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For young movie goers (under the age of 30) Nixon will probably,
aside from the history books, be remembered from Ron Howard’s
gripping account Frost/Nixon (2008), about Nixon’s intense encounter
with the journalist David Frost.
Twelve years earlier, however, in 1996, Oliver Stone made a
memorable biopic called Nixon, starring a staggeringly persuasive Sir
Anthony Hopkins in the film’s leading role and simply depicting reality
‘as the director sees it’ (cf. In Video Entertainment 1996).
“Paranoia, bitterness and revenge” function as the main themes in
Stone’s movie, in which Nixon is at best a tragic hero, who may have
had ideals, but who would soon come to be known for his scandalous
cover-ups and political plotting (ibid.).
As is typical of Oliver Stone, the film uses fictionalized archival
footage, creating an intense sense of authenticity, and the film
establishes a certain sense of sympathy toward Nixon – however
unrelenting it may seem – by going back to his strict upbringing and
showing him as a young, impressionable boy (fig. 18). “JFK was a
murder mystery,” the director says, while “this is a character mystery”,
a character mystery trying to unlock and explain the enigma that is
Richard Nixon (ibid.).
Stone has often been known for his political views – and largely seen
as a political filmmaker – but going back to and dramatizing the
childhood of Nixon, he focuses on Nixon as a private and essentially
tragic character, providing us with a causal-psychological way of
explaining or even justifying of Nixon’s actions. As Anthony Hopkins
puts it in the featurette accompanying the dvd version of Stone’s film:
“I think he’s a tragic figure, tragic to America also” (ibid.).
Politician Turned Boxer: Frost/Nixon
Whereas Stone, like Griffith, creates a fictional ‘cradle-to-grave like’
account of Nixon’s life, Ron Howard focuses on one specific and crucial
event from 1977, a televised interview which would largely disgrace
and discredit ex-president Richard Nixon.
The screenwriter behind the film, Peter Morgan, is hardly unfamiliar to
the biopic genre, having earlier created The Queen (2006), in which
Hugh Grant stars as the British Prime Minister (at the time) Tony Blair
and Helen Mirren plays The Queen.
In Frost/Nixon we are not concerned with the hows and whys – how
The Watergate scandal came about and why Nixon was so paranoid
regarding his political opposition. Howard’s film, instead, is concerned
with Nixon’s attempt to retouch or even recreate his image and the TV
journalist David Frost’s attempt to resurrect his career in TV
journalism. Howard’s film, characterized by film critic Peter Bradshaw
as nothing more than a “talky, inert drama” (Bradshaw 2008), is, thus,
reminiscent of a “boxing movie about two combatants who never meet
outside the ring” (ibid).
As is typical of the genre, the film opens with (fictionalized) archival
footage and captions illustrating the trials regarding Watergate and
displaying the different people who were forced to resign on account of
that political scandal (fig. 19). “As an American I found this story
relevant,” says director Ron Howard, a story displaying “the breakdown
in the citizens’ trust of their government” (Universal 2009). More
acutely, though, the director points to the potential of describing the
“alleged abuses of power” in the Bush administration of the time
(2008; ibid).
However the film is conceived – whether it is seen strictly as a
historical reminder or as an allegorical depiction of power abuse and
misconduct in the US government – it hardly gives us a deep insight
into the psyche of Richard Nixon.
Final remarks
In his own words, Frank Langella, who plays Nixon in Howard’s film,
was “determined not to do an impression” (ibid.).
Even so, biopics have an inherent Oscar quality, given that actors have
to mimic and (to some degree) impersonate a famous person – and
polical biopics are often compelling and complex character studies in
which tragedy and success are juxtaposed in various different ways.
The political biopic is not a new genre in America, and its prevalence in
the Hollywood genre system is telling of its inherent qualities as a ‘star
vehicle’ which feeds on a natural hunger for reality and history (in a
way that seems harmless, even if it clearly represents a deeply
individualistic conception of society).