Frost/Nixon, Langella/Rockwell

Frost/Nixon is, of course, about the infamous interview in which a very minor celebrity -- who admittedly referred to himself as a performer more readily than as a journalist -- entered the history books by, against all odds, not only landing an interview with former President Richard Nixon, but also being the first person to get Mr. Nixon to publicly admit to engaging in a cover-up.

On another level, Frost/Nixon is about a contrast between two very different great performances. On the one hand, we have the more obvious of the two, Frank Langella, who nails Richard Nixon so precisely that from the very first moment he appears on screen, we feel that he was born to play the role. It's actually quite amazing how much he resembles Nixon, in both face (his make-up is minimal, especially when compared to such artificial transformations as that of Anthony Hopkins) and voice (which he doesn't have to change at all, although he does slightly alter his speech patterns to mimic Nixon's). Yet there is more to Langella's performance than a mere resemblance to Nixon. With the help of writer Peter Morgan, Langella paints Nixon not as a caricature, but as a man who, paradoxically for one who had so much to hide, wore his emotions on his sleeve for all to see. Morgan depicts Nixon as a man who delights and even excels in playing mind games with his adversary (for that is indeed what David Frost was from the beginning). Amiable when he should be defensive, devilishly throwing social curveballs just before the cameras roll, and always quick with a justification and an anecdote to make himself seem folksy, Nixon is here presented as a man who borders on outright villainy, but is saved from such a label by his own delusions that he is ultimately a good guy, that he and Frost are kindred spirits. One seeks to bury the truth, the other seeks to uncover it, but in Nixon's mind, these contrasting goals are merely two sides of the same coin. He has fun with the whole concept, and if this eventually leads to the overconfidence that resulted in his downfall in the Frost/Nixon interviews, Morgan shows how this turn of events could have seemed like a surprise to a man like Nixon.

As Frost, Michael Sheen gets the job done. His performance is a bit too broad, as if somebody forget to tell him that this isn't a comedy, but a political thriller. By the time the movie gets to the final interview -- the scene that matters most -- we are accustomed enough to Sheen's interpretation that the scene remains effective, but the end result is the same: Although we are clearly meant to, we never quite identify with Frost; he remains a cinematic archetype, the Man who Must Fight the Odds to obtain his goal.

If the film has an everyman, it's Jim Reston, played by Sam Rockwell, and here we get to why Frost/Nixon plays like a contrast in great performances: While Langella gives an undeniable tour-de-force, Rockwell makes his character believable as a guy you might know. His outrage at Nixon's crimes go beyond political belief; he actually feels emotionally hurt by Nixon's actions. Even the juxtaposition delivered by Rockwell (and the film has a great deal of exposition, which many actors consider the toughest task for a performer) feels natural and familiar. Initially, I was taken aback by how well Rockwell inhabited such a role, which made me realize he has never played an everyman before -- he's been the goofball, the wacko, the sociopath, the best friend, but even in his lead performances, he's never been called upon to play just a Regular Guy. Here, he does so with a naturalism that invites you into his world, and makes you feel that even if you don't know Jim Reston himself, darned if he doesn't remind you of someone you can't quite put your finger on.

Langella was nominated for an Oscar for his performance, and rightly so. But Rockwell's performance is arguably the more impressive one, and if it was overlooked as a performance -- well, that's kind of the point.

He must be crazy! He's a security guard!

In the A&E documentary "Poltergeists," part of their series on "The Unexplained," clinical psychologist James Houran, a quack who works for the University of Illinois, dismisses a ghost sighting because it was reported by a security guard at Bobby Mackey's Music World, and, according to Dr. Houran, security guards are particularly likely to believe in ghosts. Let me repeat that: Houran is actually claiming that there is a direct correlation between the chances of being a security guard and the chances of believing in ghosts. What a crock! This is the kind of skeptic whose wild alternative theories make the blind believers seem reasonable by comparison. As a security guard, I'm offended. As a security guard who happens to believe in ghosts, I'm aware that I have to tread lightly; in other words, yes, I appreciate the irony.

Dr. Houran defends his statement that security guards are more likely to believe in ghosts because, as he explains it, guards personalize their patrol grounds and develop a feeling of responsibility that is so intense that it can manifest itself in the delusion that ghosts are present. This delusion fills the guard's emotional compulsion to be needed and, in the guard's mind, legitimizes his professional duty. After all, the guard can now conclude that he has to protect his grounds not only from trespassers and vandals, but also from mystical spirits that go bump in the night! At this point, it's important to note that Houran never claims that he has diagnosed the guard from Bobby Mackey's on an individual basis -- but rather he is saying this about security guards in general.

I am perfectly willing to admit to the logic behind Houran's theory -- to an extent. If somebody who is already emotionally vulnerable and mentally unstable enough to be blindly open to suggestion -- and we all know such people exist (most of us even know at least one or two) -- then I can see them going down this sad path of psychological breakdown if they take a job as a security guard. But those psychological vulnerabilities must have already been present in order for this to occur. A person of reasonable mental health, however, is an entirely different ball of wax. To believe that an emotionally stable, mentally sound person can develop an emotionally compulsive need so strong that it results in delusion is . . . well, that belief itself is delusional.

Isai, Director of Housekeeping at the Greenwich Country Club, laughed when I told him about Houran's theory. In response, Isai offered his own explanation of why security guards might be more prone to believe in ghosts: because they routinely work alone and in the dark, conditions which are ripe to allow the darker corners of our imaginations to run wild. This actually makes sense to me, although Isai meant it as a joke, and did not mean to imply that he actually agreed with Houran's statement. How interesting to me that, given the same basic premise (that a mind's workings explain that, and explain how, a security guard is more likely to believe in ghosts than most other people would) the janitor's explanation is more logical and plausible than the explanation provided by the Resident Clinical Psychologist of the University of Illinois.

And speaking of Isai, let me go off on a bit of a tangent here; don't worry, it's relevant.

Every morning at work, Isai drops by my office and performs the following routine: First, he asks me what's new, and responds with amazement and disbelief when I tell him that nothing is new. Second, he plops down in a chair and complains about how tired he is. Then, after staring into space for a few moments, he will tell me a story about something he heard on the news or through the grapevine. The story is always interesting and rarely plausible.

Today's story was about a woman in Miami who hit her head in a car accident. She seemed to recover quickly, but when she returned to work, she found herself constantly switching back and forth between five different languages, and was, due to her head injury, unable to control which language she would speak in any given conversation. Customers couldn't understand her, and so she was fired. She responded with a lawsuit, claiming that her civil rights, as defined by the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990, had been violated.

Oh, and here's the kicker: She claims that before the accident, she didn't speak five languages. Only knew the one. Never took a class or immersed herself in another culture or anything like that. Just one day, a bump on the head makes her not just multilingual, but uncontrollably so. Her family, of course, swears her story is true.

Isai seemed to believe every word of the woman's story, and argued that it must be true, because the lady's family backed her story up. I laid out the possibilities:

1. The woman is lying about not knowing five languages before the accident. Either as an (apparently successful) attempt to get media attention, or as a scam to sue her employer, the woman is being outright deceitful.

2. The bump on her head actually did some damage, and she no longer remembers learning the many languages she speaks. Her family backs her story up either because they are being deceitful (for the reasons mentioned above) or they honestly somehow didn't know that the woman really speaks five languages. Yeah, they're her family, but they might not know. You hear all the time about people who discover amazing secrets from family members: he's got a second wife, she's had an abortion, he's a wanted criminal, whatever. As far-fetched as it may sound, it's entirely possible this woman learned five languages without the knowledge of her family. And it's certainly more plausible than the third theory, the one she wants us to believe:

3. The hit on her head somehow magically or miraculously granted her the instant ability to be multilingual. If you ask me, it's a pretty crappy miracle that gets you fired from your job and makes you unable to communicate; how ironic that the woman who speaks so many languages has trouble conversing, although I notice that while she can't communicate well enough to do her job, she can somehow speak well enough to arrange a law-suit.

Isai is a blind believer, and he'd rather believe theory #3, regardless of relative plausibility. Dr. Houran is a blind skeptic, and in his struggle to justify his lack of belief, he runs circles around logic to come up with alternative theories. Neither way is the way to go. I'm somewhere in the middle; most people who read this will know the story of why I believe in ghosts, but will also know that I'm not satisfied to settle on "ghosts" as a definite answer, that I still believe that the events that happened to me so long ago must have a rational answer. "Ghost" is just the phenomenon I attribute those events to until I find a better explanation.

Dr. Houran, by contrast, doesn't care about finding a better reason, he just wants a non-ghost-related reason. Here is the biggest, most obvious flaw in Houran's reasoning: As he explains it, the security guard's belief in ghosts is caused by a delusion, and the delusion in turn is caused by a combination of emotional need and a high degree of responsibility. This is not an example of cracking under pressure, this, for the security guard, is a normal state of affairs. If responsibility leads so directly to delusion, forget about ghosts, I'd be scared of airline pilots and neurosurgeons!

It occurs to me that the title of Resident Clinical Psychologist of the University of Illinois must carry a lot of responsibility.