Robot & Frank

Future Tense: Past Imperfect
or
Wiping the Memory

Frank (Frank Langella) is a "retired" jewel thief, and getting old.  By day, he sits around the house, getting up late and reading a book—that old, antiquated form of reading in the future.  When he has half a mind to, he'll wander into town and visit the library, and flirt with librarian Jennifer (Susan Sarandon), and do a little light shop-lifting.  At night, he indulges in some light lock-picking...a man has to have a hobby.

But, living isolated, 30 years divorced with two grown kids with their own lives, he's solitary...and failing.  It's tough for son Hunter (James Marsden) to keep an eye on him, so he gets Frank the latest thing...a robot caretaker (performed by Rachael Ma, voiced by Peter Sarsgaard*) to get Frank on a regulated schedule, cook him healthy meals, clean, and program some beneficial activities.

To Frank, the robot is one big rectal thermometer, and he spends the initial first few days trying to find a way to turn the thing off or, at least, a way to get under its metal skin (those lock-picks might come in handy!).  Frank grouses, kvetches, protests and Robot (he never gets around to naming it) re-directs, gently persuades, all according to a program that looks for improvement, adjusts its approach and gently pushes.  It is altogether clear that Robot is more capable of change than Frank.  But, they're stuck with each other, in sickness and in health, until the old thief notices the precision and flexibility of the robot.  Maybe they might be of some use to each other, after all.

It's a great idea for a story, and the capacity for old dogs and programs to learn new tricks.  It might be a little too "out there" to make Frank a jewel thief, as the tale would be just as compelling, the interactions (the best part of the film) as interesting without it, but without that angle there wouldn't be much of a plot.  And the movie falls flat in the same area most speculative movies fall flat  the sociological aspect.  Oh, they get little technology details fine (there's one futuristic electric car, all the others are very contemporary) and the fashions are a little forward (but not hysterical ala The Hunger Games), but everything feels exactly the same as now.  There are no details, beside the talk of "brain-centers" and the demise of the bound book, about what the effect of these mechanical man-servants on people's lives, or the plight of the mentally challenged in this world.  This future does not look compelling, and after saying the film is set in "the near future," the idea is pretty much abandoned.**

But, that's the details.  For the most part, Robot & Frank clanks along, with a nicely done performance by Langella, the central interaction between the titular characters being the heart, soul and well-greased gears of it.

Robot & Frank is a Matinee.

* Sarsgaard's performance is in the same soft, reedy, solicitous manner that, I suppose, is de rigeur post-HAL 9000—Kevin Spacey did the same thing in Moon—but one wonders if one can do anything else with it, besides, of course,  fussy butlers.

** I could also quibble about one relationship being a little too neatly tied together, but to say anything else would be spoiling things.

Frost/Nixon

"That Was the Crook That Was"
or
"David vs. Go-lie-eth"

Well, it was hardly "An Epic Battle for the Truth." It was a stunt put on by David Frost and Richard Nixon to jump-start their respective careers. I remember those interviews and the hoopla they generated. there was a lot of heat in the media about "checkbook journalism," and it was being kind to call it "journalism"—Frost's go-to question always was "What is your definition of love?"* It was, in fact, the news-equivalent of opening Al Capone's vault, or the Billy Jean King-Bobby Riggs tennis match.

But it did happen, quite a bit of the way "Frost/Nixon" scribe Peter Morgan presents it. The legal wranglings, the rejection by the networks leading to syndication, the sponsorships by the new-tech "Weed-Eater" and Alpo dog food (Lorne Green was the spokesperson). I remember the stories of the exploding light, Nixon's remarks of Frost being his "Grand Inquisitor," even the "Did you do any fornicating?" line that (although it didn't occur right before taping as the movie would have you believe) Nixon threw at Frost when the cameras weren't running.

But there's enough difference to make it suspect. The interviews were not as packed with drama as the movie would have you believe (see the video below). They were quite benign affairs, and Nixon didn't betray any secrets that he didn't want to betray--the movie doesn't tell you that Nixon's deal included 20% of the royalties of the syndication, which made him Frost's partner in the enterprise, and the former president knew that throwing in some red meat would garnish more money for him.

The furthest afield that Morgan goes is the most interesting. The playwright/screen-writer invents a late-night phone-call between Nixon (Frank Langella--after a while you buy him, but his Nixon speaks like a dilletante) and Frost (Michael Sheen—his Frost is vocally perfect) before the final interview, the one involving Watergate. Frost, ill-prepared and feeling in over his head, is caught in a moment of self-doubt when Nixon, with a couple drinks in him, calls and has a heart-to-heart comparing Frost's history to his own—of being shunned by the privileged kids, the ones who got all the breaks. Finally, Nixon builds to a fevered pitch and becomes the ranting monster everyone imagines him to have been, yelling that "all those (expletives deleted) can choke!"

And this is the problem: that phone-call never happened.** It's an invention of Morgan's to transtion Frost from defeated to fighting, and although it dramatically works, it's a cheat. The truth of the matter is that Nixon is never the monster that the dramatists and speculators want him to be—as threats to democracies go, he was a rather dull one, but, as with "Secret Honor," the fictional Nixon, drunk, raving like a bitter lunatic, vengeful and self-pitying (which he was), but dramatically incapable of being Lear, just isn't good enough to square with the man who used his office like a club against his political enemies, and set up his own police force to carry out the dirty work that even J. Edgar Hoover disapproved of. One suspects "The Queen" isn't nearly as accurate a picture of Elizabeth II. Reality just isn't dramatic enough.

Still, it's a great cast with Kevin Bacon as Nixon's Chief of Staff, Matthew Macfadyen (blonde Beatle-wigged as Frost's producer), Oliver Platt and Sam Rockwell as Frost's researchers, Toby Jones as a perfect Irving "Swifty" Lazar, and the original "Bad Seed " Patty McCormack plays a frail Pat Nixon.

It's certainly Ron Howard's most subtle film in years—there's no evidence of the grand-standing direction that weakens a lot of his out-put, and his asides and cut-aways aren't distractions, but part of the fabric. He merely provides the arena, and lets the actors do their work. It shows just how good a director he is, when he's not trying to show how good a director he is.

"Frost/Nixon" is a Matinee.

Reality and Fiction: Frost and Nixon and "Frost/Nixon"

* My favorite answer was Richard Burton's: "Love is staying up all night with a very sick child...or a very healthy adult." Barbara Walters' go-to question was "If you were a twee, what kind of twee would you be?"

** And Morgan does some obfuscating on the point: Nixon doesn't recall making the phone-call, although Frost assures him that he did.

Olde Review: Diary of a Mad Housewife

This was part of a series of reviews of the ASUW Film series back in the '70's. Except for some punctuation, I haven't changed anything from the way it was presented, giving the naive, snotty kid I was back in the '70's a break. Any stray thoughts and updates I've included with the inevitable asterisked post-scripts.

This is a companion piece to "Olde Review: The Nights of Cabiria"


"Diary of a Mad Housewife" (Frank Perry, 1970) As for "Diary of a Mad Housewife," it was the first time I had seen it in an unbutchered form, and I hate to make snap-judgements on a film,* but all the time I was watching it, I was painfully aware that it was made in 1969, released in 1970, at the heighth of the "youth-movie" craze, when, in order to make a point (and a buck!) subtlety was thrown out the window and you were beat over the head with "THE MESSAGE." I felt it was a shame that to see Frank and Eleanor Perry, who collaborated on the sensitive "David and Lisa," consciously changing their style to fit what was profitable at the time, so that the whole movie was written and directed like the opening cocktail party of "The Graduate." It's fine for ten minutes of the film, but the whole film? After awhile, I began to think I was in a cage, no matter how honorable the film's theme is. Anyway, Ithought I'd tell you where I stood at the beginning.


"Diary..." tells the story of Tina Balser,** (Carrie Snodgress) who is married to an overly-ambitious, ego-centric, heartless,and just plain insensitive husband (played by Richard Benjamin, just the way you'd expect him to play it-hissing is allowed). She has two obnoxious little girls who take after their dad, and she's somewhat dazed (and just a little miffed) by the whole situation, especially after a hectic day (capsulized in a fantastic title sequence) when her husband heaps new work on her, complains she does no work, and then he wants to go out. In desperation, she has an affair with a writer (who is just as chauvinistic as her husband--but at least, she can talk to him).


Like Cabiria, Tina caroms off disaster into disaster, because in the worlds of her two males, she is always wrong, in their views. Her lover (Frank Langella) who is her only means of escape from her home-life, is no solution to her problem. He is just another problem. Finally, she goes into analysis, where she tells her story, and here, too, is no solution, for her "group" is too obsessed with each of their own personal problems to help work out hers. Our last sight of Tina is of her face, not really listening to the arguments of her group, her eyes slowly look around the room, carefully avoiding the people. Then, finally, she looks at us, like Cabiria. She stares at us, then smiles, not the half-sad smile of Fellini's heroine, but the smile of someone in an absurd situation and realizes it, and realizes also that she can't get out. Just before we fade out on her, her eyes widen. Maybe onto another means of help; maybe on out of a realization that she's trapped and has withdrawn back into herself.

Broadcast KCMU-FM October 7th and 8th, 1976

Again, not much to add. I'm far less enamored with "Diary of a Mad Housewife" because the cartoonish stylization employed by the Perry's to exaggerate Tina's plight--the hellish counter-argument to the domestic bliss of the Mrs. Cleaver/Mrs. Brady/Donna Reed's that had been foisted on television audiences--is as much a lie as the tv versions. The "madness" of the American housewife of the 60's was a very real side-effect of the help-mate/second-class citizen role that was typical in the pre-exploded nuclear family. Now, economic conditions have blasted the stay-at-home Mom to a luxury of the upper-class. Now, mom's work...and do the rest of the "mad" duties, as well.

This is progress?!

* There's a lie if ever I've read one. Snap and summary judgements are a critic's bread and butter (not to mention terribly efficient!). The trick is being able to justify it. And there, some re-adjustment sometimes has to be put in play.

** Uh, get it?