The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (***1/4)

It was a war begun under a false pretense that lasted way longer, was more deadly, and proved much more costly than predicted. The outcome was not as planned, and that severely impacted the political fortunes of the president who had poured hundreds of thousands of troops into a faraway country. That was Vietnam. People under 45 or 50 won’t remember Daniel Ellsberg, and yet his actions indirectly may have led to the downfall of a president and to one of the most important First Amendment verdicts by the United States Supreme Court.

Ellsberg’s goal was to end the Vietnam War, though. Through his job as a United States foreign policy analyst at the Rand Corporation, he had access to a top-secret report about the history of US involvement in Vietnam. Notably, it was top secret not because it would aid the enemy, but because it would demonstrate the deception of American presidents and the unreality of upbeat assessments about the likelihood of success. After handing the report to The New York Times and other newspapers, Ellsberg earned both a federal indictment and, from President Richard Nixon, the epithet that gives this film its title.

This can be seen as a companion piece to The Fog of War, the Errol Morris documentary that featured Vietnam-era Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. McNamara and Ellsberg were both originally supporters of the war (though Ellsberg with more reservations), and both realized that the US was not, as President Lyndon Johnson had told the public, winning the war. But whereas McNamara felt, until decades later, that his duty was to be loyal to his boss, the president, Ellberg came sooner to feel otherwise. Directors Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith allow Ellsberg to narrate his own story, incorporating recent interviews of him and others. Stylistically, the movie is not noteworthy. There is no Philip Glass score a la Morris’s work to lend a sense of urgency, and no fancy graphics. Minor re-enactments of certain scenes are included, and period footage, but mostly the movie is a typical “talking heads” documentary. Almost all of the voices, though, are of those directly involved in leaking the document, in Ellsberg’s life, or in related matters. One academic, people’s historian Howard Zinn, appears, but as one who knew Ellsberg in the 1970s. Nixon is heard on tape, wondering in one excerpt whether dropping a nuclear bomb on Vietnam might not be a good idea.

While little new information is revealed, this is a very well organized look at a piece of history that any American ought to know.

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viewed 4/14/10 at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 4/15/10

Frost/Nixon (***1/4)

This movie made me think not of other political movies but of a boxing movie, like Rocky, or the underrated one director Ron Howard did before this, Cinderella Man. They were underdog stories, and this is an underdog story for political junkies. It’s not about Watergate. There’s already movies like All the President’s Men and so forth. You don’t even need to know much about Watergate, or Richard Nixon, to watch the movie, though if you don’t it’ll be less interesting. But what it’s about is how a British journalist/TV host with a lightweight reputation managed to not only snag the fist in-depth interview with a heavyweight but also land some serious blows and, arguably, a knockout punch.

Written by Peter Morgan, who adapted his own play, the film begins with David Frost (Michael Sheen) as the affable but scheming celebrity-interview specialist. (Think of a cross between Barbara Walters and Geraldo Rivera.) But of a playboy too. Frost spends half the movie trying to get enough money to buy Nixon’s cooperation. Even the interview segments are not simply a condensate of the programs that in 1977 drew a record US television audience for an interview, but rather focus on the strategies of the combatants. For Richard Nixon (Frank Langella), it was something like Muhammad Ali’s rope-a-dope—let Frost use up his time flailing away at him while he calmly, presidentially, rolled with the punches and delivered lengthy, unrevealing answers.

Besides Morgan’s cohesive screenplay, Frost/Nixon is anchored by the powerful performances of both leads. Sheen’s Frost follows the same trajectory as his Tony Blair in The Queen (also written by Morgan); he becomes a more serious person as the film goes on. Langella’s Nixon is masterful; Nixon is a man whose voice and mannerisms are easily parodied, but Langella makes him into a real person, and not simply a villain. While I have no doubt that Nixon deserved to have resigned, I was not without sympathy for him while watching this, even as a rooted for Frost to take him down. Of the supporting actors, Kevin Bacon is most notable as Nixon’s fiercely loyal aide, Jack Brennan.

Everyone knows how this ends. Nixon would spend the next twenty years continuing to attempt to resuscitate his image, Frost was knighted in 1993, and other presidents went on to abuse their power. But the lesson of the movie is, beware the journalist with something to prove. It might’ve helped Sarah Palin to watch Nixon/Frost before she agreed to talk to Katie Couric.

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viewed 12/19/08 at Ritz 5; reviewed 2/14/09