Frost/Nixon (2008)

Frost/Nixon is not a documentary, but it feels like one. I wasn’t sure how I was going to digest the interview-style of the film, using actors to play each working part of the famous Frost/Nixon interview. By the end, I was entranced enough to believe it. Despite all the makeup, and beautiful celebrities involved, Frost/Nixon feels real. Real in its depiction of hard-hitting journalism. Real in its depiction of the  Nixon and the shattered post-POTUS life. Real in the conversations between the journalists, and the Nixon camp. 

This is a stunning reenactment of the interview and all the events leading to it, and after it. Outshining everyone is Frank Langella as Nixon. Though not perfect as a vocal impression, Langella embodies post-Watergate Nixon. A man consumed with too much pride as a former president to admit any wrongdoing. The interview conducted by David Frost, billed originally as a rehabilitating puff piece, turns into a full-on interrogation of Tricky Dick. Sparring together onscreen, Langella and Sheen are brilliant to watch. 

As I watched, I thought to myself of something just as captivating as the subject of the film. Frost/Nixon represents an era in American politics where revelations of rank corruption were shocking and not to be tolerated. Nixon was treated as a pariah in history, though I suspect he wouldn’t have been if he obtained power in this current era. Politics from Washington D.C. all the way down to the local level, as we know it, is a 24-hour, 365, Watergate. So many are guilty are crimes just as bad, or far worse than Richard Nixon. Things seem so bad now, that it wouldn’t be irrational to assume that politicians back then took on a cleaner, nobler profession for themselves. The truth is, they didn’t. They never have. The corruption was always there. Watergate was simply the first rock to be turned. 4 and 1/2 out of 5 stars.