Film Review – Frost/Nixon Director Ron Howard
Frank Langella and Michael Sheen in Thrilling Political Movie
Dec 23, 2008
Frost/Nixon is a pyschological action film rooted in a verbal wargame.The strength of this tense captivating drama is served by the gifted Peter Morgan who has adapted his hugely successful theatre play for the cinema.
Morgan has taken the culmination of the historical reality of the original interviews and with his own vision created the backdrop and explored the subtext of the relationship between the disgraced subversive ex U.S. president Richard Nixon post his resignation after the Watergate scandal and the opportunistic entrepreneurial talk show host David Frost.
Captivating Performances
Director Ron Howard's wisdom is to let the piece breath and thus he brings to the big screen a larger focus of the theatre play without tampering with its original quality. Actors Michael Sheen (Frost) and Frank Langella (Nixon) who also starred in the stage production give rich captivating performances that must have profited from the time they spent in the theatre developing their respective parts.
Morgan has always been adept at underscoring historical characters and events with his personal fictitious reality in what he calls ' the twilight between historical fact and fiction.'
The Queen and The last King of Scotland his other masterly screenplays are both imbued with his adept talent of filling in the spaces with his own imagination.
Tricky Dicky the cannily evasive political Machiavelli and Frost the soft interviewer seemedly were always a very unlikely pair. In this insightful film Langella's Nixon, dark and brooding and Sheens light, youthful,quizzical Frost brilliantly depict the disparity of their personalities as in real life.
Nixon and Frost Thirst for Fame and Fortune
What brings them together three years after the president's resignation in 1974 is a common thirst for money and fame. Frost sees the potential interviews with the ex President as the tv scoop he needs to conquer America and which would reward him with a further enhancement of his glittering lifestyle, to say nothing of his pulling power for women.
Frost's recruits were John Birt ( Matthew Macfadyen) his imperious b.b.c. producer, the distinguished journalist Bob Zelnick (Oliver Platt) and the fanatical James Reston Jr (Sam Rockwell) who saw the tv show as a perfect realisation of his raison d'etre 'to give Nixon the trial he never had.'
Frost Loves Women
There is a lovely scene which demonstrates Frost 's penchant for beautiful girls and his ability to mix business with pleasure. On a plane to California with Birt to meet Nixon for the first time, Frost, using his seasoned patter and boyish charm scores the quintessentially British Caroline Cushing , endearingly played by Rebecca Hall.
Nixon is offered huge amounts of money via his agent Swifty Lazar (Toby Jones) which coaxes him out of retirement. His corner is led by the ex marine Col. Jack Brennan (Kevin Bacon) who perceives Frost's soft interview technique as a way of relaunching Nixon back into the public arena.
Financial backing finally in place the political game takes shape and the focus of the film emerges through Frost's rights of passage from benign celebrity showman to incisive inquisitor. It is precisely the initial ineptness of Frost's ability to cope in the jousting arena of a deadly serious political debate that creates the suspense.
In the first interviews Nixon has his thumb on his opponents solar plexus pinning him to the ground with his rambling rhetoric. He never allows the increasingly frustrated Frost any response to his questions, like an email that keeps bouncing back.
Morgan uses artistic license to fill in the spaces between the on screen interviews. Nixon and Frost's sexual banter culminates in a midnight phone call from the drunk ex president on the eve of the final interview in which he talks of their similarities as both men from modest backgrounds who 'the snobs' deride.
The culmination of the fourth interview as defined in history, shows the hitherto lame Frost breaking out of his languid stupour. Inuring himself against Nixon's easy familiarity he finally rises to the challenge of his able adversary and in a desperate bid, powers out unscripted punches that finally break the tragic figure.
This exceptional film exemplifies the perfect chemistry of a fabulous screenplay, skilled direction and brilliant acting. Not to be missed.
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