I went to watch Frost/Nixon at the AMC last night. It’s one of those few films that feels really necessary, not least as a masterclass in narrative craft. This feeling of necessity is all the more surprising given that the concept – a film about a TV program – sounds like a definition of redundancy. There are so many moments where I half-expected the film to come unstuck: the potentially tedious need to fill in the contextual detail of the end of the Nixon premiership for an audience a generation on was handled impressively, though with some rather heavy-handed dialogue in the opening few scenes.
The use of staged interviews with the characters provided some neat insights – Nixon’s advisor Jack’s admission of his inability to watch the final interviews, for example – but sometimes felt superfluous. As these were interviews with the characters rather than the real participants, the film didn’t stray into the dreaded docu-drama territory, but there was a feeling of purposeless that I think can be attributed to the fact characters interviewed were of the same era as they appear in the drama, thus making the retrospection seem false.
Both leads are superb: Michael Sheen’s note-perfect Frost, with nasal tone and slightly manic charm, and Frank Langella’s lugubrious, wounded Nixon are the vital ingredients in what could otherwise be an exercise in political camp. Sheen/Langella often make an eminently compelling double act. Sheen’s frustration at his lack of purchase on Nixon in the early interviews is shared by the viewer, but the irritation is mediated by the scenes of Frost’s desperate fundraising efforts and off-camera antics – though how enjoyable these are depends on one’s Michael Sheen tolerance level.
The infamous final interview is where the Langella’s ability to capture vulnerability and defiance comes into its own. Lingering close-ups as he watches, apparently for the first time, footage of razed Cambodian villages provide some genuine drama and point to a complex -and unexpected – undercurrent of tragedy that culminates in the closing shots of Langella, outlined against the Pacific and looking mystified by a pair of Italian shoes given to him by Frost, fading out with a touch of melodrama.
Frost/Nixon deserves the garlanded reception it has so far been given. Despite its faults, it is an impressive account of an unlikely confrontation between the man out of time and the man of the moment, a film that rises beyond social history to provide moments of startling revelation.
Alphabet Rain 