Richard Nixon was the president of my youth. Although I was very young when he was elected, and barely sentient when he left office ignominiously several years later, I still have this view of him as a larger-than-life figure even beyond what is normally ascribed to holders of that office. His actions, and subsequent villification, may have been factors in my early decision to be a journalist.
As a public servant for many years since leaving the fourth estate, and both a student and a teacher of public policy, I approached a viewing of
Frost vs. Nixon with a mixture of curiosity, intrigue and not a little salacious interest in reliving the details. As an aside, it was also a reminder that I'm getting older - movies are now being made about real events that have taken place in my lifetime.
For the record, my view of Nixon was that he was a man whose real accomplishments - and there were many - will forever be oveshadowed by his vicious temper, borderline sociopathic personality and unbridled paranoia. The Watergate break-in and subsequent coverup were the manifestation of his self-destructive tendency, not its cause.
The movie does an admirable job of portraying Nixon as a flawed human, but a human nonetheless. In some ways, it is reminiscent of
Oliver Stone's portrayal of George W. Bush. That film uses actual, documented events to tell a story that is so farfetched and beyond credibility that it could only be true. Neither Stone nor
Ron Howard, who helmed Frost vs. Nixon, has ever been known as an apologist for the right. And yet their takes on their respective subjects were, if not sympathetic, then at least somewhat balanced.
Where the movie falls down, though, is in its trotting out of the old saw that politicians and journalists share many of the same flaws - vanity and insecurity not least among them. Other movies have made the same point, and
often done so more convincingly. I get that they need one another, and endure something approaching a sibling love-hate relationship.
This is simply too facile an interpretation of one of the most complex stories in American politics in the last 40 years. It calls out for a more probing, thoughtful analysis - one that goes beyond what's known and probes the more difficult questions. For example, why did it take a lightweight British talk-show host to do what the American networks steadfastly refused to do, namely, to tackle the Nixon legacy? If the mainstream press truly found its feet in the post-Watergate era, why then did it take them so long to start challenging Ronald Reagan when he took office less than a decade later? And we won't even go to the hagiography of the
Fox Newses of the world while George W. Bush was president.
Frank Langella does a stellar job with Nixon's ambling gait, mumbling delivery and mercurial personality. The way he embodies one of the best-known personalities of the past half-century, without lapsing into parody, is both admirable and quite possibly Oscar-worthy. As David Frost,
Michael Sheen brings to the role an air of pomposity and uncertainty that speaks to both the medium's self-image and its power. He is at once uncomfortable in his role as Nixon's inquistor, and aware that it just might cement his career.
There is a pivotal scene in the movie's final third in which Nixon drunk-dials Frost late at night. The rambling, disjointed and frequently terrifying conversation that ensues marks the beginning of the film's end - both literally and figuratively. From there it devolves into protracted exposition and more words per minute that even David Mamet could muster on his best day. After the final of the four interviews, Langella's Nixon emerges into the bright sunshine and has trouble focusing his eyesight. He looks like he might stroke out. Shortly afterwards, he enters a scene at his palatial San Clemente estate hobbling on what appears to be a cane, but turns out to be a golf club. Although it was a stroke that evenutally felled Nixon - many years later - this felt like a missed opportunity to foreshadow the outcome.
In the end, the movie breaks no new ground. It does not tell us anything we didn't know before about either man, their relationship or the seismic importance of these interviews in the canon of western journalism. It is alernately entertaining and unnerving, but focuses on neither enough to make a success of it.
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