June 13, 2009
frost / nixon
In the opening sequence of Frost/Nixon, one of Frost's team notes that he was no political thinker, but he understood one thing better than anyone around him: the power of television. This sets the stage for the film's closing exchange between the two principals, oceanside at San Clemente. Asking about Frost's predilection for the high life, Nixon inquires if he really enjoys those parties?
Frost: 'Course.The ironies interior to this sad peroration are, well, at about television-level. What makes it finally interesting is that David Frost is played here by Michael Sheen, previously best know to US audiences for his role in the The Queen — wherein he plays, natch, Tony Blair, politician of facility, lightness, and charm. The Queen closes with Blair's seizure of the national imagination after the death of Diana, possible exactly and explicitly because he understands the power of television, despite being a vulgarian lacking moral seriousness.Nixon: You got no idea how fortunate that makes you, mmn, liking people, being liked, having that, uh, facility...that lightness...and charm. I don't have it. I never did. It kind of makes you wonder why I chose a life that hinged on being liked. I'm better suited to a life of thought, debate, intellectual discipline. Maybe you should have been a politician and I a rigorous interviewer.
Frost: Maybe.
And so it is hard to take the close of Frost/Nixon as a meditation on the power of the medium. Indeed, as soon as one recognizes it as fantastical conversation between Nixon and Blair, it is hard to take as anything other than a meditation on the changing of political modes. Nixon and the ghost of Thatcher take their positions as the last serious politicians, however flawed and devious — inverting the film's proposed moral stance almost exactly.
If there is anything striking historically, it is that the role of the last authentic politician of the US, sculpted from gray gravitas, is Nixon rather than Thatcher's usual twin, Reagan. But of course this must be, as there is no way to rescue his political legacy from his longer career as an onscreen performer, and no real desire to do so. And Nixon, after all, is the towering figure of director Ron Howard's emancipation; the last broadcast of the Watergate hearings ended four days before the release of American Graffiti...