Frost/Nixon

Well, it's certainly an educational experience, speaking from the point-of-view of someone almost wholly ignorant of the political circumstances of 1970s America. And the performances are unquestionably good. And Ron Howard brings his dispiritingly professional touch to the film, executing everything neatly with a few neat flourishes. [Speaking of the direction: enough with the voyeuristic 'out-of-focus-edge-of-door/window-in-frame' stuff already. Sheesh. Alison Jackson has a lot to answer for in terms of cinematographic trends.] The film is primarily interesting though, as a character study. And I suspect the reason Frank Langella has received critical recognition, while Michael Sheen remains relatively unnoticed, is mostly due to the fact that Nixon comes across as a much more interesting character than Frost. J. Hoberman sums it up perfectly in his review for the Village Voice, "Frost/Nixon's main attraction is neither its topicality nor its historical value, but Langella's re-creation of his Tony-winning performance." Jonathan Gross finds Milk, in an interesting comparison, a far more successful political fillm - and I have to agree with him really. The one way the film is trukly interesting, politically speaking, is the way it engages with the idea that politics has become so entangled with ideas about performance - ideas that are probably more successfully addressed in a stage-play. All in all, I'm pretty sure the play is a more powerful piece of drama. And it looks great too (check the pics above. Liking the blue carpet mucho). Here's another excerpt from the Voice review (love those guys), "In opening up the play, however, the movie unavoidably dissipates its power. Having Nixon's actual lair, the so-called Casa Pacifica, as a location is considerably less compelling than the stripped-down onstage set, in which Langella and Sheen competed not just with each other, but with their giant, multiplied video images. (There's a profound poetic justice in that, as historian David Greenberg has argued; Nixon was the first American president preeminently concerned with the construction of his image.)"