Opinion: Christmas-Day Movies: A Visit From St. Nixon?
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| A scene from the movie, not real life. (AP Photo/ Universal Pictures, Ralph Nelson) |
Nothing says Christmas like Richard Nixon. Every single seat in the mid-afternoon Christmas Day screening of ‘’Frost/Nixon’’ that I went to was full. Maybe people went to the film to relive the political past, in which case they may have gotten a bit more than memory would otherwise have provided. Among the criticisms of this engrossing mano a mano duel film is that the British screenwriter made interviewer David Frost into more of a formidable TV version of Woodward-Bernstein than he actually was.
No matter. As someone points out at the end of the film, it’s television’s freeze-frame, big-moment nature, obliterating all of life’s lesser episodes, that ends up defining history. Maybe, after all, that’s why people crowd into films like this one: not to be reminded of the major truths they already know, but of the smaller insights and episodes, the quirks and collateral moments, that may have eluded them -- or in this case may not have happened -- in the first place.
I’m looking forward to reading the book. Again.