Richard Nixon is one of those rare Presidents, not unlike Lincoln, Washington, and Roosevelt, that has transcended the Presidency to become a mythic figure in our culture. But unlike those others, he has attained that position through his wrong doings, not through his greatest achievements. I only have one memory of the man: his death. I was too young to be aware of him before then, and I was simply not around when he was President. Interestingly enough, much of what I've gleaned from cinema about him is that he was a tragic man who almost deserves our sympathies. Such was the case with Oliver Stone's Nixon, and such is the case here with Frost/Nixon. Here is a portrait of a man that is seen as both cunning, sly, and cruel, yet at the same time tragically lost and lonely. How many other Presidents get such a multifaceted examination so consistently in films?Based on the stage play of the same name, and staring the same stars, Frost/Nixon centers around the four day interviews between British talk show host David Frost (Michael Sheen) and former President Nixon (Frank Langella). In an interesting take on the two men, both see this as an opportunity to reclaim some of their past glories. Nixon wants to use it as a way to show the public he's a misunderstood good guy after all, while Frost longs for the chance to be relevant again after a slew of failed TV shows. Clearly both men won't get what they want.
This is a prefect example of how if you have a great screenplay and terrific performances across the board, you've almost certainly got yourself a good movie. I've long been a naysayer of Ron Howard, and here he does nothing to change that. He lacks any sort of real style, and he does everything as safely as possible. That worked wonderfully for him once before, with Apollo 13, and now it works again for him here. Because he has such a simple approach to the material, he allows the stronger aspects of writing and acting to shine through unobstructed. And boy do they.
The two central performances of Sheen and Langella are uniformly excellent, among the year's best. They've had a great deal of time to perfect these roles on the stage, and it really shows. Langella is clearly the showier role, yet he doesn't allow it to become a caricature. Often times he is simply delivering long monologue answers to questions, yet he does it with such wit, charm, and charisma that you can understand why one character says he wished he'd voted for Nixon when he had the chance. I don't think this is ever meant to be a damning portrayal, simply a tragic one. Nixon often comes across as a man in need of an audience, yet never knowing what to do with that audience. Take his impromptu piano performance for friends and family, or his rambling stories with no point. He loves attention but is at a loss as to how to keep that audience happy. He even muses at one point that perhaps that very quality was what made him ill prepared to be President.
Sheen has the tougher job of the two. He has to play Frost as a guy way out of his league, yet make him alternatively charming, cocky, frightened, and authoritative. His is the real character arc of the film. Frost constantly has a look on his face that indicates he is grasping to his calm demeanor with only the most tenuous of strings. He knows he is in over his head, but he refuses to let anyone else know. The other actors all do great stuff. Sam Rockwell and Oliver Platt as Frost's two investigators bring a great air of levity, while at the same time grounding it all in reality by reminding us that there's more at stake here than just one man's reputation. And Toby Jones is quickly becoming one of the most entertaining character actors working today. His Swifty Lazar is only in a few brief scenes, but you can't take your eyes off of him.
The real star, however, is the screenplay. The writing is so assured that it allows two people to just talk back and forth with the knowledge that it this is in fact riveting. The interviews between these two men are the most gripping scenes in the movie. Much of it is lifted from actual transcripts, but it's all pieced together in such a way that it allows us to see inside these two men, really understand what it is that makes them tick. Fascinating stuff. What's also very surprising about the writing is how funny it is. There are some truly great laugh out loud moments I simply wasn't expecting. I know the idea of a movie about two people conducting an interview sounds like it has the potential to be boring, but the writing never allows that to be the case.
I think the unsung hero of this film - and many great films of this nature - is the editing. If the editing wasn't just right, it's entirely possible that the screenplay would have lost some of its edge. Editing is something you don't get with a stage play, and I think it is used here in such a way that this feels like more than a play. Howard picks exactly the right moments to cut to a close up of an actor, inviting us inside each man's head at crucial moments in the interviews. There is also a use of talking heads shots where people in the film comment on the events that transpired, allowing the film to have a sort of analytic feel to it while also feeling so personal. The tension constantly builds, even if we know deep down that this wasn't a major moment in history.
This is much more an Oscar contender than I ever would have given it credit for. Langella is a strong candidate for the win, and in a fair world Sheen would be in the running for a lead actor nomination as well. And perhaps most important of all, this is just a really fun movie. Not something I would have expected to say before I saw it, but I could easily sit through this one again and just enjoy it. There's a lot to be said about movies that can inform, examine, and entertain, all at once.
