Last night, I put up two postings and I'm going to try to do another three or four today. I have a backlog of films that I'm trying to clear off the docket. Hopefully, I can do this in time to put my musings about Watchmen next week.
Anyways, so J. and I went to my favorite theater, The Majestic Bay in Ballard. It's a family-owned theater (the only one in Seattle). More importantly, though, they have comfortable seats, freshly popped corn (I hate that popcorn that comes shipped in bags), real butter, and NO COMMERCIALS. It's so nice to avoid those really annoying commercials especially the ones for the National Guard. I have nothing against the military but I do have everything against mediocre testosterone rock used to create propaganda. I probably don't get out there as often as I'd like. Part of the problem is location -- J and I like to avoid using the car on the weekend and it's much easier to bus it downtown. The other issue is simply film selection. They just don't seem to play many of the films that I'd like to see. I'm always thankful, though, whenever I do have a reason to head out to Majestic Bay.
Much like The Visitor, J and I felt no great compelling reason to see Frost/Nixon. The only reason we bothered was because we wanted to see it before the Oscars. While I wouldn't call it disappointing, I certainly didn't feel that the film was particularly remarkable. I think sometimes the Academy confuses gravitas with quality. In other words, they overlook a film like The Dark Knight, which despite the fact it's a comic book-based story is still an example of masterly film making, and instead give credit to films like Frost/Nixon and The Reader because they tackle "serious" issues.
It would be incredibly stupid to measure the quality of a film based on popularity. Every quarter I ask my students what their favorite films are and when students name recent films, I'm often left wondering if they would say the same thing two or three years from now. Sometimes students ask why I show "old" films (meaning anything that's more than five years). I then point out that many of the films they may be so enamored with today, the ones showing in the cineplex, will soon be forgotten. I ask them how many films they saw four or five years ago they would really want to see again today?
With this said, I think it's equally stupid to ignore a film because it's too popular and after seeing Frost/Nixon, I'm even more convinced that a mistake had been made. There are so many films far better than this (including The Dark Knight) that came out in 2008. It's not that this is a bad film, it's just not a particularly interesting or innovative film. The only aspect of Frost/Nixon that I felt even remotely compelling was the structure. Released about fifteen years ago, Leon Gast's When We Were Kings documents the legendary "Rumble in the Jungle" between Ali and George Foreman (long before he became the lovable pitchman for an electric grill). If you've seen Frost/Nixon or plan to see it, I recommend that you take a look at When We Were Kings. The structural parallels are amazing. There's no way this could have been coincidence -- Ron Howard must have been thinking about Gast and the way he put together this retelling. Both films center around a "duel" -- in one case a verbal match and the other a boxing match. There is great emphasis placed on how the event came to be set-up and then the training process leading up to this great match. Just as Frost was seen as a lightweight, Ali too was thought to have been outmatched by Foreman. At first, it seems that Frost is getting pummeled but makes a surprising comeback. Ali also is getting destroyed but it turns out he was playing the rope-a-dope. Interspersed throughout this narrative stream are interviews (or fake interviews) of people who were there reflecting on what they saw happen. Oh, and if the parallel isn't obvious, there's a scene in which Nixon actually throws a playful jab to Frost's mid-section.
By the way, if you've noticed how little time I've spent to actually discussing Frost/Nixon itself ... well, let that be your clue as to what I really feel about the film.
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