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Sunday, May 3, 2009
At last, real adult entertainment!
posted by Rick Blue at 11h07
Based on a play by Peter Morgan.
If you haven’t been to the multiplex recently because the absurd fantasy Hollywood churns out these days really doesn’t turn you on, here is some good news:
Frost/Nixon.
My 19-year-old has no interest in it whatsoever. That’s a good sign. It will leave the Red Bull drinking, video game playing, hip hop listening, hat-sidewise wearing generation cold. And I am sure it will also baffle those of arrested development who run the film industry.
It is – my God – an adult film; using the real meaning of that phrase.
It’s hard to find adult entertainment these days. The movie industry thinks “adult entertainment” is the athletic escapades of an endless supply of bleached blondes cavorting with the same three dim-witted studs and shot as if it was a gynocological training film rather than anything remotely resembling erotica.
But it’s not.
Real adult entertainment is meaningful stories, convincing performances and crisp, intelligent scripts – difficult and therefore to be avoided like the plague.
If you liked The Queen, you will like Frost/Nixon. It is, refreshingly, not really about politics. And this is its strength. The politics is only used to reveal character, the character of these two men: David Frost and Richard Nixon – as different as sugar and salt.
Well played by consummate actors, they face each other in intellectual combat. And it climbs toward a dramatic climax, more compelling than any jerky camera, exploding, flying, shooting special effects extravaganza I have seen in years.
(Have you noticed that the shot of a superhero running towards the camera just as something big explodes behind him is such a cliché now that it has become comic?
But I digress.)
Nixon is portrayed by Frank Langella with amazing subtlety and compassion. Considering how easily he could become a cardboard bad guy, this might seem surprising. (He should have won the Oscar.)
But this is not the first time that this has happened. Years ago Oliver Stone made a film about Nixon, in which he was also played sympathetically by Anthony Hopkins.
Perhaps this is because Nixon was such a complex and interesting character, anyone who takes the time to scratch below the surface is rewarded with a gold mine of misguided and overreaching ambition.
Nixon is Macbeth.
As all those who study literature quickly find out, a sinner is much more interesting than a saint. It is a fact that baffles puritans and ideologues to this very day.