Fresh Loaf

MANO A MANO: David Frost (Michael Sheen, left) and Richard Nixon (Frank Langella) shake on it.

Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon resembles a reunion film of The Queen, or at least, it should. Frost/Nixon shares screenwriter Peter Morgan, who penned the 2006 Oscar-winning film about Princess Diana’s death as a political tipping point in England. Michael Sheen, who played Tony Blair in The Queen (and in Morgan’s predecessor film The Deal) here plays David Frost, a television personality best known today for his interviews with Richard Nixon in the wake of Watergate.

Based on his stage play, Morgan’s script for Frost/Nixon offers a similar perspective on power and the public sphere as The Queen. Morgan argues that incidents that seem like minor footnotes in fact prove to be historical turning points. Howard’s steadiness as a director makes a clever and compelling film of Frost/Nixon that’s everything a “West Wing” fan would want in a contemporary political drama. Unlike The Queen, however, the film feels more like a tempest in a teapot than one of the hinges of history.

Howard approaches the material almost like he’s helming a sequel to the famed newspaper drama All the President’s Men. The film opens with a montage about the Watergate Hotel break-in, the subsequent scandals, cover-ups and resignations, building to Nixon’s withdrawal from office. Frank Langella reprises his stage role as Nixon, and while his harrumphing delivery echoes many Nixon impressions, he gives the disgraced president the gravitas and dignity of a lion in winter.

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A Republican war hero picks an inexperienced right-winger as his running mate.

Questions quickly arise about the upstart VP candidate’s qualifications, and a scandal gets national media attention. But the running mate wows the party’s conservative base with a scrappy televised speech, turning the table with attacks on Democrats and the media.

Sound familiar? Yeah, I’m talking about Richard Nixon.

There are remarkable parallels between Nixon’s famous “Checkers speech,” which saved his spot alongside Ike in 1952, and Sarah Palin’s speech at the Republican convention, which … well, which may have done the same thing for her.Here’s one of the speeches:

I know that this is not the last of the smears. In spite of my explanation tonight, other smears will be made. Others have been made in the past. And the purpose of the smears, I know, is this, to silence me, to make me let up. Well, they just don’t know who they are dealing with. (more…)

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