Frost/Nixon

Ron Howard's Frost/Nixon closely follows the footsteps of Robert Altman's Secret Honor insofar as it presents a puzzlingly polite picture of the dastardly Richard Nixon (Frank Langella). Set up in a centrist style (whose mitigating factor is represented by the naive, dedicated and opportunistic David Frost [Michael Sheen]), Frost/Nixon chronicles a series of interviews conducted by Frost in the wake of Richard Nixon's unprecedented Presidential resignation. Sensationalized for sentiments sake, the right is represented by Nixon acolyte and Vietnam Vet Jack Brennan (Kevin Bacon) and the left by a solid team of researchers including James Reston Jr. (Sam Rockwell) and Bob Zelnick (Oliver Platt). Shot linearly but intercut with reality t.v. style reflections upon the events as they unravel, the film kaleidoscopically presents a variety of passionately opposing viewpoints regarding commitment, exposition, desire, and dogma, all the way to an intoxicating interrogation of one Richard Nixon.

Each performer is given their chance to shine: Platt humoursly delivers an intricate Nixon impersonation, Rockwell zealously critiques Frost for not leveling the same degree of ideological rigour, Bacon demonstrates unyielding support for his mentor, and Sheen gesticulates and genuflects his way through several different frenetic facial expressions. But they're all left in Langella's domineering dust as he stoically commands his realization of the role. The performance is strong, potentially best actor strong (although the competition's stellar). While he generally steals each scene, at one point, after delivering a semi-commercial speech at a relatively unimportant function, he particularly lets go of his characteristic resolve and enthusiastically laments his post-Presidential predicament, thereby unleashing a substantial degree of split-second emotion that elevates his performance to another level.

There's a lot more to Frost/Nixon than an interview between a struggling talk show host and an ex-President. It complicates and coruscates the Nixon phenomenon in a wizened well-rounded manner, all the while demonstrating the cultural pressures competently pursuing each combatant. The subtly ambiguous ending supports its centrist technique as well inasmuch as Frost clearly wins, thereby saluting the left, but his victory is set up in a black or white either/or opposition, thereby clearly saluting the right. Does this ending represent Howard's elevation of clandestine contradictions and the ways in which they convolute any attempts to uniformly delineate a point of view, and, by doing so, does the ending, like Nixon's thoughts regarding the responsibilities of the President, situate the film beyond good and evil?

I really don't know.

Secret Honour

For those of you searching for a film that casts a humanitarian light onto the life and times of Richard Nixon, you should check out Robert Altman's Secret Honour. Within, we are introduced to Nixon and only Nixon as he rants and raves for an hour and a half about how he was universally coerced during his political career, drinks Chivas Regal, and ponders blowing his brains out. Played by Philip Baker Hall (Tom Cruise's father in Magnolia and one of Larry David's Doctor's in the early moments of Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 4), this fictional version of Nixon breaks through the shallow conceptions which the media often employ to tether his volatile life to a mundane manipulative caricature. I'm no expert on the Nixon phenomenon, but Secret Honour does successfully accomplish the remarkable task of pointing out the socialist side of this iconic Republican, thereby accentuating the irrational's pervasive influence on so many attempts to isolate an individuality.

Not that I like Richard Nixon.