movie review: Frost/Nixon
Dec. 12th, 2008 01:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacI didn't watch David Frost's interviews of Richard Nixon when they aired, and know little about them except for the famous phrases: "I gave them a sword" and "When the President does it, it isn't illegal." This was in keeping with my disinclination to see Nixon on trial as well: unlike other Nixon-haters, I approved of Ford's pardon. All I had wanted of Nixon was to see the back of him, and once he was gone, to stay gone.
But that doesn't mean I haven't kept reading about him and Watergate, and this movie sounded like a good one. Besides, nobody glowers like Frank Langella glowers. He's a perfect choice for Nixon.
It is a well-made film, with a dramatic plot artificially forced on it, about the callow Frost finally getting the better of the wily old master. But the artificiality of it can be seen in the epilogue, with paragraphs in space depicting Frost's subsequent career as flourishing, while Nixon sinks into obscurity and death. Actually, Frost never maintained the prominence he was aiming for, while Nixon grotesquely was able to reinvent himself as a wise old hand. The last spoken words in the film are Frost's researcher saying that Nixon's legacy is to have "-gate" attached to every political scandal. Yeah, you know how that happened? William Safire started tagging it on every minor fuss of the Carter administration, in an attempt to bring Watergate down to a perceived equal level of triviality. (That's discussed in David Greenberg's Nixon's Shadow, which I reviewed yesterday.) It's Nixon's revenge, not Nixon's final defeat.
Curiously, I just saw another film with Michael Sheen, who plays Frost. It's Stephen Fry's 2003 film Bright Young Things, based on an Evelyn Waugh novel. Here, Sheen gets to be the femme boyfriend of a butch auto racer, who gets in trouble after he and his butterfly society friends muck up the auto race by wangling invites into the pit and then waving the little blue flags at the wrong time. I intended to see this film when it came out, but it opened obscurely and then I forgot about it until I saw it mentioned recently, so I found the DVD in the library.
It's a good mixture of farce and an underlying sadness, with lots of notable actors. See Jim Broadbent play an old sot, which he always does so well. See David Tennant of Dr. Who play a shallow wealthy fop. See Dan Aykroyd play the press baron that Rupert Murdoch was based on. Hear Stockard Channing as an Aimee Semple McPherson parody, directing her angelic choir in singing "There ain't no flies on the Lamb of God." And, see Fenella Woolgar, who was new to me. Her scene as a society flip waking up from a hangover in a house she only slowly realizes is 10 Downing Street is priceless. She's also funny as an emergency substitute racecar driver who doesn't know how to drive. If you have a comic role that'd be perfect for Emma Thompson but you need somebody younger, hire this woman. She's 37, it says here, so get her now!
But that doesn't mean I haven't kept reading about him and Watergate, and this movie sounded like a good one. Besides, nobody glowers like Frank Langella glowers. He's a perfect choice for Nixon.
It is a well-made film, with a dramatic plot artificially forced on it, about the callow Frost finally getting the better of the wily old master. But the artificiality of it can be seen in the epilogue, with paragraphs in space depicting Frost's subsequent career as flourishing, while Nixon sinks into obscurity and death. Actually, Frost never maintained the prominence he was aiming for, while Nixon grotesquely was able to reinvent himself as a wise old hand. The last spoken words in the film are Frost's researcher saying that Nixon's legacy is to have "-gate" attached to every political scandal. Yeah, you know how that happened? William Safire started tagging it on every minor fuss of the Carter administration, in an attempt to bring Watergate down to a perceived equal level of triviality. (That's discussed in David Greenberg's Nixon's Shadow, which I reviewed yesterday.) It's Nixon's revenge, not Nixon's final defeat.
Curiously, I just saw another film with Michael Sheen, who plays Frost. It's Stephen Fry's 2003 film Bright Young Things, based on an Evelyn Waugh novel. Here, Sheen gets to be the femme boyfriend of a butch auto racer, who gets in trouble after he and his butterfly society friends muck up the auto race by wangling invites into the pit and then waving the little blue flags at the wrong time. I intended to see this film when it came out, but it opened obscurely and then I forgot about it until I saw it mentioned recently, so I found the DVD in the library.
It's a good mixture of farce and an underlying sadness, with lots of notable actors. See Jim Broadbent play an old sot, which he always does so well. See David Tennant of Dr. Who play a shallow wealthy fop. See Dan Aykroyd play the press baron that Rupert Murdoch was based on. Hear Stockard Channing as an Aimee Semple McPherson parody, directing her angelic choir in singing "There ain't no flies on the Lamb of God." And, see Fenella Woolgar, who was new to me. Her scene as a society flip waking up from a hangover in a house she only slowly realizes is 10 Downing Street is priceless. She's also funny as an emergency substitute racecar driver who doesn't know how to drive. If you have a comic role that'd be perfect for Emma Thompson but you need somebody younger, hire this woman. She's 37, it says here, so get her now!
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