At the Movies: Frost/Nixon
You’re checking the Village Theatre timetable and the uninspiringly titled Frost/Nixon is screening on a dull evening with vacuous telly.
You ask: How interesting can a movie about an interview actually be? Do I need…
· A consuming interest in American (or any) politics?
· An encyclopaedic knowledge of the relevant events?
· A zealous conviction that the docudrama genre is intellectually and cinematically superior to fantasy?
· To stay home and be bored in case it’s rubbish?
Heck no. Frost/Nixon is psychologically fascinating, as absorbing as any thriller, and a superb experience for anyone about 16 or over with half a brain. Chess and sports players will thrill over its extraordinary cat-and-mouse strategy, film buffs will love its acting and craftsmanship, and historians will appraise and appreciate its representation of events.
In 1977, lightweight British “entertainer” David Frost, looking for a career coup, considered President Richard Nixon’s Watergate fall from grace and decided that ratings and credibility were waiting for any man who could pin Nixon to the metaphorical ropes and secure his admission of guilt. Perhaps an apology as well.
Media heavyweight Nixon, looking to win back public respect, fully expected to control the engagement and floor Frost in an easy knockout. He agreed to four separate rounds of strictly managed recording, and the match began. The results became the most viewed political interviews in history, and a landmark in Frost’s career.
Who really wins? You decide. It’s brilliant.
You don’t have to like politics, and you don’t need to know much about Watergate. The essentials are covered in the film’s first five minutes while the credits run. Being a girly swot, I read up on Watergate for the review (come on, I was 14 when it happened), but I’d have better spent the evening washing the dog. It wasn’t necessary.
Peter Morgan adapted his award-winning play for the screen, and the lead players, who had both played the roles onstage, are tremendous. Michael Sheen (Tony Blair in The Queen), a good actor but a better impersonator, has Frost nailed. Close your eyes and listen – it’s uncanny. Frank Langella, a solid performer for decades and a dab hand at villains, is formidable.
Director/producer Ron Howard opts for plenty of juicy close-ups to capture all the detail in their fine work. This is one of the finest projects in his own long career. Howard’s fact-based works outshine his fictional productions.
There are two exceptional, hair-on-the-back-of-the-neck sequences in Frost/Nixon, before and during the last interview, but despite the film’s 10 Oscar and Globe nominations, the wins have gone elsewhere. The judging panel may have wanted more international appeal (Slumdog Millionaire), novelty (Benjamin Button) and social commentary (Milk).
We last reviewed the expansive, epic Australia, in which Baz Luhrman goes for breadth. Frost/Nixon may be the cinematic opposite. Its extremely specific scope may have cost it wider accolades, but that tight focus allows the luxury of great depth, and in my view, it’s bliss. It’s like caviar and truffles; less really is so much more.
Maria Polglase
FROST/NIXON (M) Next screening at the Village Theatre, Sunday 15 March at 5.00pm.
