Frost/Nixon

While firmly 2nd best on the list of "Historical Dramas with a focus on important events in US History that Noah saw this year," Frost/Nixon had a number of good things going for it. Most of those good things had to do with the performances. Frank Langella did a great job in humanizing the character of Nixon, who for most Americans (at least those as generally unfamiliar with the details of US History as myself) has been dehumanized every which way.

That relates to another reason I liked the movie- I found it educational. That's a bit of an embarrassing admission, but I'm going to claim ignorance due to poor US History education in my scholastic career. Yes, I'm aware that Frost/Nixon is fictionalized. However, I didn't even realize that the interview ever happened, much less the details therein, so at the very least I learned something.

But back to Langella, because he was really the bright point in this film. Langella presented a complex Nixon- a Nixon that was arrogant, defensive, and unapolagetic but ultimately haunted by the mistakes that he made in office despite trying to do his best for the country.

The film could have done a better job of contextualizing the interviews by giving a better sense of the public's reaction. Milk (my favorite Historical Political blah blah movie of the year) did a better job of this, although it had some advantages since many of the important scenes took place in public instead of in a small house and some very intense one on one conversations. That said, Frost/Nixon did have the option to explore the interviews through the lens of the television (in the format that most of the contemporary public would have followed them). That might have been a different movie, but it would have been an interesting approach.