The Review Revue
Issue date: 2/3/09 Section: Arts & Entertainment
The battle between two heavyweights has never been recorded like this before. It's Cassius Clay trumping Sonny Liston but instead of the ring - an interview. Instead of physical blows - verbal disintegration. This is Frost/Nixon.
The film portrays a critical goal garnered by avant-garde filmmakers since the 1920s. The quest for truth, the definitive cinema verites. Capital tee Truth. What does it mean and how does one find the real Truth of a controversy?
The subject matter is precise, David Frost vs. Richard Nixon, an epic battle between two public titans. Whether an audience of conspiracy theorists or avid entertainment seekers, Ron Howard directs us into an event, a documented event, which would forever encompass the realities of Watergate and disclose, in my opinion, an unbiased Truth of events.
Howard is not hiding the fact that he is directing something already documented. We watch the cameras go on. We are a part of the film crew. We are there as it happens.
The realism is uncanny, as the audience is forced into a position unlike any other; a sense of time that places us into the unfolding circumstances. Nothing hides from the camera's gaze. We watch everything unfold; the mental breakdown of the interviewer and the possibilities of failure in search of truth, the pre-fight trash talking, the urge to define careers and abolish negativism towards controversial lifestyles.
An acknowledgement of the career defining or demolishing moment through the lens of a television projector. But equally, we are able to understand that Nixon himself, as a subject, is purely humanistic and not as careless as Frost and his colleagues had led us on to believe.
While the truth is found, the subject is being extinguished and forgotten as an actual being. He believes his actions are true, like any other man.
Through faux documentary-esque interviews, a notion of time is established at the beginning and at the conclusion. We are given all the facts of what occurred during these four infamous interviews and are asked to decide whether or not the truth should be found regardless of its abilities to debilitate those involved.
The film portrays a critical goal garnered by avant-garde filmmakers since the 1920s. The quest for truth, the definitive cinema verites. Capital tee Truth. What does it mean and how does one find the real Truth of a controversy?
The subject matter is precise, David Frost vs. Richard Nixon, an epic battle between two public titans. Whether an audience of conspiracy theorists or avid entertainment seekers, Ron Howard directs us into an event, a documented event, which would forever encompass the realities of Watergate and disclose, in my opinion, an unbiased Truth of events.
Howard is not hiding the fact that he is directing something already documented. We watch the cameras go on. We are a part of the film crew. We are there as it happens.
The realism is uncanny, as the audience is forced into a position unlike any other; a sense of time that places us into the unfolding circumstances. Nothing hides from the camera's gaze. We watch everything unfold; the mental breakdown of the interviewer and the possibilities of failure in search of truth, the pre-fight trash talking, the urge to define careers and abolish negativism towards controversial lifestyles.
An acknowledgement of the career defining or demolishing moment through the lens of a television projector. But equally, we are able to understand that Nixon himself, as a subject, is purely humanistic and not as careless as Frost and his colleagues had led us on to believe.
While the truth is found, the subject is being extinguished and forgotten as an actual being. He believes his actions are true, like any other man.
Through faux documentary-esque interviews, a notion of time is established at the beginning and at the conclusion. We are given all the facts of what occurred during these four infamous interviews and are asked to decide whether or not the truth should be found regardless of its abilities to debilitate those involved.
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