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BLOW
Frank Langella and
Michael Sheen in
Frost/Nixon
In French with English subtitles.
7:25 Nightly Sun Mat: 1:50
Trust/Issues
PG-13
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FREE SUPER BOWL PARTY
Superbly acted, but how faithful?
FROST/NIXON: Directed by Ron Howard.
Written by Peter Morgan. Cinematography, Salvadore
Totino. Music, Hans Zimmer. Starring Frank Langella,
Michael Sheen, Sam Rockwell, Kevin Bacon, Rebecca
Hall and Oliver Platt. Universal Pictures, 2008. R.
122 minutes . 44421
F
rom the inspired fantasy of Cocoon
to the history-inspired A Beautiful
Mind, you can’t accuse director
Ron Howard of staying put when it comes
to genre. But you can say there is a Ron
Howard pattern. And that pattern simply is
this: When the times get tough, the tough
start crying. I’ll never forget feeling the
narrative power of Apollo 13 — arguably
his best fi lm, although A Beautiful Mind
earned him an Oscar — piddle away after
the umpteenth u-turn back into the den of
the astronaut’s spouses. Opie, Richie, Mr
Howard: Stop polishing my tear ducts.
While Howard manages to create precise,
even sumptuous fi lms, they tend to be
as shallow as a kiddie pool and about as
intellectually stimulating. It’s as if deeper
waters are more than he can bear.
All of this is why the prospect of Howard
at the helm of Frost/Nixon is both exciting
and worrisome. The stage play, written
by Peter Morgan (The Queen), was tense
and combative; it was a partly speculative
telling of the interviews President Nixon
granted to David Frost, a minor British
TV personality, three years after Nixon
resigned. The material had the potential to
relieve Howard of his maudlin sensibilities,
his tendency to emotionally manipulate
viewers just as things get dark and dirty.
And on the strength of several sensational
performances, this is mostly the case with
Frost/Nixon the fi lm. (The performances
are so good that as journalist James Reston,
actor Sam Rockwell — the third option in
this top-heavy lineup — steals every scene
he’s in.) Using actual news footage, searing
close-ups and gentle focusing techniques,
Howard pumps Frost/Nixon for maximum
drama. The question is whether in pumping
too hard, he’s overinfl ated the importance
of actual events.
On the surface, Frost/Nixon is a classic
David and Goliath story. In 1977, Frost
(played by Michael Sheen) was a callow,
weak-kneed playboy, a sort of Robin Leach
for the disco set. He was occasionally
clever but easily distracted. Watching
Nixon (played by Frank Langella) resign
via television, he hatched the idea to
interview Nixon as means of advancing
his career. Nixon, for his part, saw Frost
as easy prey. A formidable and menacing
but disgraced ex-president, Nixon coaxed
$600,000 from Frost, a then-record for a
TV interview and proof enough, when it
became public, that Frost was a lamb to
Nixon’s lion. All of this Frost/Nixon covers
effectively, not to mention entertainingly.
But the fi lm, like the stage play, is all about
the interviews, the great match — recorded
in four sessions — during which Nixon
bests Frost again and again.
In the fi lm, Nixon is a cutthroat
competitor, but he’s also funny, stubborn
and keenly observant. Crucially, Langella
doesn’t attempt an impersonation; he goes
within, with a great sense of mystery and
purpose, to reveal a man more credible
than any look-alike. But the pathos here is
Howard’s; Nixon, in the fi lm, is too gentle
and sympathetic. (Sheen, for his part, has
been used more effectively; he’s smirky and
cagey here.) Nor is Nixon’s participation
fully disclosed: Nixon was to receive 20
percent of the interview’s profi ts, meaning
that — and there’s no two ways about this
— Nixon and Frost were business partners.
But even if you’re willing to overlook this
historical infi delity, deliberate revision of
the actual interview transcripts is harder to
accept. Editing the arrangement of Nixon’s
statements is one thing; inventing what
Nixon said is another.
Even at the level of pure entertainment,
Frost/Nixon, while often fun, can feel
pushy, like it’s trying to build mountains
out of sand. At one point during a break
from the interviews, someone yells
at Frost, “You’re making him look
presidential!” I had the same reaction —
without the disappointment. With so little
actually at stake, it was hard to share their
passion.
ew
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