I can’t say how much appeal this movie will have for those who are not for political junkies (like me). It lacks has the transformational power of something like Shakespeare’s history plays (think Richard III or Henry V) to elevate the dross of political history to almost metaphysical heights. But it does a really solid middlebrow (in the best sense of the word) effort to make the filming of a series of interviews with the disgraced ex-President by a smarmy TV talk show host into an thrilling contest of wits and wills. Frank Langella and Michael Sheen recreate their roles from Michael Morgan’s successful play. Morgan seems to have cornered the market on literate, semihistorical films: see The Queen, The Deal (both with Sheen as Tony Blair), and The Last King of Scotland (about Idi Amin).
Sheen’s David Frost is not an impersonation, but a representation that captures not only Frost’s arrogance but his uncertainty; he seems like a man constantly working to overcome his weaknesses. Langella’s Nixon has been universally praised; he captures Nixon’s intelligence, his mercurial nature, and his tedium. His demeanor is more open than the real Nixon’s and makes him a better candidate for our sympathies. I am also fond of his portrayal of Nixon’s stooped, shambling gait which seemed awkward in the real Nixon but almost graceful and polished, designed to disarm, in Langella’s body. I think he makes Nixon rather wittier than the real man was. What Langella, and probably writer Morgan, leave out is the loutishness, the crudity, and clumsiness of the Nixon we hear on the Watergate tapes. This is a more sympathetic portrait of a man who trampled on the Constitution. I’m okay with that, and enjoy trying to penetrate this most enigmatic of our political figures (and Nixon does remain profoundly enigmatic in Langella), but we should also keep in mind what Nixon did.
There is a scene that troubles me somewhat in which a drunk Nixon calls Frost on the night before the last, Watergate-dominated interview and Nixon tries to create some bond between himself and Frost based on their rejection by the elites. Nixon admits to an inferiority complex and urges Frost to join him in sticking it to the elites. The whole thing seems unnatural and out of character, the most obviously invented element of the film. While carried off very well by both actors, it seemed contrived and unconvincing.
Ron Howard directed the film, which is to say he largely stayed out of the way of the story and the actors. In this case that is fine. He does begin with a nice montage of the historical events of Watergate, including lots of news footage that was nostalgic for me. He does occasional scenes in which we are presumably seeing through Nixon’s eyes, and they are out of focus; that effort seems superfluous and slightly distracting. I also read that Howard was insistent on getting all the details of the interview set exactly right, as if anyone was paying any attention to the furniture with all the tension that is built up and the wonderful performances that are unfolding before us in those scenes.
Nixon has been portrayed by two other great actors, Anthony Hopkins in Oliver Stone’s Nixon and Rip Torn in Blind Ambition. Langella’s portrayal stands well along side them. If you’d like to see more of Langella's skills on display, I recommend his recent Starting Out in the Evening in which he plays an aging, emotionally stifled author.
