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Frost/Nixon Is a Revelation
Ron Howard's film is a compelling character study of the 37th president.
All of the hullabaloo Howard and Morgan construct around the interviews boils down to two sound bites: Nixon saying, “When the president does it, that means it’s not illegal,” and Nixon issuing the mildest imaginable sort of semi-apology when he owns up to having let down the American people. That this is a pretty meager harvest from 29 hours of talks over 12 days is overlooked in the film (”He went no further than he did in his resignation speech two and a half years ago,” the Washington Post ruled at the time). Instead, we are told that the look on Nixon’s face when he gave the so-called apology made for great television and a cathartic moment. Frost is presented as having knocked out the champ.
Actually, though, many of the most interesting things Nixon said came when the cameras weren’t rolling — when Frost wasn’t deploying the alleged brilliance of his supposedly heroic team of investigators (played by Oliver Platt and Sam Rockwell) but simply listening. In the film’s pivotal scene, a drunken Nixon calls Frost in his hotel room and makes the case that the two of them are kindred spirits who have always been counted out by the snobby elites. Later in the film, Nixon will swear he has no memory of the conversation, suggesting it was indeed a moment when he let the mask slip. The scene is plausible, but unfortunately for Morgan, and even more for us, it is fabricated. Morgan has justified the scene by likening it to similar moments in Nixon’s life, but in a supposedly fact-based film, that isn’t good enough. At another point, just as cameras are about to roll, Nixon asks his interlocutor, “Did you do any fornicating last night?” It’s a hilarious, quintessential moment.
Richard Nixon — a man who signed notes to his wife “RN” and was photographed walking the California beach in dress shoes — was a deeply strange personality whose disgust for his perceived enemies and perpetual aggrievement did have much to do with the many abuses of power we call Watergate. No movie before this one (certainly not Oliver Stone’s often cartoonish Nixon, which features one of Anthony Hopkins’ most mannered and least convincing performances) has come so close to getting him right. Langella’s performance has a whiff of the nightclub impersonator about it but it’s a much more balanced effort than the jerky, awkward Nixon that Hopkins delivered. Langella’s work occasionally even makes a bow to charm and charisma, traits not normally conceded a man who did, after all, carry 49 states in 1972. When the film puts aside the ultimately unimportant Frost and the even less interesting media circus around him to train its gaze on Nixon, it’s a compelling, even incisive character study.
Frost/Nixon
Directed by Ron Howard
Starring: Frank Langella, Michael Sheen, Oliver Platt, Sam Rockwell
3 stars/ 4
122 minutes/Rated R
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Kyle Smith is a film critic for the the New York Post. His website is at www.kylesmithonline.com.
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25 Comments
1. syn:I’m looking forward to the charater study of 39th president Jimmy Carter, especially his character when creating hyper-inflationary economics and began the war of America’s lifetime specifically those 100 days in which he totally fell apart and submitted to evil.
It’s freezing outside America, just put on another sweater.
Unfortunately Hollywood would ever do it because the useful idiots love and admire dicators, kleptocrats and plutocrats; as long as free people continue showing up to suck down the crap, Hollywood will continue their production of it.
Dec 5, 2008 - 3:13 am 2. Yorba Linda:Jimmy Carter would make a lousy on-screen character because audiences despise weakness. They would reject him outright, refuse to even experience a movie from his point of view. Filmmakers – and film audiences – are drawn to bold characters who make bold moves and engage in conflict. Even when such characters screw up and make mistakes, they make big, interesting mistakes.
In short, the very existence of Stone’s NIXON and Howard’s FROST/NIXON is a tribute to the boldness of Nixon.
Dec 5, 2008 - 3:42 am 3. Hucbald:I laughed out loud when I heard Opie was making this film, and then laughed even harder when I saw Langella’s utterly ridiculous portrayal of Nixon in the trailer. I was a freshman in college when the original interviews aired, and they probably constituted many of the top most boring hours of television in all of television history, the rest being covered by the Watergate Hearings, which I was forced to watch in American History class as a high school student. All that “drama” and “intrigue” because Nixon botched a coverup of a simple covert spying op on the Democrat party that went awry. It’s as if a majority of Americans went insane and actually believed that sort of thing doesn’t happen all the time on both sides, but with better results (IOW, we just never hear about it because nobody gets caught).
Like intelligent people have been saying for decades now, Nixon’s mistake was that he got caught.
I was less bored watching the old Indian test pattern waiting for Saturday morning cartoons to start when I was a kid than I was watching those Nixon-Frost interviews. It’s hard to believe anyone would be so stupid as to think a movie about them would make for any kind of entertainment. Barring, of course, a treatment in which Nixon pulls out a light saber and lops Frost’s head off. That I’d watch.
Dec 5, 2008 - 4:12 am 4. Trudy Schuett:I don’t get how anyone is supposed to buy in to a Nixon with a British accent. Whose idea was that?
Dec 5, 2008 - 4:25 am 5. SiouxLady:What I remember of the Frost/Nixon interview is that it introduced me to a WeedEater. I was angry at what the MSM had done to Nixon and that they had intimidated major advertisers from sponsoring the interview. When the MSM sneered that the only sponsor Frost could find was some nothing company called WeedEater, I went right out and bought one. I’ve had one ever since. Hee hee.
Dec 5, 2008 - 4:51 am 6. Craig:“…after all, carry 49 states in 1972.” Which makes it all the more ridiculous why a breakin plan at the Watergate was even hatched.
McGovern was a loon and everyone in America knew it.
Dec 5, 2008 - 5:12 am 7. JohnnyL:“McGovern was a loon and everyone in America knew it.”
It’s funny how those positions in 1972 earned you a “loon” status and in 2008 would win the election. McGovern’s problem in 1972 was that he was so obviously a captive of his party’s far left and that frightened us, especially with the war going on and whatever else was happening with Russia, etc.
Dec 5, 2008 - 6:09 am 8. Bugs:Obama managed to disguise that from most of 2008’s voters. It also says a lot about how the republicans so tarnished their brand that the voters would rather elect a loon than McCain.
Hucbald has it about right. Whether they believed Nixon was a uniquely corrupt politician or merely a typical politician who got caught, by 1977 I think people were kind of enjoying NOT hearing about him and Watergate 24/7. I also think it was too soon to interview Nixon. The scandal was still too fresh in his mind and he had nothing new to say about it. As for Frost – I seem to remember him as a pop interviewer with pretensions of seriousness. Kind of a British Dick Cavett. I don’t think anyone would expect him to explore Nixon’s mind to any great depth.
Dec 5, 2008 - 8:08 am 9. Tex Taylor:JohnnyL,
It’s funny how those positions in 1972 earned you a “loon” status and in 2008 would win the election. McGovern’s problem in 1972 was that he was so obviously a captive of his party’s far left and that frightened us, especially with the war going on and whatever else was happening with Russia, etc.
Great point. Of course, for all the ugliness of the 70s, most of us still felt that the adults were running the show on account of the USSR making us all feel vulnerable. Then Jimmy Carter made it apparent we really were vulnerable. But now, only 46% of voting Americans realize it’s now a more dangerous world.
For all of George Bush and the Republican party’s foibles, Bush and his cabinet, in conjunction with the best military in the world, have successfully restored a real sense of personal security for domestic citizens after 9/11. Maybe Bush & Co. have done it a little too well.
It’s allowed the loons on the left, who now feel warm and safe, to return to their typical bad mouthing of America is evil, government is the only way, Republicans are devils, the world hates us, Abu Ghraib Death March, GITMO is torture, Christians are hatemongers, Oprah Oprah Oprah, Obamessiah, {ad nauseum}…
If God forbid something like 9/11 happens again, or worse, especially if it’s in one of these big, blue urban settings, you watch these weasels on the left start quivering about “we’re all purple!” and the John McCain mold to become the yearned for figure.
I doubt our new president-elect and his rag-tag crew of Clinton lackeys are going to inspire the same degree of confidence if the pressure is really on.
Dec 5, 2008 - 8:10 am 10. Brian Richard Allen:The Lunatic Left-Wing Fringe’s number one hero hypocrite, Bill Moyers, ran a more overtly corrupt, meaner and tougher once white house plumbers’ shop than Mr Nixon’s guys even dreamed of.
But “Democrat’s” are above the law. And are not tipped on by corrupt DNC-activist feral gummint dole recipients. Like the execrable Mark Felt, for whom the much vaunted and otherwise boringly pedestrian Messrs Bernstein and Woodward acted for a time as clerk typists.
Brian Richard Allen
Dec 5, 2008 - 9:17 am 11. Scott:Los Angeles – CalifUBAMAcated 90028
Yes,Syn…you remember in 1976 when Carter came up with the “Misery Index”(Inflation rate + Unemployment rate)?In 1980,it had doubled!Nixon was a larger than life figure…the only thing larger than life about Carter was his lips
Dec 5, 2008 - 9:37 am 12. Valerie:Surely the subject matter interests very few cinema-goers. And the actors aren’t going to pull in tons of fans. When I saw the ad for it on TV, I thought it was a made-for-TV movie.
Dec 5, 2008 - 9:40 am 13. Tom:I bet “Wallace/Clinton” would make a much more interesting movie, Chris had a lot of guts taking on Bubba. But if Opie makes a sequel it will probably be “Couric/Palin”, and at any rate I won’t waste my $10 on it, especially now that Opie has really gone far-left.
Dec 5, 2008 - 12:49 pm 14. Войска ПВО:JohnnyL writes:
“It’s funny how those positions in 1972 earned you a “loon” status and in 2008 would win the election. McGovern’s problem in 1972 was that he was so obviously a captive of his party’s far left..”
Sort of ironic, in a tangenial way, that McGovern has been featured in those anti-”Employee Free Choice Act” commercials.
Maybe another omen as to how far left things have swung?
Dec 5, 2008 - 3:06 pm 15. RKV:“perpetual aggrievement”??? The guy had the presidency stolen from him in 1960 by the ballot stuffing Daley machine in Chicago. Ya think you’d be pissed off after that? I’ve got my own set of problems with RMN, particularly after his unconstitutional (if legislatively enacted) wage and price controls. There is no place in the US Constitution that allows the President or the Congress or any two of the above to set wages and prices, the commerce clause is no where near that. Not even close. And yes, there was a double standard applied because he was a Republican. As others have noted above, the Kennedy administration had huge problems – can you picture a national press article about JFK f___ing an East German spy (among MANY other women, who didn’t happen to named Jackie)? Fact, not fiction, and her name was Ellen Rometsch, she was born, and had relatives in what became East Germany, and was very likely working for the Stasi. Bobby had her deported.
Dec 5, 2008 - 4:26 pm 16. cedarford:Richard Nixon — a man who signed notes to his wife “RN” and was photographed walking the California beach in dress shoes — was a deeply strange personality whose disgust for his perceived enemies and perpetual aggrievement did have much to do with the many abuses of power we call Watergate.
Nixon had legendary quirks, but the same could be said of a range of distinguished men gifted with a high IQ (Nixon was believed to be in a range of 148-153). In everything he did, from school to post-Presidency, he remained a person of significant, consequential accomplishment.
He didn’t have “perceived” enemies, he had actual enemies – who gunned for him for going after mostly Jewish communists that Nixon and history had proven guilty beyond doubt..while giving Harvard elite Bobby Kennedy a complete pass and Jewish elite Roy Cohn a near-pass…further embittering him. Nixon was Target #1 of a then-mostly Jewish owned TV and newsprint media (as well as the Jewish intelligensia and Gentile East Coast Establishment) for his “McCarthyite” attacks on their Jewish friends, prep school classmates. Relentlessly from the 50s through Watergate.
His aggrievement started with not getting East Coast lawfirm offers despite the Harvard Scholarship he was too poor to take even with tuition paid, and finishing 3rd at Duke Law – because his “breeding” was so pedestrian and “country bumpkin”. It went on…
Historians, particularly in Europe and Asia, are consistently elevating Nixon higher as a great, but flawed American ( a la DeGaulle, CHurchill) as years go by. Also benefiting are Eisenhower, Bush II…while JFK and Reagan (after the failure of Reaganomics) are headed lower as men of consequence.
Dec 5, 2008 - 10:14 pm 17. whiskey:Nixon’s enemies were not Jews but WASPs who hated him. Nixon was the Californian outsider, the Westerner, who has been hated (Jackson, Lincoln, Reagan) by the East Coast elites, and vice versa, for very good reasons.
Power flows either to the West, where the demand for cheap land and expensive labor and lots of opportunities are the rule, or the East where it is the converse. It’s Reagan or JFK.
Nixon’s enemies were all the “proper” folks from the Ivy League, but that’s normal for America. Nixon himself was a domestic disaster, wage-price controls, and a fool who could not take Yes for an answer.
Oddly enough, the guy who most reminds me of Nixon, being uncomfortable in his own skin, deviously stupid, “Charismatic” in that awkward, totalitarian way “Nixon’s the One” … is the One. Obama.
Dec 5, 2008 - 11:33 pm 18. Maggie:Bravo #1 syn’s comment. I’m sick of liberal propaganda movies.
Dec 6, 2008 - 6:50 am 19. Harry:As for “political” films, one might revisit Oliver Stone’s “JFK” which opens with Eisenhower’s parting footage warning us of the “Military/industrial,
Dec 6, 2008 - 12:57 pm 20. NahnCee:[congressional] complex”, which which rings true to in Haliburton/Cheney war mongering reality . . . . how right was that?
Question: how does Opie know what went on behind the scenes when the camera’s weren’t on? How does Mr. Howard — with an admittedly liberal bent determined to show that all Republicans including George Bush are evil — know that Frost’s intent was to make Nixon look bad?
Frost is still alive — is that what *he* says? WAs someone filming him while all this was going on so that there are transcripts?
I’m remembering that it was a fairly big deal at the time, partially because of the spin that it took a Yurpizoid to get the real facts because American journalists were too stupid and/or lazy. But I also seem to have a dim recollection that part of that spin was that only someone from across the pond would be able to stand back emotionally and ask the questions that a pissed-off American journalist wouldn’t think to ask.
Am I misremembering or is the “Frost was out to ambush Nixon” meme a typical HOllywood misinterpretation of history?
Dec 7, 2008 - 10:58 am 21. mike:I watched the original Nixon/Frost interviews and David Frost’s comments in getting the interview. He was not out to make Nixon “look bad”. What he wanted was for Nixon to admit the obvious, that he had broken the law. He wanted an historical moment and a psychological drama. There’s nothing wrong with either. And the interviews themselves were interesting to watch.
Dec 8, 2008 - 4:53 am 22. Mike G:“I don’t get how anyone is supposed to buy in to a Nixon with a British accent. Whose idea was that?”
Langella’s from New Jersey, although i’ll grant you he has a sort of indeterminate theatrical manner of speaking by now.
Dec 9, 2008 - 9:03 am 23. Paul:#9, Tex Taylor:
“I doubt our new president-elect and his rag-tag crew of Clinton lackeys are going to inspire the same degree of confidence if the pressure is really on.”
Sometimes awesome responsibility builds character. Lets hope so!
Dec 9, 2008 - 2:32 pm 24. arthur:Nixon was a terrible president, a crook, a real criminal who thought he was above the Constitution, and why anyone would want to praise him or alternatively watch this is beyond me.
Dec 10, 2008 - 11:46 am 25. remy:Frost comes off as a lightweight straight ponce, his cronies are screaming fit-throwing children, and Nixon appears as a good sport.
I think it shows how the media was starting to become one-sided.
Dec 10, 2008 - 2:14 pm