Frost/Nixon: Not So Tricky Flick
January 6th 2009 04:17
In Frost/Nixon, playwright Peter Morgan has adapted his own work for the screen and impresses immediately with a script that does little to hint at its stage origins. It’s one of the high points of this film that tells the tale of a series of interviews conducted by David Frost with Richard Nixon in 1977. But while the United States and indeed most of the western world retains a keen interest in Nixon, his skulduggery and subsequent pratfall in 1974, Frost/Nixon is really David Frost’s story.
Frost/Nixon begins with Frost toiling away, seemingly doing penance on Australian television, before he hits on the seemingly outrageous idea of interviewing Richard Nixon. He struggles to convince his television superiors in London before departing for California with producer, John Burt (Matthew MacFayden). Once there, the pair team up with ABC political journalist Bob Zelnick (Oliver Platt) and anti Nixon author James Reston (Sam Rockwell), who implores Frost to give Nixon the ‘trial he never had.’ Frost also hammers out the final elements of an exorbitant deal with Nixon for the interviews, taking on a significant personal financial risk after he fails to receive backing from any of the major US television networks.
The stakes are high for Frost, who besides spotting the serious financial gains from such an enterprise also sees the interviews as a chance at a career-defining production. Nixon (Frank Langella), for his part, handles the interviews as an opportunity for a re-entry into the political scene on the east coast, agreeing to the idea only because of Frost’s lightweight credentials. Thus a talking title fight is established, a struggle from which there can apparently be only one winner.
Unfortunately, the film being Frost’s story, Morgan has failed to move us close enough to the British presenter’s real personality. Early in the proceedings, too much time is devoted to setting him up as a sanguine playboy, leaving a slight distance between the character and the audience. This is magnified about halfway through the picture when things get financially dicey for Frost and he hardly seems overly concerned. The stakes just don’t seem to be that high and it keeps those in the theatre at arm's length from the movie’s protagonist.
There are other irritating niggles with Frost/Nixon, such as structural problems that leave Frost’s turn before the final interview too late in the film. Also a little perplexing are the extraneous and clumsy talking heads of the main players that pop up throughout the film.
Still, there’s plenty to like in Frost/Nixon. Ron Howard’s direction is efficient (if unspectacular) and the performances are uniformly excellent; Langella in particular captures your imagination with the Nixon role he played in the original stage version, while Oliver Platt stands out as always with his remarkably natural style. These elements alone make it an interesting if unspectacular film.
It’s just a shame that Morgan and Howard couldn’t quite imbue Frost/Nixon with the drama the tale deserves. The interviews and the story behind them naturally lend themselves to a great screenplay and while Morgan succeeds on a number of fronts with his script, he ultimately fails to hand the audience a character they can really get behind.
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