Frost/Nixon (2008)

Ralph Nelson

Michael Sheen, left, as David Frost and Frank Langella as Richard Nixon in “Frost/Nixon.”

December 5, 2008

Mr. Frost, Meet Mr. Nixon

It’s twinkle versus glower in the big-screen edition of Peter Morgan’s theatrical smackdown “Frost/Nixon.” Directed by Ron Howard and adapted by Mr. Morgan, the film revisits the televised May 1977 face-off between the toothy British personality David Frost and the disgraced former president Richard M. Nixon three years after he left office, trimming their nearly 30-hour armchair-to-armchair spar into a tidy 122-minute narrative of loss and redemption that, at least from this ringside seat, would be better titled “Nixon/Frost.”

Broadcast in four 90-minute programs, the interviews were seen as an enormous risk both for Mr. Frost, who was gambling with his money and future, and for the presidentially pardoned Nixon, who was seeking absolution but risked further public humiliation. (Whatever the outcome, he was guaranteed a sweet jackpot: some $600,000 and 10 percent of the profits.)

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APPALOOSA

 

Ed Harris rides tall in the saddle as director, co-writer, co-producer and star of this terrific Western, a potently acted powerhouse that sticks in the mind and the heart. The source material is a 2005 book by Robert B. Parker, best known for his Spenser crime novels. Harris is best known for being a reliably superb actor (four Oscar nominations) and for scoring an acclaimed 2000 debut as a director with Pollock, in which he played the abstract painter Jackson Pollock. There is nothing abstract about Harris’ approach to Appaloosa. Every frame of the movie indicates his bone-deep respect for classic film Westerns, notably 1946’s My Darling Clementine, in which director John Ford took a low-key, almost lyrical approach to the gunfight at the OK Corral. Though Appaloosa is shot through with thunderous action and nail-biting suspense, the movie finds its soul in its main characters, in the friendship between Harris’ marshal, Virgil Cole, and Viggo Mortensen’s deputy, Everett Hitch. The two men have a history, and you can feel it in their every sly move and telling gesture, in their easy banter, in their hard-won mutual respect. Having signed up to bring rough justice to Appaloosa, an 1880s town in the control of despotic rancher Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons), Virgil and Everett do everything that’s expected, except show off or show fear. “Feelings get you killed,” says Virgil.

Harris and Mortensen, who co-starred in 2005’s A History of Violence, do some of the tangiest acting of their respective careers, and they make a knockout team. Everett, who carries an enormous double-barreled 8-gauge shotgun, shows a quiet erudition in his conversations with Virgil. Nothing comes between their unspoken loyalty — that is, until the arrival of Allison French (Renée Zellweger), a widow with a knack for playing piano that almost equals her knack for playing men. Virgil isn’t blind to Allison’s treachery, but he’s in love, and Everett sees it. So does Bragg, who knows that his wealth and power will trump love for centuries to come.

Harris deals with the story’s modern parallels, with the fine distinction between enforcing the law and just killing people. “Are you afraid to die?” Virgil asks one varmint, who proudly claims that nothing scares him. “Good,” says Virgil, pulling his gun, ” ’cause you go first.” Great line. Harris knows that the moral issues at stake here are timeless. His Western isn’t revisionist like Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven or deconstructionist like last year’s 3:10 to Yuma. His film resonates with themes of personal honor that don’t age. Appaloosa is gripping entertainment that keeps springing surprises. But Harris triumphs by making the final showdown a battle between a man and his conscience.

Slumdog Millionnaire

Who would believe that the best old-fashioned audience picture of the year, a Hollywood-style romantic melodrama that delivers major studio satisfactions in an ultra-modern way, was made on the streets of India with largely unknown stars by a British director who never makes the same movie twice? Go figure.

That would be the hard-to-resist ” Slumdog Millionaire,” with director Danny Boyle adding independent film touches to a story of star-crossed romance that the original Warner brothers would have embraced, shamelessly pulling out stops that you wouldn’t think anyone would have the nerve to attempt anymore.

But Boyle has been nothing if not bold with this film. He’s dared to use so many venerable movie elements it’s dizzying, dared us to say we won’t be moved or involved, dared us to say we’re too hip to fall for tricks that are older than we are. And, as witnessed by “Slumdog’s” capturing of the Toronto Film Festival’s often prophetic audience award, he’s won that bet.

Given that, it was perhaps inevitable that the director would end up making a film in India,plugging effortlessly into the phenomenal liveliness and nonstop street life of the place. And he’s upped the ante by hiring the great A.R. Rahman, the king of Bollywood music, to contribute one of his unmistakable propulsive scores.

All this dynamism is at the service of a script by “The Full Monty’s” Simon Beaufoy, which is in turn based on “Q&A,” a novel by Vikas Swarup that involves, of all things, the Indian version of the hit TV show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” If this sounds like unlikely source material for involving cinema, you’re not alone in your thoughts: Boyle initially had the same reaction.

What won the director over is the dynamic, almost Dickensian arc of “Slumdog’s” story, which begins with a multiple-choice question typed on the screen. “Jamal Malik is one question away from winning 20 million rupees,” it reads. “How did he do it? A) He cheated. B) He’s lucky. C) He’s a genius. D) It is written.”

Jamal Malik (Dev Patel of the British TV series “Skins”), the slumdog of the title, turns out to be an impoverished 18-year-old orphan who works hurriedly serving tea to harried telephone solicitors in the great city of Mumbai.

We see Jamal in two places almost at once in the film’s cross-cut opening. He’s on stage on the “Millionaire” telecast, being needled by Prem (Anil Kapoor), the show’s arrogant host. And he’s also in a police station the night before the final telecast, being brutally interrogated (”Slumdog” is rated R for “some violence, disturbing images and language”) because no one can believe that such a lowly, uneducated person has been able to answer all the questions that he has.

To get back on the show for the final question — by explaining to the dubious police inspector (Irfan Khan) how he came to know what he does — Jamal has to tell him (and us) the story of his life, a story where, in true Frank Capra fashion, chance, luck, suffering and street smarts all play major parts.

Jamal’s companion in most things is his older brother, Salim (Madhur Mittal), a hard-headed cynic where Jamal is a passionate dreamer, the kind of kid who is willing, in one of the film’s most piquant scenes, to literally wade through the offal from an outhouse to get to his hero, Indian film legend Amitabh Bachchan.

Because Jamal’s and Salim’s lives are full of incident despite their youth, it takes three actors apiece to tell their stories. The youngest of them are Hindi-speaking street kids whom casting director Loveleen Tandan (whose work was so crucial that Boyle gives her a co-director credit) both discovered and worked with closely.

As Jamal describes the specific incidents that led to his being able to answer each of the quiz show questions, he is simultaneously telling several stories, tales of the link between brothers, the never-ending battle with poverty, the lure and pitfalls of crime and the rapid modernization of India.

But most of all — and it wouldn’t be a Hollywood-style movie if this weren’t true — he’s telling a romantic story as well, a tale of love at first sight with the beautiful Latika (played as an adult by Freida Pinto), a love that has to fight against all manner of privations, disappointments and despair.

To make this kind of story modern, Boyle and his team, especially cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantel and editor Chris Dickens, have told it in the jazziest way possible, breaking things up into numerous then and now sections and making the dark elements (like the torture used in the initial police interview) much darker than would have been the case in Hollywood’s prime. The Warner brothers would have blanched at that, but they would have loved this story, and in that they would have been far from alone.

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Tags: Frost Nixon, must see movies of 2008, slumdog millionnaire