Frost/Nixon

3.5/4 stars

Going into this Oscar season, from the time the nominations were announced, I was most enthusiastic about Frost/Nixon. Although it's true that I have an unusual dislike for Ron Howard as a director (I struggle to think of one of his films before this one that I have any affection for), the reteaming of writer Peter Morgan and actor Michael Sheen after their collaboration in the incredible The Queen was something to be excited about. In the end I did like Frost/Nixon quite a bit, but not as much as I wanted to.

Although, true to its title, the film plays as an examination of two characters, it is easily the historical enigma of Richard Nixon that the whole effort is centered on. The subject of the film is the interviews; the subject of the interviews was his tumultuous presidency. Even that was in many ways the final act of a convoluted political career. Frank Langella brings Nixon to life flawlessly, and the true genius of the script is that it allows him to be two things at once. On the one hand, he is the villain of the piece, a chillingly cunning and unrepentant opponent. On the other, he is a lonely and tragic figure. How can you not pity a man who worked so hard for something and lost it due to his own overbearing flaws? Langella is brilliant, in voice, appearance and temperament. He embodies the good and the bad equally, never far from each other, the stubbornness that began as righteous and drifted slowly yet irrevocably in the other direction. Even as Kevin Bacon turns in a distinctly unlikable performance as his chief of staff, it is tempered with an undercurrent of fierce protectiveness. In politics, an admission of wrongdoing on the scale of which Nixon is guilty is career suicide. At the same time, the interviews are his only chance to tell his side of the story, an apology his only opportunity for redemption.

This is where Frost comes in, and Michael Sheen expresses this in his portrayal of the character: while everyone around him wants simply to skewer and ruin the former president, Frost knows his duty as an interviewer is to come to know him on a human level. At the same time, the circumstances of what occurs are such that a conflict arises that neither can take lightly. The moment in which Frost realizes this is the turning point of the film. While Langella gives the outstanding performance of the movie, Morgan's writing and the fine ensemble are excellent in every corner.

The direction is where this movie finds trouble. Like in The Queen, real news footage is used in combination with the dramatization to supply a real, grounded feel. However, whereas in The Queen this gave insight into the perspective of characters who were seeing their every move documented for an angry public, in Frost/Nixon it seems to be an excuse to spoon-feed information or commentary that the movie otherwise can't be bothered with. Unlike this movie, The Queen was never speaking directly to the audience. Here, we sometimes seem to be watching a dramatic film, but other times we're watching a mocumentary, seemingly as it suits the director. The effect is that of a cellophane wrapping around the art of the film: unpleasant, distracting and cheap. While there are some interesting effects as work (the way the interview scenes are framed to move in and out of a television perspective) overall the style seems cluttered and uncertain.

A regrettable amount of this review is Oscar season quibbling. Frost/Nixon is as much worth sitting through as anything else (even compared to some of this year's other candidates) even if it lacks the near-perfection of its excellent predecessor.

The Queen

4/4 stars

At this point it basically goes without saying that the performances in this movie are incredible. Mirren and Michael Sheen particularly stand out, but in fact the entirety of the relatively small cast is so perfect as to be nearly invisible. This, along with the most effective integration of archive news footage I've seen, makes the movie so absorbing one is tempted to take it as a represenation of reality. And of course, it is in some sense. The film examines the week following the death of Princess Diana, revealing the mourning of both a family and a nation. The realism and credibility that the film seems to bring to its portrayal of the events behind the scenes of a national crisis are quite impressive. I was reminded of The West Wing, the television series whose adeptness at that same task was one of its best qualities. This is the third film I have seen by Stephen Frears, and the second that I have found nearly perfect (High Fidelity is a classic to any music geek, 2002's Dirty Pretty Things didn't live up to its potential). The film is engrossing, it plays a subtle but intense conflict without spelling out to the audience what is at stake, allowing the humanity of the characters to take care of that. For the best film of 2006, I would probably choose the more ambitious, more sprawling, more flashy The Departed, but there is no mistaking that The Queen is a significant accomplishment.

Written August 12, 2008.