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I remember Watergate and I remember my father talking about the interview at the time, although I myself didn’t see it. So when we went to see Frost/Nixon this weekend I was aware of what it was about, however the film still managed to put up a few surprises for me. Martin Sheen was excellent as David Frost as was Frank Lagella as Richard Nixon, no surprise Frank has been nominated for an Oscar.
While there is a couple of scenes with just the Nixon camp the film is shot on the whole from the Frost side, in part it uses a documentary style to fill in some gaps which works well, but by far the main body of the film is the preparation for the interviews and the struggle to raise the money and get the interviews seen. Looking back on the impact they had it does seem somewhat surprising that such a struggle went on, but at the time no one thought Nixon would crumble and even if he ever was it wouldn’t be while being interviewed by a talk show host with a comedic bent. The way the film is presented suggests that if Nixon, having had a few drinks, hadn’t phoned Frost late one night then Frost would never have found the key to get Nixon to finally admit that he made mistakes. If that was really the case then from Nixon’s point of view the biggest mistake was that phone call.
The style of the film will sit well on the small screen so if you haven’t got the inclination to go and see it now on the big one then you are not going to miss anything by waiting for it to appear on the Television, however, that being said it is certainly worth going to see.
