Frost/Nixon

The experience for an audience when watching films that are ‘based on a true story’, such as Frost/Nixon, is often fraught with questions of ‘what is ‘true’’ or ‘is this constructed to serve and propel the drama?’ (I think less coherently when watching films of course and the questions more often occur as ‘did this really happen’ or ‘are they lying to me’?). This experience is often problematic because it distracts from the ‘story’, which, after all, is the god that must be obeyed of Hollywood film-making. The film was initially a stage play, (both stage-play and screen-play was written by Peter Morgan) which explains its development into a perfect example of finely honed classic Hollywood storytelling. And as audiences, we have come to expect nothing less from likes of director Ron Howard.

It’s a character driven, well-balanced narrative that continually plays with your allegiances. It depicts the famous David Frost interview with Richard Nixon after his resignation and controversial pardon for his Watergate crimes. ‘Interview’ is also a theme that is used as a mode of address and as a battle ground of the minds and personalities of Front and Nixon. The perception of ‘interviews’ is to uncover a ‘more real’ or to gain a deeper insight in the person being interviewed. It’s an act of uncovering and exposing. The film plays with this idea as the interview uncovers and exposes both the interviewer and the interviewed.

As characters, both Front and Nixon are unlikeable yet sympathetic at different intervals. And both have discernable character arcs and journeys where their interaction with one another affects the other; they learn and grow from their experience with each other. To its credit the film seamlessly guides you in rooting for the underdog despite his flaws but leaves you with an unlikely allegiance at the end.

There is a plot device that if it is ‘based on a true event’ then it is a fascinating insight into Nixon’s plagued conscious. If it is only a plot device to motivate Frost’s turning point then it feels artificial and you start to mistrust the narrative, the verisimilitude is broken, the disbelief is grounded instead of suspended – you begin to feel that their lying to me.
The film-makers acknowledge the “this is not real” problem, through the direct to camera ‘interviews’ with characters who are apparently fictional. Direct to camera interviews are a mode of address commonly associated with documentaries – a genre of film, which assumes factual authority. Through the use of these ‘interviews’ they are saying - Yes, they are lying to you. But does it matter?

Does it matter if they’re “lying to me” – no because truth is the ground on which fact falls, slain by the soldiers of storytelling. It doesn’t matter because history is merely the collection of human stories, biased and emotional as only they can be, poising as fact. Thus Frost/Nixon is a modern parable about the human need to exorcise the burden of guilt through confession and how the weight of responsibility lingers without reprieve.