Ron Howard seems to be taking a page out of the Oliver Stone book with his casting of Frank Langella as Nixon. From the trailer, I'm having a difficult time buying him as Nixon. In some bits, Langella has the voice down, but in others it seems awfully forced.

Link to the thread on Oliver Stone's Nixon (1995).

Baal_T'shuvah wrote:
: Ron Howard seems to be taking a page out of the Oliver Stone book with his casting of Frank Langella as Nixon.

I don't think Howard can take credit for that. If memory serves, Langella has been winning raves for playing Nixon in the stage version of Frost/Nixon, so Howard is simply reproducing onscreen what has worked onstage. (The stage, which is largely about actors and audience sharing an imaginative space, has less requirements regarding "realism" than film, which is inhibited somewhat by its photographic nature and the expectations that audiences bring to that.)

I recently viewed the trailer, and I have to agree that, from the trailer, Langella's voice seems very forced. There are bits that seem very natural, but overall it seems quite distant from the real Nixon's voice.
That said, I still have hopes for the film. I believe that it may just be a case of the trailer containing questionable segments and not the film itself. I'm very curious to see whether this film becomes the big award's season contender that so many critics believe it will be. Only time will tell.

I saw Langella in the role on Broadway, transferred from the West End, and it was one of the most extraordinary stage performances I've seen. (And believe me, I've seen tons.) As Peter suggests, the attempt was never to impersonate Nixon, but rather to embody something of the man's essence, late in his life.

I see that he'll be opposite Michael Sheen, as he was in the stage version. If you're looking for impersonations, I wouldn't say Sheen is any more likely to pass for David Frost than he did for Tony Blair - though I suppose that objection will come up a lot less often, given American audiences far greater familiarity with Nixon. Poor things.

A couple of early reviews from the premiere at Londonfest...

From Variety



From The Hollywood Reporter

The reason this film succeeds is that Ron Howard doesn't try to display traces of cinematic personality. It's a modest picture that efficiently captures two fine actors delivering interesting, nuanced performances. Any talk of Oscar will be an exaggeration of the film's strengths and importance, I think. But I found it thoughtful, engaging, and enjoyable primarily for its two talented leads, and for its way of raising timely questions for a general audience. And I think it will make a good selection for discussion groups.

So I'm happy to say that this is one of those rare Ron Howard films that I can actually recommend... that didn't provoke some kind of allergic reaction.

I am VERY curious to know if there is any historical basis for that one phonecall. It felt like a very "stage-play" sort of device, but who knows, maybe the real David Frost has said that something like it actually happened.

Haven't seen the film yet (sadly I was ill during the London Film Festival) but from the trailer I would say that Sheen is far less like Frost than he is like Blair. David Frost is even more distinctive than Blair in the way he speaks. But Sheen is a fine actor and I suspect it won't worry me after the first few minutes.

Agreed. I don't get the Oscar fever -- it's a well acted movie, but I didn't think either main actor was as good as they've been in other films -- but it's consistently interesting. I'm a little doubtful about the attempted political parallels with today's president, and am wondering if that perception is what's driving a lot of the awards talk for this movie. If so, it makes such recognition even less desirable to me, but if the movie snags some awards, I'll suck it up. There have certainly been worse award-winners in recent years. (I never cared for A Beautiful Mind, which won a slew of big awards, for instance).

Andrew Sarris and Rex Reed both went bonkers for this movie in the latest NY Observer. I sat down to write something about the movie last night, and it occurred to me what I think is missing from the film: I don't really care about David Frost.

Yes, I did care about him during most of the movie's running time, and it made for good drama. But in the end, I wondered what it all amounted to. The guy, we're told, saw his career recover, and, get this! -- he appeared on the covers of Time and Newsweek! Oooo-la-laaa!. Meanwhile, Richard Nixon's legacy is said to be that the word "gate" is now attached as a suffix to any presidential scandal.

Really? That's it? Frost's career prospects just don't, and didn't, matter to me. It was the interview that mattered. And Nixon's Watergate fiasco, which is high strongest legacy, is far from the only thing that mattered about his presidency.

So the film ended on a weak note, for me. Even during the interview portions of the film, Frost's tactics interested me far less than did Nixon's. Nixon is simply the more compelling character in this drama, and I think Langella gives the better performance, even though Sheen is fine. But now I'm reading reviews that mention both characters, and both actors, as equals in this film, and although that's what the movie's title implies, it didn't come across that way to me as I watched it. Despite the shared screen time, it was Nixon's story that engaged me, and not so much Frost's -- which isn't to say that Frost's story bored me. I just didn't care about his career stakes.

Anyone else wanna chime in on this?

My initial comments in a comparison with Doubt.

(Christian, I see that my reaction to Frost/Nixon is similar to yours. I was stunned by the dismissive conclusion. The film deserved a more nuanced epilogue that that.)

That's very good, Jeffrey. Nice parallels. I was thrown for a moment by your reference to Micah, because I learned that verse in a praise song I used to sing at Campus Crusade meetings, where it was phrased, "but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God." I'd never thought of that verse as being about "seeking" justice, but "doing" justly is a form of same, don't you think?

I wish I'd thought to draw parallels between these two movies.

Elizabeth Drew rips into the movie's "distortions" of history (such as its omission of the fact that Nixon was not only paid a flat fee for the interview, but was guaranteed a percentage of the profits from TV sales etc., thereby giving him a financial incentive to make the interview as "interesting" as possible), and Jonathan Rosenbaum questions her description of the real Nixon as a "tragic Shakespearean figure".

More on the Drew allegations here.

Nikki Finke reported a weak per-screen average for yesterday's shows of this movie. If it underperforms, that'll be disappointing to me. I don't think the film is a masterpiece, but it's very well performed and deserves to be seen.

(Finke also reported weak returns for The Reader; that would be justice!)

I liked this quite a bit, although the boxing references were getting a bit overboard by the end - I kept waiting for somebody to ring a bell.

The film is hardly sympathetic to Nixon, rather it portrays him as pitiable. Some might confuse that somewhat with sympathetic. For hardcore Nixon haters, even pity might be unacceptable. Not sure I'd point to anybody that is full on sympathetic. Frost is a bit of a puff. Reston is a ideological zealot. Brennan is blinded by loyalty.

Hmm...interesting reactions all around. I personally saw the film as a hybrid of W. and Good Night, and Good Luck.

On one hand, it's a condescendingly sympathetic portrait of an unpopular president that humanizes him while viewing his political career as an utter unethical disaster (a la Oliver Stone). It tries to see things from his POV, without shaking off its insistence of his guilt/ineptitude/what-have-you.

On the other hand, it celebrates watchdog reporting and newsroom tenacity by ramping up the stakes of a fabled interview/television exchange between the fourth estate and the powerful that, in reality, was not quite as important as the film makes it out to be (a la Clooney). Frost's interviews with Nixon weren't the force to be reckoned with that the movie suggests, and neither was Edward R. Murrow's joust with McCarthy. It's fun to pretend that they were important, though.

I like Frost/Nixon better than either of those films, though. Its script is more subtle, and the acting is better.

I really liked this as an actors' film. Two seasoned professionals facing off, with no directorial tricks to distract the audience.

At the same time, the sets and the lighting of the film: the contrast between the natural lighting of the outside scenes and the artificial lighting of the interview segments, as well as the supporting characters; give the film enough depth to be more than merely just a filmed version of a stage play.