Frost/Nixon: An Excursion into Revisionist Fantasy

Frost/Nixon, An Excursion into Revisionist Fantasy

I freely concede I’m no movie critic with no pretense of being a Siskel, an Ebert, or a Roeper. I like movies with some action, a shot of titilating romance, involving mixed genders, preferably devoid of leftist propaganda and homosexual themes. Unlike television sitcoms, locating such films is still possible, if increasingly difficult, to find. Despite many reviews to the contrary, Frost/Nixon isn’t one of them.

I have no clue as to why it was honored with 5 Golden Globes and 5 Academy Award nominations except that those tributes were more reflective of Hollywood’s sharp liberal, leftist bent than the merits of the film. Frost/Nixon’s one saving grace was that it was devoid of homosexual characters, attributable to its 1977 setting, when most homosexuals were still in closets as opposed to their current infestation of American society and entertainment venues. Politically, it reeked and oozed liberal propaganda.

The absence of quality in the disjointed Frost/Nixon, which nevertheless was accorded accolades, was superseded by a blatant revisionistic interpretation of history. On top of all that, it was just plain boring, except for Frank Langella’s excellent rendition of the brooding yet brilliant figure of Richard Nixon. As for Michael Sheen, he should have stayed on his own side of the Pond.

Perhaps a swisher or two would have made the difference in Frost/Nixon, as comic figures, and it might have finished ahead of Milk as best picture of 2008. It sure worked for Brokeback Mountain, anointed the 2005 best picture winner because it “broke new ground” with its two homosexual cowboys. Frost/Nixon didn’t break any ground at all since Nixon has been trashed for half a century and usually with more historical accuracy.

David Paradine Frost was essentially a nonentity with a career circling the toilet when he conceived the idea of cashing in on the disgraced and almost-impeached Nixon. His project and the movie featured a series of one-on-one interviews with the former president, the plan being to get him to fess up that he was responsible for the loss of thousands of American lives and many more thousands of Vietnamese in the Viet Nam War and to admit complicity in the Watergate coverup.

The plan failed but you would never know it from Frost/Nixon which presents Frost as scoring a dramatic coup d’etat, which never really happened, although it’s hard to tell that from the reviews.

Google “Frost/Nixon” . . .

(Read the rest at http://genelalor.com/.)