Portrait of an American Family - 'W.' Review...
The first decade of the 21st Century is undeniably characterized first and foremost in America, possibly even more than the lengthy wars that we have become involved in, by the atmosphere of sheer political tension. George W. Bush has been called many names, from “visionary” to “the worst President in American history, but the one that applies to a review of this allegedly biographical film is probably “the Great Divider.” Like it or not, regardless of your own political standpoint, Bush cleaved the nation in two along political lines in a cleaner and more thorough cut than probably anyone else in American history.
It follows, then, that a biographical film about his life, made and released during his actual presidency, should raise some controversy. It may be reasonable to assume that your political convictions will color your impression of the film, but as a fair account of Bush’s life as relevant to his presidency, W. appears to make a conscious effort to portray scenes and sections of Bush’s life as we know them from a huge variety of published materials from his former aides, reporters, etc. On the other hand, it’s also not hard to tell that director Oliver Stone doesn’t have many nice things to say, which tends to take away from the film’s believability. But Bush haters are going to eat it up.
The movie starts out as Bush was suffering through a fraternity hazing ceremony at Yale and then moves through a series of disjointed events throughout his life in an effort, I suppose, to give us a better idea of who he is and what life experiences caused him to make the decisions that he made and to stick by certain things in the face of what seemed to be overwhelming evidence to the contrary. There is no arguing with the fact that the movie is fascinating as long as you have at least the slightest interest in modern American politics, but it’s true that it’s impossible to ignore the political slant. I don’t have much nice to say about Bush myself, but it would have been a much better artistic and ethical decision to lay off the Bush-bashing in a movie like this.
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Granted, the movie presents itself as an honest attempt to tell the story of a man whose life was peppered with enormous mistakes, addictions, failures, and short-comings, and who then made it into the highest office in America and continued many of the same habits of making mistakes and ignoring advice, but when you have things like Bush’s famous creation of the word “misunderestimate” and his inability to articulate what happens when you “fool me twice,” it becomes obvious that the movie has an agenda entirely different from showing us something more about a compelling and fascinating figure in the annals of modern American government. Especially when such things as those little slips of the tongue are taken entirely out of reality and plugged into situations convenient for them to fit nicely into the screenplay.
I happen to agree that Bush was a terrible president, it’s just too bad that Stone felt so compelled to spend so much time poking immature fun at the man when he should have been making an informative and lastingly important film about his life.
There are amazing impersonations of many of the members of his administration, Richard Dreyfuss gives us an incredibly effective portrayal of Dick Cheney’s quiet, ruthless confidence, Toby Jones is a small Karl Rove but captures his political brilliance and his understanding of how to pull Bush’s strings, and Jeffrey Wright gives a great performance as Colin Powell, a sole voice of warning about the implications of going to war. His comes across as a voice that is clearly informed and knowledgeable, indeed the only sane one in the room, but one that is summarily ignored.
[caption id="attachment_25423" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Hey, you can't fight in the War Room!"]
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But there are also some lacking performances. Scott Glenn doesn’t look or act like Donald Rumsfeld but fills the role well enough, James Cromwell couldn’t be less like Bush Sr. but provides the necessary imposing father figure whose apparent preference for his other son created a lot of Bush’s drive to become something, even if, as the movie argues, it was something that he was not prepared or qualified for. But worst of all is Thandie Newton as Condoleeza Rice. Hers is one of the closest physical comparisons, but my god, what a nasally, whiny performance. Her bizarre attempts to capture the voice of the real Condoleeza was the most distracting and ineffective thing in the entire movie. This is her worst performance since Beloved.
The two things that the movie attempts to do are to show us who Bush the man is and to give us some insight into how and why he made the decisions that he made while in the White House. It is an interesting portrayal of a young adult life that shows us a lot of things that we have long since already known about. But the reading public and those who follow political developments in at least minor detail will not learn much of anything new, and that’s probably the movie’s biggest weakness.
It’s most compelling scenes are the ones in the inner circle, meetings with top members of the administration discussing the run-up to the Iraq war, although the extent to which these scenes are all conjecture – educated conjecture, but still conjecture – subtracts from the immediate believability of it all. I was disappointed at how much time I spent wondering how much of this was just made up, especially the stuff from Bush’s personal life. When the director so obviously makes no efforts to hide his own political opinions, it’s a little distracting when he presumes to paint such a detailed picture of both the personal and professional lives of Bush and so many of the important members of his administration.
The movie is hugely interesting, it’s just too bad that so much of it is necessarily fictional, because when made-up conversations are interspersed with well-known and documented occurrences and facts, it blurs the line between fiction and reality and makes it almost impossible to tell what we should believe and what us just Oliver Stone making an elaborate political statement. Sadly, the result is an overall loss of credibility.
The timing of the movie, being released during Bush’s actual presidency, would seem to be a daring move but unfortunately only makes it seem that the movie is screaming for attention. It is one of the great things about America that a movie as critical of the sitting president as this one is could legally be filmed and financed and distributed and presented to the public without any sort of governmental interference (although imagine the public backlash if the Bush administration had tried to block it…), but it also follows that making a movie about a sitting president’s presidency is going to have the conspicuous absence of an ending. And the way that they chose to end this movie does nothing but call attention to the fact that the story was still being written. There is a lot of symbolism in the final scene of the movie, but it is a symbolism representing a gaping hole in the narrative rather than anything about Bush.
In fact, had Oliver Stone done the respectable thing and waited until a story about one of the most controversial presidents in American history was a complete one and could be placed in a historical context, it’s interesting to imagine how the movie would have been different. If nothing else, I am curious to know how Stone would have presented Bush’s incredible statement in his farewell speech that Iraq was now a “friend of America,” as the Iraq war rages on with no end in sight.
Note: I just stumbled across a discussion thread on the IMDb talking about Thandie Newton’s disappointing performance, and one poster who goes by the name of Bob Ogden mentioned that “Josh Brolin and Richard Dreyfuss were spot on as the mentally challenged guy and Darth Vader, respectively. Great performances.”
For all the movie’s shortcomings, at least it makes room for some hilarious commentary!
[caption id="attachment_25417" align="aligncenter" width="299" caption="4 Beans out of 5."]
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