Frost/Nixon
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DVD details
Actor: Frank Langella, Michael SheenBrand: Universal Studios
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language); French (Dubbed); Spanish (Dubbed)
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 122 minutes
Published: 2009-04-01
DVD Release Date: 2009-04-21
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Universal Studios
DVD Reviews of Frost/Nixon
DVD Review: Awful
Summary: 1 Stars
Consider the pedigree of the movie "Frost/Nixon": this is a film which is based on a play which is based on a TV interview. Here's why no straight thing could ever have been carved from such crooked timber:
Film and television are usually at their cheesiest when they cross over. When even a successful film produces a spin-off TV show, the result is usually of very poor quality. (Examples: "Fame", "Ferris Bueller", "In the Heat of the Night".) Worse, when Hollywood is truly stuck for ideas, the spin-off goes in the other direction: "Charlie's Angels", "The Incredible Hulk", "Dukes of Hazzard" are all dreadful films based on poor TV shows. "Frost/Nixon" is off to a bad start straight away because (i) the original material is not a TV show but merely a TV interview, and (ii) even that's been put through the strainer of being converted into a play.
What's that, I hear you object? "But the TV interview was real. And it was real in a way that `Dukes of Hazzard' could never be." I absolutely agree. So why wouldn't we just go and watch the *actual* TV interview, and not this twice-diluted recreation of it? This is the central problem with "Frost/Nixon: the movie". It never overcomes its own pointlessness. Its redundancy seeps through in every frame. Anyone who wants to find out what actually happened in this famous interview could simply go to the source material. It certainly contains dramatic moments. Why would anyone want to *re*-dramatize it?
Well, the answer, apparently, is that the movie can offer us something that the real interview can't. And here it is: we get to see the dramatic story of what happened behind the scenes. That is to say, we see two things: (i) Frost's attempts to get his TV show financed; and (ii) the manoeuvrings of both Frost's staff and Nixon's, focusing mainly of the research efforts of Frost's. So - if we grant that the reproduction of the interview itself is redundant, then we are left with a movie about researching and financing. Who wouldn't dash off to see that?
In fact, the filmmakers themselves seem quite conscious of the unexciting nature of the leftovers they have been lumbered with. There are constant efforts throughout to inject `dramatic' moments:
1. Witness David Frost reaching for a glass of water. (The close-up movement of his arm is filmed in slow motion while tense music underscores the significance of the moment.)
2. Watch as Nixon's team and Frost's team line up and eye each other across the living room. If this were a hushed saloon, there could easily be a gunfight. (Except that it's not and therefore there won't be.)
3. Listen as Kevin Bacon compares the opening sentences of the interview to the first punches in a prize-fight. Meanwhile the actor playing his counterpart on Frost's team declares: `It was horrifying ... just horrifying!'
4. Take note as Frost is counselled by his staff to `Never forget ... you are in there with a *major* operator.'
5. Whistle at the close-up of Frost going for broke by flinging his clipboard of questions onto the floor (which didn't happen in the real interview).
6. Listen as Nixon growls down the phone to Frost: `I shall be your fiercest adversary ... when the time comes, I'm going to be focused and ready for battle.' (Of course, the confrontation took place in a pair of armchairs, so as epic battles go, it's hardly Stalingrad.)
Scenes in the movie are interspersed with post-interview interviews with the staff on both Frost and Nixon's team. But wait. Those interviews weren't with real people. They were with the actors, who continued to play real people. This supposedly `clever' device for adding extra drama falls on its face because there are only two possibilities here: either the real Frost-Nixon staff never said these words on camera, in which case the filmmakers of "Frost/Nixon" are just making it up; or else they did say these words on camera, in which case - again - why wouldn't we be looking at the original footage? Isn't this just more redundancy? (And in case anyone thinks that intercutting real interviews into a movie is too incongruent, recall that Warren Beatty's film "Reds" won a Best Picture Oscar while using precisely this approach.)
It's painful watching a film like "Frost/Nixon" which is so gravid with its own self-importance, and yet at the same time so encumbered by its own emptiness. At the close of the film a character speaks the following astonishing verdict to camera:
"The rest of the project and its failings would not only be forgotten: in time, they would totally cease to exist."
Really? One wonders where to begin with this remarkably incautious statement. Should a major media event's failings be allowed to be airbushed from our collective memory? If so, what does that say about the supposedly ever-vigilant media itself? And, if one recalls Orwell, this precept - that an event which is forgotten about is one which has ceased to exist - was a totalitarian principle.
So if we are prepared to admit that the Nixon interview hardly achieved anything, why make a movie which so plainly tries to confect it as some sort of triumph? (By the movie's own admission, Frost failed in three out of the four sessions.) The film - sure enough - ends with nothing more than the `satisfaction' of the nation seeing of a guilty-looking Nixon. He didn't look guilty before? And isn't it fair to say that a guilty person always comes across looking morally better for having admitted guilt than having refused to? The film seems to have missed its own point here: how do we know that the negative image of a guilty Nixon was not drowned out by the more perniciously humanising image of a contrite and anguished Nixon? If that's a win, it's pretty thin.
In a famous book published in 1960, the American historian Daniel J. Boorstin wrote of the increasing (and damaging) dominance in American culture of what he called the "pseudo-event". He meant, among other things, that newspapers and other media were beginning to report on things which were not substantial occurrences. He listed four criteria which defined a pseudo-event. Here's number one:
"It is not spontaneous, but comes about because someone has planned, planted or incited it. Typically it is not a train wreck or an earthquake, but an interview."
[Boorstin, "The Image, or What Happened to the American Dream", Antheneum, New York, 1962, p. 11]
So here is the plain truth. The Vietnam War was an event. The Watergate Scandal was an event. But David Frost's interview with Richard Nixon was not an event: rather, it was a footnote to events. Making a movie of a play based on this subject matter meant creating a footnote to a footnote to a footnote ... except that herein the filmmakers were desperately trying to persuade us that the interview *was* an earthquake.
So - what next? Will a superstructure of absent dramatic tension and no historical significance be erected around ... "Couric/Palin"? (After "Frost/Nixon", don't laugh.)
Description of Frost/Nixon
From Academy Award-winning director Ron Howard comes the electrifying, untold story behind one of the most unforgettable moments in history. When disgraced President Richard Nixon agreed to an interview with jet-setting television personality, David Frost, he thought he?d found the key to saving his tarnished legacy. But, with a name to make and a reputation to overcome, Frost became one of Nixon?s most formidable adversaries and engaged the leader in a charged battle of wits that changed the face of politics forever. Featuring brilliant portrayals by Frank Langella and Michael Sheen, Frost/Nixon is the fascinating and suspenseful story of truth, accountability, secrets and lies.Sounds like a good match: a historical drama from the author of The Queen, but with an American subject in the generational wheelhouse of director Ron Howard. And so Peter Morgan's Tony-winning play morphs into a Hollywood movie under the wing of the Apollo 13 guy. Morgan's subject is a curious moment of post-Watergate shakeout: British TV host David Frost's long-form interviews with ex-President Richard Nixon, conducted in 1977. It was a big ratings success at the time, justifying the somewhat controversial decision to cut an enormous check for Nixon's services. The movie adds a mockumentary note to the otherwise straightforward style, having direct-to-camera addresses from various aides to Frost and Nixon (played by the likes of Oliver Platt, Sam Rockwell, and Kevin Bacon); these basically tell us things we already glean from the rest of the movie, adding unnecessary melodrama and upping the stakes. In this curious scheme, the success of Frost's career, which could bellyflop if he doesn't get something worthwhile out of the cagey, long-winded Nixon, is given somewhat more weight than the actual revelations of the interviews. Even with these questionable storytelling decisions, there's still the spectacle of two actors going at it hammer and tongs, and on that level the movie offers some heat. Michael Sheen, who played Tony Blair not only in The Queen but also in another Morgan-scripted project, The Deal, is adept at catching David Frost's blow-dried charm, as well as the determination beneath it. Frank Langella's physical performance as Nixon is superb, and he certainly can be a commanding actor, though veteran Nixon-watchers might find that he misses a certain depth of self-pity in the man. Both actors were retained from the original stage production, a rare thing in Hollywood--and probably Howard's best decision of the project. --Robert Horton
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