Review
Cornelius 
Send a Compliment at 5:52 PST, 10 December, 2008
By Lisa Schwarzbaum (EW.com)
Frost / Nixon is a fact-based drama, starring Michael Sheen and Frank Langella, about a mid-1970s confrontation between a wily British TV host and a - disgraced American president. Doubt is a fictional drama, starring Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman, about a mid-1960s confrontation between an imperious Bronx nun in charge of a parochial school and a liberal priest she is convinced has behaved improperly with a student. The two might seem to have nothing in common, save that both previously enjoyed award-laden Broadway runs, and both are currently receiving Prestige Movie treatment.
But the pair, taken together, constitute a rewarding study in the opportunities and pitfalls of adaptation. Frost / Nixon, directed with practiced fluidity by Ron Howard, surges with an energy and visual verve that improve the play and enhance the themes of dramatist Peter Morgan's script - about the codependency of media and politics, and about the vanities of ambitious men shaping public images. Doubt, fussily overdirected by its author, John Patrick Shanley, dulls the play's own sharp inquiries into the dangerous power of those who profess certainty with God on their side.
Frost / Nixon trusts Sheen and Langella to re-create the roles they first originated to such acclaim in London in 2006, then moved to Broadway in 2007. Certainly the two stars know their characters inside and out: There's David Frost, the striving TV-age smoothie who savored his jet-set lifestyle but craved journalistic legitimacy; and there's Richard M. Nixon, the infinitely complicated politician forced to resign in the wake of Watergate, who craved - well, obviously, he craved something, since he agreed (for a handsome fee) to sit with Frost through 12 days of taped interrogation. With the transcript as his guide, Morgan explores psychological terrain: how Frost found the chutzpah to land the interviews; how Nixon played cat and mouse with his interlocutor when asked to admit wrongdoing and apologize; how both men of humble beginnings felt stung by the scorn of those born with more ââ¬Â¨privilege; and how both were superb manipulators. But Sheen (who played the very model of a modern British go-getter as Tony Blair in The Queen, also written by Morgan) and Langella (operating at the peak of his powers) are disciplined enough to crop their performances to close-up size. (The sizing echoes the look of the - actual interviews.) And Howard is smart - to enhance the one-on-ones with journalistic context, weaving archival Watergate-era - footage into his fictionalized re-creation.
last edited by Cornelius Send a Compliment at 5:53 PST, 10 December, 2008
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Comments (1 comment)
The Frost/Nixon interviews are fascinating. Not every second of them, especially not when Nixon rambles on and on, avoiding questions by offering anecdotes in place of answers. Yet, they are an invaluable historical document, which allow us the rare privilege of seeing a major politician as a human being and nothing else. As interesting as the interviews themselves is the lead-up to them, the circumstances surrounding them, and the characters involved, particularly Frost and Nixon, of course. One could say that you only need to watch the actual footage, but there's ample room for a great dramatization, but it needed an even-handed approach, and certainly needed no political preaching.
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