an epic battle of wills

Rating: 9/10 (3 May 2009)

Never having seen Peter Morgan's "Frost/Nixon" on stage, I can't speak to how much it may have gained or lost on its way to the big screen. I can, however, state that, in its latest incarnation, this is one humdinger of a political drama, as poignant as it is suspenseful, as intimate as it is wide-ranging.
The story centers around the famous series of interviews that David Frost conducted with Richard Nixon in the spring of 1977, nearly three years after Nixon had been forced to resign in disgrace from the office of President of the United States. This is the encounter in which Nixon famously declared, "When the President does it, that means it's not illegal" - as clear-cut and unabashed an acknowledgement of the corrupting influence of power as one could possibly expect from a politician.
Morgan and director Ron Howard have taken full advantage of the new medium, giving the material room to breathe by opening it out beyond the restricted confines of the interview setting to the world at large. We go back and forth between London and Los Angeles, visiting key points of interest - The Beverly Hills Hotel, Nixon's home in California, etc. - along the way. This also means that more time can be devoted to the earlier stages of the story, including Frost's often desperate attempts to secure financing for the project, and the efforts both sides expend on brainstorming and strategizing for the final showdown.
And what a showdown it turns out to be, for at its heart "Frost/Nixon" is really an account of a fascinating, take-no-prisoners duel between two evenly matched opponents with diametrically contradictory goals. For Frost - a British entertainer who had, up to that point, made his name as a variety/talk show host in England and Australia and who was known primarily for his international-playboy antics off the set - these interviews would be his big chance to definitively establish, before a worldwide audience, his bona fides as a serious journalist, hopefully by making a disgraced ex-President wither under the glare of hardball questioning. For Richard Nixon, this seemed the golden opportunity to finally begin what would be a long and grueling process of rehabilitating his reputation and his legacy in the eyes of the public and of burnishing his place in history.
Thus, with so much at stake, both men are seen throughout the movie trying their best to manipulate the interviews and indeed each other to their own advantage. Keenly aware that only one of them can ultimately emerge the "victor" from their encounter, these two intellectual prizefighters jockey for position and power, sniffing out their opponent's weaknesses and vulnerabilities while playing intricately developed mind games on one another in the hopes of gaining the upper hand. Yet, oddly, as is usually the case in such situations, these two opponents actually discover that they have more in common with one another than they have differences that separate them.
For all its excellences of cinematography, editing and direction, "Frost/Nixon" is still, at its core and in deference to its theatrical roots, an "actors' picture," with Michael Sheen and Frank Langella brilliantly reprising the roles they created on stage. Langella never falls into the trap of relying solely on mimicry to capture the essence of a well-known and easily caricatured public figure. Instead, he allows us to see the subtle machinations of a man long adept at pulling the levers of power by manipulating events and individuals to his own advantage. Yet, at the same time, he shows us the gentler, more human side of a man wracked by loneliness and an innate lack of likability, who certainly didn't set out in life to become a tragic figure but who, through a lack of a clear moral compass, ended up that way anyway. Sheen more than fulfills the promise he demonstrated playing Tony Blair in "The Queen," making of Frost a good-natured but shrewd creature of the limelight who learns right quick that he needs to be wary of how a trapped beast will react when he's pushed into a corner with no way out. The beauty of the film is that, for all its emphasis on competitiveness and antagonism, it still manages to convey the mutual respect and even camaraderie that eventually came to define the relationship between the two men.
These two towering performers are complemented by similarly impressive work from Kevin Bacon as Nixon's loyal aide, Rebecca Hall as Frost's latest girlfriend, and Sam Rockwell and Oliver Platt as anti-Nixon zealots brought in to help Frost craft the questions he's going to ask.
Of course, as with most docudramas, it's often hard to tell which events are strictly factual (i.e. docu) and which have been made up or distorted for the sake of the drama. There is one glaring anachronism, for instance, when the filmmakers show Frost heading off to the premiere of "The Slipper and the Rose" - a movie he helped finance - on the eve of the first interview in March 1977 when the movie was actually released in late 1976. And I'm sure there are plenty more, much less innocuous fabrications that those closer to the subject could easily point out. Yet, no matter how much liberty it may take with the facts, "Frost/Nixon" turns relatively recent history into a riveting drama that has many pertinent things to say to the world today.