Revisiting Frost/Nixon
David Frost’s death Saturday night at 74 inspired me to revisit my review of “Frost/Nixon,” Ron Howard’s riveting account of the British broadcaster’s interviews with Richard Nixon after the former president resigned in disgrace. The 2008 film was nominated for five Academy Awards including best picture and best actor for Frank Langella’s intense and disturbing turn as Nixon (but, oddly, no nomination for Michael Sheen as Frost). Still, the film remains Howard’s best. Here’s a look back.
Universal Pictures
Rated R for some language.
Running time: 122 minutes.
Four stars out of four.
“No holds barred,” Richard Nixon urges to David Frost as the two prepare to sit down for a series of interviews in 1977.
As “Frost/Nixon” powerfully reveals, that statement contains equal parts promise and threat from both the disgraced figure on screen and the actor playing him.
Frank Langella is positively formidable as the former president, a skilled manipulator under optimal circumstances whose desperate desire for rehabilitation makes him extra dangerous.
Langella isn’t doing a dead-on impression, which is preferable; Nixon’s quirks have been imitated so frequently and poorly, such an approach risks lapsing into caricature. Rather, he has internalized a volatile combination of inferiority, awkwardness, quick wit and a hunger for power. He loses himself in the role with rumbles and growls, with a hunched carriage and the slightest lift of the eyebrows.
Langella and Michael Sheen, also excellent as the breezy British TV personality Frost, reprise the parts they originated in Peter Morgan’s Tony Award-winning stage production. But you never feel like you’re watching a play on film: The way Morgan has opened up the proceedings in his screenplay feels organic under the direction of Ron Howard, who’s crafted his finest film yet, and one of the year’s best.
“Frost/Nixon” is talky and weighty as it digs into the details of Vietnam and Watergate, but it moves along with a fluidity that keeps it constantly engaging. Morgan’s script also contains a healthy amount of dark humor, mostly the result of something crass or inappropriate Nixon has said. Good thing, too, because the tension starts percolating early and only grows.
Upon seeing the image of Nixon smiling eerily as he boards a helicopter after resigning the presidency, Frost stands in front of a television transfixed. Hoping to lose the perception that he’s a lightweight and gain some credibility _ or rather, achieve fame in America _ he approaches Nixon for an interview and promises money he doesn’t have.
Sheen is doing something so subtle here, and as in his insightful work as Tony Blair in Morgan’s “The Queen,” he’s likely to get upstaged, unfortunately. All his Frost wants is to be liked, but he strives for that with the slightest obsequiousness. Critics may mistake his playboy demeanor for arrogance, but it truly seems to spring from longing.
The former president, meanwhile, hopes to use the opportunity to return to public life among the East Coast elite: He’s bored with retirement and feels humiliated droning on for banquet crowds for cash. He wants an interviewer with heft, but he’ll take the $600,000 his agent, Swifty Lazar (Toby Jones), has secured by saying yes to Frost.
And so they face each other for four extended interviews, which comprise the film’s second hour. Frost has gotten help cramming for this exam from British TV producer John Birt (Matthew Macfadyen), veteran journalist Bob Zelnick (Oliver Platt) and author and Nixon critic James Reston Jr. (Sam Rockwell). Rebecca Hall provides moral support as the sultry socialite Frost picked up in first class while flying to the United States.
In Nixon’s corner are loyalists including the fierce strategist Jack Brennan (Kevin Bacon) and, amusingly, a young Diane Sawyer. Performances from the chief supporting players are uniformly excellent, especially from Platt and Rockwell, whose characters rib each other and share a disdain of Frost’s celebrity.
But Zelnick puts it best when he calls Frost “the most unlikely white knight … but a man who had one big advantage over all of us. He understood television.” And television exposed both Frost and Nixon for their true natures _ for better and for worse.
R.I.P. David Frost
Having lived through the Nixon presidency I remember Nixon’s fall from grace. When the film came out we saw how diabolically corrupt and paranoid the leader of our country was. Scary.
David Frost was a fearless interviewer, whether he was cross examining a head of state or having afternoon tea with Minnie Mouse. Many have tried to emulate his style (Martin Bashir), and in my opinion, fall short. Sadly I knew he’d continued to work past the 1990’s but he wasn’t as visible in the United States as he must have been in the UK. Our loss.
Ironically, I live close to the Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda and have visited from time to time. It’s small compared to Ronald Reagan’s Presidential Library in Simi Valley, but the grounds are serene, the buildings unassuming, and the political information rich. The family home Nixon grew up in is located on the property. Very interesting walk thru. Depicts a time when orange groves populated Yorba Linda and the surrounding community. One doesn’t get a sense of shame or apology for his presidency, and they don’t sugarcoat the facts.
I don’t know if I agree that this is Ron Howard’s best movie (for me, it’d be hard to top the sheer intensity and drama of “Apollo 13”), but it is an excellent film, and I hope to revisit it soon.
I agree with you that “Frost/Nixon” avoids, thanks to Frank Langella’s outstanding performance, devolving into cartoonish caricatures. So many movies about presidents (or statesmen/leaders in general) are distracting for me to watch, especially when the actor playing the leader in question is a big-name star. That’s why I’m a little hesitant about “(Lee Daniels’) The Butler,” since all of the presidents are played by very recognizable faces.
For my money, the best presidential performance in recent memory was Bruce Greenwood as JFK in “Thirteen Days.” He may have been a few years too old for the role, but he really disappeared into it. It helps that Bruce Greenwood wasn’t then (and isn’t now) much of a household name.