Frost/Nixon

 Whom do you think the best inter­viewer, you have come across? Per­son­ally, I like Pran­noy Roy, Vir Sangvi, Simi Garewell, Suba. Veer­a­pandiyan, Maalan, Yugi. Sethu.If you think Mud­hal­van inter­view is based on “Nerukku Ner” of Sun TV, you may end up wrong. It was Mcguf­fin — actu­ally the idea had been taken from this film Frost/Nixon.

We have seen enough about the film ‘All the president’s men’ in part I. It talked elab­o­rately about the Water­gate scan­dal and the inves­ti­ga­tion. You know what Nixon res­ig­na­tion let­ter stated “I hereby resign the office of the pres­i­dent of the United States” — this is the clas­sic exam­ple of a polit­i­cally cor­rect state­ment. Of course, he’s sur­rounded by the best lawyers to advise what to say n write. So what hap­pened after his res­ig­na­tion? His suc­ces­sor Ger­ald Ford relieved/pardoned from his charges. Then what?

If you think the inter­est­ing part is over, you will be sur­prised to know the hap­pen­ings in Frost/Nixon. The movie is based on a play which in turn is based on the famous Frost/Nixon inter­view series in 1977.

Plot

After his 3 years silence, Richard Nixon came out to con­fess with a British tele­vi­sion host David Frost. Of course, it hap­pened with a price tag asso­ci­ated with it for its view­er­ship because it’s Nixon’s con­fes­sion. Did Frost able to get what he expected out of the inter­view? Did the manip­u­la­tive Nixon answer for the tricky ques­tions as a usual politi­cian? They both had their egos, ques­tions about the suc­cess in their car­ri­ers and the legal impli­ca­tions, which was con­sid­ered more than any­thing else. You know who is speak­ing before Frost. Was it just another exam­ple of check­book jour­nal­ism? It’s not the story; it’s a ver­bal tug of war at its best.

View

Going back to Mud­hal­van, the 10 mins inter­view was cap­tured very well on screen. Think about a full length movie about prepa­ra­tions, the actual inter­view and after­ef­fects. The actors did not only enact their respec­tive roles but per­fectly per­son­i­fied. The movie begins with some minor intro­duc­tion parts from the TV host­ing part and Nixon’s part to get into a costly agree­ment, which both hasn’t thought about.

The impor­tant aspect of the film is its edit­ing. This is the only enabler of the movie which can carry the movie inter­est­ingly. Oth­er­wise, it could have been ended just as an exten­sion of the orig­i­nal inter­view doc­u­men­tary. Unlike live tele­casts today, the inter­view was taken in parts in dif­fer­ent days. So it vir­tu­ally looks like a box­ing game hap­pen­ing in rounds.

This movie also adds some inter­est­ing part of the his­tory, tele­vi­sion jour­nal­ism, the money involved [of course], legal impli­ca­tions of an inter­view and the impor­tance of ask­ing the right ques­tions to the right per­son. The full credit goes to Ron Howard for the right cast­ing and the per­fect play­ground for a polit­i­cal drama.

Offline from this film.. You know.. Geeta Koda [ wife of Madhu Koda ] has won her recent assem­bly elec­tions and ded­i­cated her vic­tory to her hus­band.. Nadakkattum.

That was a good inter­view :) [ Raguvaran’s dialog ! ].

:)

Toto

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