FROST/NIXON
This truly has been a great year for performances. Just when I’d decided that I’d be fine with either Sean Penn or Mickey Rourke picking up the Best Actor Academy Award this month (I’m leaning towards Penn), along comes Frank Langella with his phenomenal performance as Richard Nixon in Frost/Nixon, director Ron Howard’s riveting adaptation of writer Peter Morgan’s (The Queen, The Last King of Scotland) successful stage play.
As he did with The Queen, here Morgan asks us once again to consider the humanity, passions, and motivations of our otherwise reproached and possibly misunderstood world leaders. The behind-the-scenes story of the famous series of interviews held between British reporter David Frost and post-resignation President Nixon, Frost/Nixon is more than a biopic or simple reenactment of a verbal sparring match; it is an examination of ambition, particularly that of men who delude themselves into believing that they’re after more than just Glory while the true idealists around them struggle to maintain their misplaced faith, and ultimately that moment when these men finally come to terms with the ultimate cost of their aspirations.
Michael Sheen, who channeled Tony Blair in The Queen and can also currently be seen as werewolf hero Lucian in Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, is also great in his role as David Frost - truly, it’s hard not to be overshadowed by characters like Queen Elizabeth II and Richard Nixon, but Sheen once again holds his own and, sadly, has been overlooked in light of the showier characters. He’s a fantastic actor who can play spirited and subdued characters alike, and I am glad filmmakers are taking more note of him (as is Tim Burton, who no doubt took note of Sheen’s signature charismatic grin in casting him as The Chesire Cat in his upcoming Alice in Wonderland).
Frost/Nixon suffers from some pacing and structural problems - while relatively humorous and entertaining, its first act does not live up to the rest of the film, providing a great deal of back story that comes close to becoming redundant and uncompelling. Howard also incorporates a series of “talking head” cutaways in which characters in the film speak to an unidentified interviewer, seemingly for the sole purpose of carrying the story along; these scenes are for the most part unnecessary, with characters either stating the obvious, reiterating something we’ve already seen, or suggesting an idea or a feeling that could have easily been conveyed in the actors’ performances. We don’t need a face to pop up and tell us when Nixon gets the upper hand on Frost, or vice versa - the actors do a fine job communicating that themselves. Still, overall this is a fine film with some impressive performances, and a fascinating and sympathetic portrait of a man who has otherwise been written off by history as an ogre; in large part thanks to Langella’s intense performance, the character Richard Nixon emerges as a tragic figure undone by his own zeal and belief in a moral universe of his own making.
- Logan Crow, 02-09-09
Comment:
