Solid Drama, Simplistic History

Rating: 7/10 (18 April 2010)

History-based movies often make a deeper impression when playing fast and loose with the facts. Think "Casablanca", "Patton", or "Richard III." "Frost/Nixon" isn't quite up there, but it's an entertaining ride with deep resonances - even if it doesn't stick to the facts.
In the mid-1970s, disgraced ex-President of the United States Richard Nixon (Frank Langella) is searching for a way out from the shadows of his near-impeachment. Enter David Frost (Michael Sheen), jet-setting British interviewer who sees in Nixon his own way back into the big time, provided he can acquire elusive commercial backing. But is Frost up to the deeper challenge of pinning down one of history's most morally compromised men?
"I spent yesterday evening watching you interview the Bee Gees," says Frost's skeptical producer John Birt (Matthew Macfadyen).
"Weren't they terrific!" replies Frost with characteristic misplaced ebullience.
While much of the drama of the movie rests on Frost's efforts to take the initiative away from Nixon with tough, unexpected questions, the film itself is entirely Langella's. He's a sad creature of darkness, seen glimpsing Frost for the first time in half-shadow like Dracula, not the one Langella was playing on Broadway when Frost/Nixon was actually going down, but Bela's Dracula. Yet he craves the light, and the possibility is held out that he may even see this interview, "no holds barred", as a way of making restitution for his failure.
That's one interpretation of where the film takes the actual story, with made-up events including Nixon's unfamiliarity with Frost (in life, the two had sat on-camera before, in 1969), Frost's frustration over landing a punch, and, most luridly but effectively, Nixon making a late-night phone call to Frost that never occurred. You can't help wishing it did, though.
Credit Peter Morgan's screenplay, based on his stage work, with getting one to not only accept but welcome this imaginative interpretation - to a point. It's not exactly like the Frost interviews changed anything regarding Nixon or his legacy. It didn't even get Frost back his American television series, contrary to the end notes of this movie. Seeing Nixon portrayed as a flawed human being, with warmth and humor, can be gratifying to those of us disposed to cut Dick some slack and resent the show-trial impulses of James Reston Jr. (Sam Rockwell), but how believable is it for him to joke about sending some Cubans to spy on Frost's research team?
In the end, I found my queasiness with the storyline and its direction more than compensated for by Morgan's artful blend of suspense and humor, the lead acting (Sheen is actually more convincing as Frost, and does more to sell the dramatic tension of his scenes with Nixon, but I could never take my eyes off Langella), and a game supporting cast. Ron Howard directs with surprising restraint that suggests a more mature direction in his fine if flashy career; it's not as good overall as his "Apollo 13" but this time Howard proves a better director.
It doesn't surprise me that "Frost/Nixon" is one movie both Reston and the faithful few at the Nixon Library both seem to bless; it's about hating the crime but not the criminal. Perhaps this is posterity's way of simultaneously catching up with Nixon's wrongdoings and Gerald Ford's controversial pardon. Complicated, affecting, even if it feels somewhat half-chewed; Watergate felt like that then, too.