First off, I need to address Michael Sheen’s face.
Stream Gems is a weekly feature where we highlight a film streaming on one of the big streaming services. No particular method to the selection, but the featured films are a) worth a watch and b) at or under two hours.
Michael Sheen has a great face. He’s kinda handsome, which is helpful in the movie biz, I’m told. But more to the point, he has a great, interesting face. He has that hedgehog nose and giant, emotive eyes. I love watching him act because he’s such an emotive actor. In Frost / Nixon (2008), he is able to convey a range of emotions with just an eye twitch or a head nod. It is interesting to watch Michael Sheen, a movie star, playing a celebrity who misses being in the big spotlight and who is willing to gamble everything to get back there.
Second thing about Michael Sheen, although this is more pertaining as much to his recent work in Good Omens as to this film, is his incredible vocal control and breathwork (are these technical terms? ‘Round these parts, they are.). I’m sitting here writing and I’m seeing him in my mind’s eye, and these little stutters, and sharp breaths, and the register that he puts his voice into in that show… dude is great. Huge fan. (Second parenthetical of the paragraph: watch Good Omens. Terry Pratchett was a towering humanist among humans, and the show’s cast is incredible and the show’s writers did an incredible adaptation of an author for whom I’ve felt every prior adaptation was a misfire. Amazon Prime, like eight total episodes. Go to it.)
Sheen’s acting counterpart in this film is Frank Langella, who puts in no less a memorable performance than Sheen, but who I think got short shrift because he was doing the politician’s equivalent of a Christopher Walken impression. Even people who have never seen footage of Nixon can do a Nixon impression. Despite that (and despite my struggle to remember a Langella role other than Masters of the Universe, Cutthroat Island, and The Ninth Gate), he is embodying this character. He is wholly compelling playing a man who was defined by the friction between how he was perceived by people and how he wanted to be perceived. His body language is incredible. He can be acidic while deadpan. He can put on a friendly veneer despite his eyes being calculating the whole time. You could watch this movie on mute and still have an incredible time just seeing Langella and Sheen in the interview scenes.
It’s a sometimes frustrating movie because you get these two tremendous performances often in shot/reverse shot but all I wanted was to see both actors at all times in these scenes. We’re missing out on something every time we switch to a reaction shot or cut to a shot of a monitor on which only one of them is visible. It would have been tremendous to see the original theatrical production (which starred Sheen and Langella. Crazy!).
I want to mention the directing for a minute. I’m not a fan of Ron Howard… but at the same time, I wonder if I’m just predisposed to be dismissive of him because he’s one of those middle-of-the-road studio guys. He’s been involved in some films that I’d consider good: Solo: A Star Wars Story is one of the better entries in that bloated canon. I liked Cocoon when I last saw it, although that was likely in the 80s. Apollo 13 is iconic. Splash is great.
But he’s also been part of some stinkers. Willow is from that pre-Peter Jackson time when fantasy films just sort of oozed disdain for their audience and their actors. I almost see the producers in the back of the theater holding handkerchiefs over their noses at the premiere, and it is a shame because the cast of the movie is fantastic. Ransom is a mean-spirited, kinda gross movie: it’s a thriller without comedic relief or titillation. Far and Away was hugely appealing when I was a kid and I cannot imagine that I’ll ever rewatch it. I didn’t hate The Da Vinci Code so much as be confused as to why it was so popular (in comparison: the dookie National Treasure movies are ten times as fun and five times as dumb). A Beautiful Mind is the kind of Oscar-bait that I get more contemptuous of with age.
That was a long way around to come to the point that I thought Frost / Nixon was shot pretty well other than my criticism above about the use of shot/reverse shot. The DP was Salvatore Totino, who has an eclectic filmography (read: a bunch of mid-budget stinkers), but who has a far more interesting music video filmography. I found myself confused by the reality TV style confessional/interview scenes, even though it gave Kevin Bacon and Sam Rockwell more screen time. I guess 2008 was a different time, with the popularity of The Office and American Idol and all that.
Frost / Nixon is also well paced. Upon seeing Rebecca Hall’s Caroline have a meet-cute with Frost, I expected some future scenes of relationship drama that would pad the runtime and push Frost’s energy away from the interviews. But that isn’t the case. This would not have been a misstep necessarily, since Hall’s character is underdeveloped and she is a great actor, but we’re here to watch a TV personality go toe-to-toe with Richard Nixon, my dudes. I’m not tuning in to boxing to watch the days leading up to the match. This movie hums along and dispels the expectation that it’s a snoozer.
This brings me to what I think is the film’s greatest strength. The interview part of the film is structured like a boxing match. I found this so fun that once I noticed it, I grinned every time a round would end. The interview will go on and there is some back and forth, and we sort of get the background researchers and staff talking about what is happening. Then there will be something dramatic and they stop filming (“gotta change the film” is said two or three times) or someone will get mad and storm onto or off of the set. Then Nixon will go to his room with his guys, and Frost will be surrounded by his guys. And they are counseling him and asking him what happened like he is Ali against George Foreman, and it’s all fun as heck.
In closing: in 1977, David Frost, a British game show host and talk show host, made a huge gamble and got Richard Nixon, post-resignation, to do a series of interviews with him. Frost is doing it to relaunch his career to new heights. And Nixon agrees to do it because he wants to control the narrative on his legacy. Two men in a match where only one can come out the winner. And this movie is that story. The cast is deep, the characters are compelling, it’s a tiny chapter in the history of a very (in)famous man, and it has a two-hour runtime.
If That, Then This: The Insider is a film about a scorned scientist at a tobacco company and his subsequent interview with 60 Minutes. But it is also about how journalists have to pick their battles when fighting megacorporations, and about the fallout that happens when someone is brave enough to be a whistleblower. Also, Russell Crowe gets some primo angry scenes. The film stars Russell Crowe and Al Pacino. Not currently streaming for free on one of the big streaming services and almost 160 minutes long, but the Blu Ray that I pulled off of my shelf looked fantastic.
Frost / Nixon is currently streaming on Netflix.