man. The two actors reprise their stage roles and have been interviewed about how different it was to play the part on screen. Well, they adapt magnificently. All the acting is excellent, but the other actors inevitably just provide the backdrop, for this film is all about these two powerful men with their huge egos (though very different agendas) locked in a deadly battle. Frost ‘wins’ because he has the sense to realise that he must change his game. Nixon plays one mindgame too many and this is his downfall. That and the fact that he lied and in the end he couldn’t deny it.

A Masterful performance from Frank Langella rescues this rather pedestrian film. Frost/Nixon would in my opinion be nothing more than a lightweight TV novella without Langella's perfect, and utterly mesmerising performance. Quite simply the best performance of his long and distinguished career and the only thing which rescues a rather light-weight look at one of recent history's most important TV interviews. Langella simply shines. His acting is not only faultless, it actually makes you believe he is Nixon. I found myself feeling sympathy with a deeply flawed character, a man of little personal charm and yet someone with a deep vulnerability despite his greed and his arrogance.

To describe this film as a "boxing match" between Nixon and the lightweight and lazy Frost is to imbue Frost with far too much in the way of actual gravitas. Frost does not bring Nixon to his knees, Nixon simply gives in. An intellectual master of deception, tired, weary and with complex emotions and feelings on his betrayal of the American public weighing on him simply rolls over. Langella shows a man of different layers, a man at odds with his own conscience in many ways. A very human and almost sad character, one perfectly aware of his own limitations and faults and someone with few illusions about his own life.

Michael Sheen gives yet another irritating performance as "Tony Blair part 2" the smiling, shallow spin king, making David Frost even more unlikeable than he already is. I simply found his rendition as shallow as his character, hammy in the extreme and kept wondering when the real acting would begin. I felt a deep sense of utter contempt for Frost, a man so self centred and quite frankly feckless as to ignore the journalistic opportunity of a lifetime until his own money is at stake. I kept hoping that Frost and Birt would simply disappear off the screen, waiting for the return of Langella's astonishing Nixon. Frost and Birt were mere irritations rather than fully believable characters.

Kevin Bacon as Nixon's faithful ADC is also word perfect, a man of iron will and convictions, deeply loyal to his president, but his character is almost criminally under-developed as are those of the excellent researchers trying to bring Nixon to "justice".

In Frost/Nixon "Justice" is achieved not by some clever intellectual mind game played to perfection by a master mind of Journalism but by the surrendering of a tired old man with a nagging conscience and the un-escapable truth. This is not a masterful mental chess game by any stretch of the imagination. There is no tension.

Disappointing but then again maybe the truth often is. Perhaps Frost really was that complacent and only "saved" by other people's hard work, research and dedication to "trap" Nixon into a confession. To get credit on that basis seems almost obscene to me but some people just get lucky.

The movie falls flat in may ways, and ends up being a superficial and rather bland product. A disappointing film as deeply flawed as its protagonists, but Langella's performance alone makes the ticket price worthwhile. Acting of this caliber is extremely rare and I can only hope that Mr Langella will be rewarded for his exceptional talents.

Pamplemousse 4 Feb 2009

In August 1974 Richard Milhous Nixon became the first man ever to resign the American presidency. In April 1977 a staggering 45 million viewers tuned in to watch Nixon undergo “the trial he never had” at the hands of English television presenter and perceived political lightweight David Frost.

In a series of interviews addressing everything from Cambodia to the Watergate cover-up, smooth-talking sideburn-sporting Frost was attempting the apparently impossible: to lure the legendary ‘Tricky Dick’ into an apology and admission of guilt.

“…he had one big advantage over all of us: he understood television.” From its opening montage sequence it soon becomes evident that director Ron Howard’s reworking of this familiar tale is a parable for a media age. Authentic news footage and playback from the Watergate tapes is punctuated with grainy close-ups of microphones, loudspeakers and cameras. Tape-recorders and television screens shift in and out of focus as the film’s own camera deliberately frames each emotive shot – Nixon gazing fixedly up at the helicopter that will take him into political exile, Frost nervously fussing with his self-consciously natty blazer – daring the viewer to challenge or doubt its truths in all their unequivocal audiovisual conviction.

Frost/Nixon is a film about a television show that’s adapted from a play, and sets its action within the frame of a fictional documentary film. Confused? So is the film’s structure. While it retains few of the awkward hallmarks of a typical theatrical adaptation, the collective unwillingness of both the film’s director and its writer Peter Morgan (The Queen) to trust their audience results in an overload of exposition, as each point is hammered home with all the subtlety of a political manifesto. Parallels between the two ambitious and insecure men are a source of strong dialogue and narrative interest, but are distinctly over-egged, most notably in a scene of Morgan’s invention, a late-night phone call between Frost and a drunken Nixon.

Michael Sheen and Frank Langella – as Frost and Nixon respectively – reprise a partnership honed in the film’s original stage production. Sheen’s Frost is a miracle of opportunistic bonhomie and taut insecurity, a subtler and more developed take on his Tony Blair (The Queen), but the nature of the film’s interview structure draws the viewer back every time to Langella, in whose hands the controversial president emerges as a figure at once repugnant and acutely human. Among the excellent supporting cast mention should also be made of Kevin Bacon, who endows the criminally under-scripted character of Jack Brennan – Nixon’s devoted ex Chief of Staff – with disturbing complexity.

“…the reductive power of the close-up.” Ultimately the film makes a crucial point and then disregards it. For all the witty word-play and quick verbal interchanges, what matters – in both politics and film-making – is the silent close-up. Silence. Gaps. Just as music has been described as the space between the notes, so film is even more literally the space between the words. If either Howard or Morgan had showed a little more faith in their audience and allowed their cast’s performances to speak for themselves, a good film could so maddeningly easily have become great.

Frost/Nixon is a deeply flawed film, but – like the politican at its heart – its flaws may well be the most intelligent and challenging that you’ll see all year. As legacies go, it’s more apt than any number of state libraries.

Alexandra Coghlan 15 Jan 2009

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Frost/Nixon

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