Richard Nixon's Atonement

I just watched Frost/Nixon and was underwhelmed by it as is the tendency. The material was there, but either the editing or the structure left something to be desired.

F/N did get the most important thing right, though. And that right thing was the same right thing that was in Atonement (that movie had a better story/script to work with, though).

At the end of Atonement, an aged Briony (Vanessa Redgrave) is doing an interview for a book she has completed. At the end of the interview as we see it, she admits that her writing has been to give a past to the people she cared about that she had denied them. Her books had been enjoyed but misunderstood. But in that TV interview, the most powerful moment of the movie, she admits that she has done something unforgivably wrong, that she had worked the rest of her life to somehow make up for it, and that she had utterly failed. Powerful stuff.

Frank Langella manages to bring Nixon a very similar moment, and we wish it could be called redemption, but it's more of an avowal, a confession.

The interview being in a TV format is important, as Ron Howard feels he needs to tell us. There was nothing short of a TV close-up that could give us that very Nixon.

Langella's revelation won't haunt me like Redgrave's did, but I still think it is important. McEwan's novel couldn't utilize the affect of the TV interview, and I'm glad Wright's Atonement did. After Frost/Nixon I expect to see this powerful TV interview construction used well in the future.