CS Weekly Archive > Weekend Read > 12/12/08

Pop Culture's Plutarch

By jason davis

Academy Award-winning writer Peter Morgan dips between the pages of history to create a compelling account of an American political icon in the film adaptation of his stage play, Frost/Nixon.

Frost/Nixon

Screenplay by Peter Morgan
Based on his play

British television presenter David Frost (Michael Sheen) watches Richard Nixon's (Frank Langella) resignation and becomes enamored with the idea of a series of interviews during which he can confront the ex-president with his misdeeds. Assembling a team of researchers and throwing the entirety of his finances behind the project, Frost sets about selling networks and advertisers on a no-holds-barred insight into the mind of a disgraced politician even as he woos Nixon to participate. With Frost facing financial catastrophe and Nixon wary of his place in posterity, Frost/Nixon delves into the hidden moments between the public broadcasts that found a former head of state finally taking responsibility of the corruption that brought him down.

As he's done previously with The Deal and The Queen, writer Peter Morgan stakes out his story tent with appearances and narrative drawn from the historical record, but the real charm in the script rests with how he fills the metaphorical tent with plausible private moments that take the characters from televised point A to press junket point B. Morgan makes Frost a kind of glamorous everyman bent on taking on a legendary figure in Nixon. That a figure like Frost—a man who had talk shows on multiple continents and who was responsible for assembling the future members of Monty Python on his 1960s satirical program, The Frost Report—can be made the viewpoint character for the audience is auctorial feat, but to bring Nixon down to a human level without reducing him to a corrupt political caricature is an even greater accomplishment.

In his treatment of the fallen chief executive, Morgan offers up a deeply flawed, but nevertheless charismatic man who still seems to have an optimistic perspective on his future. Though surrounded by yes men and gatekeepers obsessed with preserving his image, Nixon spends most of the film as the most powerful guardian of his legacy. His scenes with Frost during the interview sequences are a master class in controlling the situation, as he constantly wrong-foots the interviewer and steers the conversation despite ostensibly being the interviewee. Indeed, Morgan's script handles the details of the story with an uncommon aplomb. Frost's complicated scheme to finance the endeavor is set out with clarity and, despite portraying the behind-the-scenes deal-making necessary to get a program broadcast, proves as interesting as the pursuit of Nixon's apology. Between the minutiae of Nixon's criminal complicity and the ephemera of 1977 television film production, the film presents a comprehensive insight into an era. Add to that the emotional stakes brought to the table and Peter Morgan doubtless has a case for his second Oscar statuette.

Adding Frost/Nixon to his already esteemed oeuvre, Peter Morgan seems set to become the cinematic biographer of late 20th century Anglo-American political personalities and, given his deft hand with sympathetic characterizations, those personalities could do a lot worse.

Frost/Nixon
Universal
Rated R; 122 min.

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Jason Davis has been the DVD Manager for CS Weekly, a contributing editor for Creative Screenwriting Magazine, and has written for Cinescape.com, MSN.com, and created the TV series Studio 13, which ran on Lorne Michaels' Burly TV network. He lives in the small space left over by his ever-expanding library of books, movies, and music.



Frost/Nixon courtesy Universal

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