Oscar season has arrived and with it a couple of prestige projects straight from “the theatah.”
“Hollywood Burgles Broadway for Bric-a-Brac” reads the likely Variety headline. The only problem is that those coveted statuettes aren’t exactly in the bag.
“Frost/Nixon,” adapted by author Peter Morgan and directed by Ron Howard, and “Doubt,” adapted and directed by author John Patrick Shanley, haven’t been altered radically, but changes in thematic emphasis, acting style and dramatic pacing might upset viewers silly enough to want to relive their theatrical experiences at the multiplex.
Faithful reinvention is the strategy adopted by Howard, whose film is the better of the two, largely because he’s the cannier movie craftsman.
Approaching storytelling as a swiftly unfolding visual phenomenon, Howard let a succession of staccato scenes speak without unnecessary interpretive underlining. Sure, his habit of holding emotionally climactic moments too long can tilt the drama in an overconventional direction, but there’s no denying the propulsive energy that brings us to these somewhat overcooked crisis points.
This tale of TV talk-show host David Frost (Michael Sheen), who wagers more than he can afford to snag the interview “get” of his era with disgraced ex-President Richard Nixon (Frank Langella), follows Morgan’s customary screenwriting scheme of pairing two historical characters of opposing temperaments whose confrontation proves to be destiny-changing.
In “The Queen,” it was Elizabeth II and Tony Blair in a standoff about the modern- day imperative of touchy- feely political performance.
Here, it’s a “born to be on the tube” party boy, eager to regain lost stature, and a notoriously untelegenic Machiavelli, determined to return to the lucrative spotlight without disclosing any Watergate secrets — a battle royal, in other words, for control over that all-important moneymaking vehicle known as public image.
Onstage, “Frost/Nixon” was as much a critical examination of media mastery and manipulation as it was the story of two dueling comeback kids. The personal saga ran alongside the larger societal one, deepening the humanity of the broader inquiry. The impressionistic set of Frost’s studio, with its flashing bank of TV monitors, never allowed us to lose sight of the play’s contention that it’s “tough to tell where the politics stopped and the showbiz started.”
The first half of the movie has a vivid sweep that’s more enthralling than the play’s bouncing abstraction. Howard keeps our senses tantalized by jetting us from London to Los Angeles and south down the coast to Nixon’s oceanfront villa in San Clemente.
The play, which began in London, includes narration by James Reston Jr. (Sam Rockwell), the journalist eager to be part of the team that will elicit Nixon’s apology to the nation, and Jack Brennan (Kevin Bacon), Nixon’s former chief of staff, who offers an alternative ideological viewpoint. This stubbornly theatrical structure cleverly is converted by Morgan into a faux documentary with talking heads delivering their sides of the story. But even with this framework in place, the focus is unswervingly on the two leads.
It’s interesting that the scenes that are less effective in the movie are those that seemed better suited to film: the series of televised debates between the two protagonists. In the theater, these clashes were presented as though they were sporting contests, a redemption competition played out by two self-dramatizers.
“Frost/Nixon” is smart, stylish and slick. If it doesn’t earn its cathartic finish, it does more than enough to deserve enthusiastic applause.
The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for “Doubt,” which despite its enviable cast (Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams and Viola Davis) is up against Shanley’s novice skills as a filmmaker. The movie version often seems as though it has been made by an English teacher who wants to introduce students to such literary concepts as foreshadowing, ambiguity and pathetic fallacy.
Consider this the Cliffs Notes edition, with every grand theme conveniently italicized for the upcoming quiz.
In fairness, the play, subtitled “A Parable,” doesn’t easily lend itself to cinematic treatment. The temptation to transform “Doubt” into a movie no doubt was fanned by its runaway success onstage (it won a Tony, a Pulitzer and nearly every other accolade).
But Shanley’s handling of this morality tale about a martinet nun who suspects a priest of wrongdoing with a pupil at her school sets up obstacles.
Talky, idea-oriented and crisply theatrical, this work can’t be expansively illustrated without recoding its DNA. For one thing, allowing us to meet the kids, including Father Flynn’s possible victim, Donald (Joseph Foster II), the lone black student at St. Nicholas, takes us from the realm of philosophical meditation to one of fact-finding, where every expression is scrutinized for incriminating information.
Cherry Jones, who originated the role of Sister Aloysius, St. Nicholas’ avenging principal, has a claim to being one of the greatest living American stage actresses. Streep is always charismatic, but Jones not only found more subtle shading in her portrait but also wrung maximum humor out of the dogmatic maxims her character coins.
“Doubt” might have worked better if, in the manner of “Frost/Nixon,” it had enlisted an outside directorial eye. But Shanley’s play is so customized for the stage that even this proposition is dubious.
The test of a truly original play might lie in its resistance to becoming easy fodder for films.
