A Moment in Time Captured

Rating: 7/10 (29 January 2009)

There is a paradox central to this film. The Frost/Nixon interviews were recorded over several hours, yet they are only remembered for a few minutes. Yet the running time of the film is around two hours, so what do you do with the rest of the film? There are two audiences to play to. The first, of whom I am one, are old enough to recall "the real thing", and will see it as Drama AND history. Those too young will see it primarily as Drama.It is too fleeting in its treatment of Nixon to be called a Biography. As a snapshot of "those moments" it is very good. But in order to understand the significance of those moments requires a remit way beyond what the film could hope to achieve. Indeed Oliver Stone's "Nixon" needed 3 and a quarter hours, and "All The presidents Men" needed two hours twenty minutes on Watergate alone! Inevitably it fails in this regard, and as a result much of the true drama of the occasion is lost.
The credentials of Screenplay writer, Peter Morgan, are peerless. "Last King Of Scotland", "The Queen" and "The Other Boleyn Girl" all demonstrate an ability to write about those at the seat of power. Michael Sheen plays an impish Frost, Frank Langella is a compelling, truculent , imposing Nixon, Kevin Bacon gives an impressively restrained performance as aide Jack Brennan, and Rebecca Hall as Frost's girlfriend Caroline Cushing has great legs.
Frost was closely involved in this project and comes out of it as clean as a whistle, portrayed as a raffish ,intelligent , go getting bon viveur, whose career defining gamble pays off. Nixon is not shown unsympathetically, but the caricature of him as a clever bully who thinks he can outwit a lightweight English Talk Show Host, and fails is too simplistic.
There are some wonderful vignettes, presumably true. Nixon asks Frost whether he had done any "Fornicating" the night before  just before they start recording, and makes a soul  baring late night call to Frost, which he subsequently fails to recall. Frost makes a gift of a pair of stylish Italian slip on shoes to Nixon as a parting gift  a style which Nixon had queried Brennan on as to whether they were "too effeminate?".
A stylish, entertaining, erudite script, is head and shoulders above the lamentably banal fare trotted out by much of Hollywood these days. Unsurprisingly, a single writer provides a cohesion and consistency of vision which multiple screenwriters so rarely deliver. Yet ultimately it is not quite enough. As a tale about a drama, it is fine, as a drama itself it does not quite find the angle to carry it off.