This is cross-posted.
If you are among the 25 percent of Americans who still approve of President Bush’s performance, Oliver Stone’s “W.” may not be a film for you. That said, the remaining portion of the U.S. population may leave the movie theater similarly vexed. A mix of satire, biopic and pop psychology, “W.” frequently is as flip and disconnected as its namesake is often accused of being. It’s also profoundly unsettling, contrived and at times surreal. Case in point: Bush and his merry band of yes men marching cluelessly in an open field at his Crawford ranch to the tune of “Robin Hood,” having lost their way; a blithely unaware Bush offering a maimed and bloodied soldier a T-shirt to thank him for his service.
Josh Brolin as W. is a determined fool, chomping bologna sandwiches while declaiming his “decider” powers to the tight-lipped Dick Cheney (Richard Dreyfuss), whining to Laura (Elizabeth Banks) about his father (James Cromwell) while on the pot, inhaling pretzels, sports shows and alcoholic beverages with a primitive glee, invoking God to justify his temporal lusts whether it’s the presidency or the ass-kicking of Saddam Hussein. He is Bush at his most crass, only magnified to an almost unbearable folly by the silver screen. For instance, in a recurring shtick, Stone places him in an empty baseball stadium listening to the applause of a non-existent crowd. In some ways, it’s a useful metaphor for the real-life presidency.
Indeed, Bush, as presented here, is a simultaneously repulsive and sympathetic character, a neglected child of privilege with a low IQ and major father issues. His lone moment of shining achievement comes early in the film when during a vodka-drenched fraternity hazing at Yale (which bizarrely foreshadows the torture techniques that would be used by his future administration), he alone is able to recite the frat brothers’ names from memory. (It’s a rare glimmer of political aptitude for the boy who should never have been king.) And it’s more than a little sad that his interactions with his vaunted parent seem to occur only in highly formalized meetings that often conclude with the elder Bush expressing his “deep disappointment” with junior after rescuing him from yet another scrape related to girls, booze and career flops. Significantly, both his parents and his pastor recoil in an almost palpable horror when W. mentions running for office. No wonder he insisted on doing so, the film suggests, if for no other reason than to prove them wrong.
Artistically, W.’s supporting cast of characters is uneven – some outstanding, some bizarrely cartoonish simulacrums of the real thing. Plaudits go out to Dreyfuss’ Cheney who projects the perfect balance of circumspect calculation and understated cunning and also to Toby Jone’s Karl Rove, who comes across here as a doughy but far more likeable genius than his real-life caricature has previously allowed for. In contrast, Thandie Newton’s highly forced Condoleezza Rice is a nerdy, sniveling, simpering sycophant (yes, the triple alliteration is called for…she’s beyond awful), while Jeffrey Wright’s Colin Powell is a weak-willed toady who vainly attempts to slow the rush to war but quickly caves when the majority of Bush’s top advisers doesn’t share his views.
Along with the usual Bushisms and rehashed campaign legends — Bush driving the car through the garage door after Laura criticized an early political speech, Bush bowing his head in prayer during Cabinet meetings, Bush mumbling his way through an incoherent press conference – Stone injects his own woo-woo musings on the so-called Bush theocracy. That Bush believes he was called by God to be president and go to war in Iraq will likely be a hypothesis easily swallowed by his real-life secular detractors. But it’s an overly simplistic explanation. More tellingly, in one scene, after losing his Congressional race in Texas, a stewing Bush avers that he’ll never be “out-Christianed” or “out-Texaned” in politics again. This brief exchange aside, Stone skips over the potential realpolitik motivations underlying Bush’s loudly proclaimed born-again status, preferring to paint this dim but determined W. as a devout fundamentalist.
It’s an interesting theory, but one that seems increasingly shaky eight years later as the final days of the administration spiral to a close, and the usual litany of failure and temporal corruption rears its head. Bush the Christian family man was a nice, effective little story to sell to the base, useful to mobilize the true believers for two national elections but it’s a storyline that now seems mostly forgotten in the post-2004 landscape, where the real Bush appears more preoccupied with bailing out billionaires and cavorting with scantily clad volleyball stars while his “mission accomplished” war drags on day after day after day — often unnoticed.
Strangely enough, Stone seems to be among the people who bought it.
If you are among the 25 percent of Americans who still approve of President Bush’s performance, Oliver Stone’s “W.” may not be a film for you. That said, the remaining portion of the U.S. population may leave the movie theater similarly vexed. A mix of satire, biopic and pop psychology, “W.” frequently is as flip and disconnected as its namesake is often accused of being. It’s also profoundly unsettling, contrived and at times surreal. Case in point: Bush and his merry band of yes men marching cluelessly in an open field at his Crawford ranch to the tune of “Robin Hood,” having lost their way; a blithely unaware Bush offering a maimed and bloodied soldier a T-shirt to thank him for his service.
Josh Brolin as W. is a determined fool, chomping bologna sandwiches while declaiming his “decider” powers to the tight-lipped Dick Cheney (Richard Dreyfuss), whining to Laura (Elizabeth Banks) about his father (James Cromwell) while on the pot, inhaling pretzels, sports shows and alcoholic beverages with a primitive glee, invoking God to justify his temporal lusts whether it’s the presidency or the ass-kicking of Saddam Hussein. He is Bush at his most crass, only magnified to an almost unbearable folly by the silver screen. For instance, in a recurring shtick, Stone places him in an empty baseball stadium listening to the applause of a non-existent crowd. In some ways, it’s a useful metaphor for the real-life presidency.
Indeed, Bush, as presented here, is a simultaneously repulsive and sympathetic character, a neglected child of privilege with a low IQ and major father issues. His lone moment of shining achievement comes early in the film when during a vodka-drenched fraternity hazing at Yale (which bizarrely foreshadows the torture techniques that would be used by his future administration), he alone is able to recite the frat brothers’ names from memory. (It’s a rare glimmer of political aptitude for the boy who should never have been king.) And it’s more than a little sad that his interactions with his vaunted parent seem to occur only in highly formalized meetings that often conclude with the elder Bush expressing his “deep disappointment” with junior after rescuing him from yet another scrape related to girls, booze and career flops. Significantly, both his parents and his pastor recoil in an almost palpable horror when W. mentions running for office. No wonder he insisted on doing so, the film suggests, if for no other reason than to prove them wrong.
Artistically, W.’s supporting cast of characters is uneven – some outstanding, some bizarrely cartoonish simulacrums of the real thing. Plaudits go out to Dreyfuss’ Cheney who projects the perfect balance of circumspect calculation and understated cunning and also to Toby Jone’s Karl Rove, who comes across here as a doughy but far more likeable genius than his real-life caricature has previously allowed for. In contrast, Thandie Newton’s highly forced Condoleezza Rice is a nerdy, sniveling, simpering sycophant (yes, the triple alliteration is called for…she’s beyond awful), while Jeffrey Wright’s Colin Powell is a weak-willed toady who vainly attempts to slow the rush to war but quickly caves when the majority of Bush’s top advisers doesn’t share his views.
Along with the usual Bushisms and rehashed campaign legends — Bush driving the car through the garage door after Laura criticized an early political speech, Bush bowing his head in prayer during Cabinet meetings, Bush mumbling his way through an incoherent press conference – Stone injects his own woo-woo musings on the so-called Bush theocracy. That Bush believes he was called by God to be president and go to war in Iraq will likely be a hypothesis easily swallowed by his real-life secular detractors. But it’s an overly simplistic explanation. More tellingly, in one scene, after losing his Congressional race in Texas, a stewing Bush avers that he’ll never be “out-Christianed” or “out-Texaned” in politics again. This brief exchange aside, Stone skips over the potential realpolitik motivations underlying Bush’s loudly proclaimed born-again status, preferring to paint this dim but determined W. as a devout fundamentalist.
It’s an interesting theory, but one that seems increasingly shaky eight years later as the final days of the administration spiral to a close, and the usual litany of failure and temporal corruption rears its head. Bush the Christian family man was a nice, effective little story to sell to the base, useful to mobilize the true believers for two national elections but it’s a storyline that now seems mostly forgotten in the post-2004 landscape, where the real Bush appears more preoccupied with bailing out billionaires and cavorting with scantily clad volleyball stars while his “mission accomplished” war drags on day after day after day — often unnoticed.
Strangely enough, Stone seems to be among the people who bought it.
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