Posts Tagged ‘david frost’

A British TV journalist no one’s ever heard of interviewing Richard Nixon about Watergate. Boring, right?

Definitely not. Ron Howard’s film adaptation of the stage play “Frost/Nixon” is anything but. He takes the potentially boring subject matter of the post-Watergate interviews that’s arguably a generation too late and instead turns it into a taut thriller with compelling performances by its stars Michael Sheen and Frank Langella, who reprise their stage roles as Frost and Nixon, respectively.

The film initially starts with some old black and white video recapping the infamous Watergate scandal we’ve all come to know, but then we’re thrown into the colorful gaudy world of the 1970s where we first meet David Frost hosting a silly variety television show. He runs out on the stage to a roar of applause like a present day game show contestant and cracks corny jokes about sausage. Is this the man who could go one-on-one with Richard Nixon? 

No one thought so including Nixon himself, which is why he agreed to the interview. Any other “serious” journalist on CBS News or any other news network for that matter would be too much of a match for Nixon who just wanted a pushover who he could throw aside so he could spin his story and redeem himself to the American people.

He thought he found that pushover in Frost. (Plus, it didn’t hurt Frost paid him $600,000 nearly all out of his own pocket either.) We are inclined to think Frost is a pushover too. After all he picks up girls on airplanes, signs autographs like he’s Tom Cruise, and attends glitzy movie premieres and parties. But Sheen brings a determinative, appealing spark to Frost that makes us not willing to give up on him yet.

That and the story’s told through his point of view. Even as Frost leaves the heavy burden of research to his team, we see that Nixon isn’t the only one with his career at stake. Frost’s career was exiled to Australia along with his respectable reputation, and he’s relying on this interview to resurrect himself as well. So we’re not willing to give up that maybe just maybe Frost will beat Nixon. After all this is a game, a competition. Only one can win as Frost later tells Nixon.

This is where the tension comes in. There’s a series of four interviews Nixon is granting with the fourth one being the most important as it is devoted to Watergate. Each of the first three interviews are like individual boxing matches leading up until the very last big fight. At first, Frost get pummeled and thrown aside by Nixon who’s like a heavyweight champion. Although he’s far from it.

Langella makes Nixon an oddly sympathetic character. Yes, we all know he’s guilty; but, Langella excels in coloring Nixon as a haunted, lonely, self-loathing man. While he throws demeaning and patronizing slurs at Frost, it’s not quite evident he actually knows what he’s saying. He’s too aloof and isolated from anyone to know how to properly interact. Thus, Langella brings us a character that, while we’re not rooting for him, we still feel for him.

For that reason alone Langella is completely deserving of his Best Actor Oscar nomination, but don’t forget about Sheen. Like Frost, he holds his own against Langella and gives a great performance as a celebrity underdog with a lot of ambition.

In fact, both Frost and Nixon are underdogs and each holds virtues the other is so desperately lacking. So this battle of determination and ability is what propels this film far above just a boring history lesson. That’s what’s great about “Frost/Nixon:” its actors breathe real, complicated emotions into a riveting, true story. 

I only wish it concluded with telling a little more of what happened to the characters. Did Frost marry that girl he picked up on the airplane who turned into a fixture on the interview sets? Were Frost and Nixon really that amicable with each other at the end? If that pivotal, crucial scene that took place the night before the final interview was fictional, what really motivated Frost to suddenly give it his all?

The film isn’t a documentary, so it doesn’t have to answer these questions; but, kudos to a film for making me want to go crack open a history book to learn more.