Balls vs. soul

Rating: 9/10 (14 December 2008)

I hope it will not spoil your experience. It might though.
In this Howard's excellent film Frost jumps to the opportunity to interview Nixon as a vehicle to move from semi-tabloid journalism to a life time challenge. Va Banque... The supporters/collaborators in this hoped by them to be an ambush/last ditch attempt to try Nixon had a chance to bring the man they considered to be a disgrace to the country to some justice. Again, in this film, as it is supposed to be in the best creative products, Integration defeats the Splitting. Frost and his crew are making their best effort to defeat Nixon and to put him on trial. They succeed - only to produce so much sought by them admission by Nixon of his fallibility and insight he lacked before. His experience during the interviews (especially the last one) brings him to the realization of his faults and seem to generate regret. Bingo! ... Yet - triumphant Frost and his team succeed glamorously and financially, but Nixon seems to retrieve his conscience and awakened his soul. His initial triumph of suppressing Frost's spirit by slamming him down and castrating him focusing on his effeminate shoes turns around and leaves him on the receiving end of his own creation. Yet - as it is supposed to be - an acquired feminine essence seemingly imposed on him brings about greater humanness and spiritual maturation he achieves as a result of a defeat - as it supposed to be.
There is a very significant theme of Jack Brennan (played by Kevin Bacon) and homo-emotional relationship between him and Nixon. Loyalty/devotion/admiration and support curled into a pretzel of serving the idol withstands the confrontation, but at the end he is not present. Disappeared. Dissolved by the defeat of the idol? We don't know. Nixon is alone. No one of significance is around. Just effeminate Italian shoes... The circle is completed. Castration ricochets back and slashes the balls of the castrator whose action has produced the sequence.
Only to make the castrated one more human and real...effeminate...as it supposed to be.