Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
10/26/08
****POLITICAL
OPINION ALERT: THIS IS A MOVIE ABOUT GEORGE W. BUSH. ANYBODY
WHO TELLS YOU THEY CAN REVIEW IT HONESTLY WITHOUT EXPRESSING A POLITICAL
OPINION IS JUST AFRAID OF GETTING FIRED BY THEIR PAPER, AND NOBODY'S PAYING
ME.****
Allow
me to be immodest for a moment: I'm one of the smartest people I
know. I read the paper every day and have a pretty good grasp of
the issues, enough so that people often ask me to explain them. But
no matter how high my opinion of my own intelligence and civic-mindedness
might be, I know this much: I am not now nor will I ever be qualified
to be President of the United States. It mystifies me when people
support political figures because they're “like me”: is there anybody
reading this review who's REALLY got what it takes to be President?
And if not, why would we want somebody like us to hold the highest office
in the land? Yeah, I used to think “anybody could be President,”
“The country runs itself,” all that crap, but that was before George W.
Bush. W., the sensational new film from Oliver Stone, presents
the 43rd President as a tragic figure who learned the cold hard truth first
hand: just because the Constitution says anybody can be President
doesn't mean they should.
In
the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the “successful” war in
Afghanistan, President George W. Bush (Josh Brolin) gathers his cabinet
to consider their options. Colin Powell (Jeffrey Wright) advises
caution and adherence to the diplomatic traditions of past Presidents,
but his is the only moderate voice in the room. Bush is inclined
to listen instead to Dick Cheney (Richard Dreyfuss), Donald Rumsfeld (Scott
Glenn), Condoleezza Rice (Thandie Newton) and Karl Rove (Toby Jones), who
seek a total change in the way America does business. Preemptive
war against Iraq would settle old scores and eliminate a heavily armed
threat they're certain exists. Bush commits to declare Iraq, Iran
and North Korea an “Axis of Evil”, and there's no turning back. Flash
back to a younger Bush pledging a Yale fraternity. Everybody likes
young George, but he just can't seem to get traction in his life, quitting
on one career after another while his father (James Cromwell) misses no
opportunity to remind him what a disappointment he is compared to his favored
brother Jeb. Along the way, George meets and marries librarian Laura
Welch (Elizabeth Banks), gives up a hard partying lifestyle to become a
born again Christian and buys the Texas Rangers baseball team. But
because of who his father is, politics inevitably define him, and after
losing a 70's Congressional election to a man who “outTexaned and outChristianed”
him, Bush returns in the 90's as a Gubernatorial candidate willing to say
ANYTHING to win an election. And if Rove's strategies worked in Texas,
why not the whole country? Back in the present, the confident President
declares the invasion of Iraq “Mission Accomplished”. But when the
war simply will not end, what's a man who holds the highest office in the
land because of one part likability and one part legacy to do?
I've
been a huge Oliver Stone fan ever since JFK shook my cinematic sensibilities
to the core back in 1991, and W. is a worthy addition to his outstanding
filmography. While he's made showier movies, and didn't write the
outstanding screenplay (Stone's Wall Street co-writer Stanley Weiser
did the honors), you'd never suspect this to be the work of anyone else.
Some will express surprise at the movie's “balance” and “sympathy” toward
its' subject, but it's really not that different than the approach he took
toward Nixon. I've always felt it was more Stone's news clippings
than his body of work that gave him the reputation of liberal hatchet man.
But then, being no fan of Bush or Nixon, my threshold for what qualifies
as balance is understandably lower than others' night be.
What
can't be argued is that under Stone's direction, actors prove uniquely
good at summoning the spirit of historical figures, even ones they don't
particularly resemble. And the biggest of W.'s headlines is
the astonishing work of Josh Brolin. Traditionally more movie star
than character actor, Brolin doesn't just show chops I never knew he had:
I couldn't have imagined ANY actor being able to so totally embody our
utterly unique President. But, aided by skillful makeup, he's got
it all: the voice, the gestures, the walk, and the escalating level
of weariness that has made him seem to age decades during his 8 years in
office. Delivering Bush's most famous speeches, he's indistinguishable
from the real thing, and he convincingly ages almost 40 years on screen.
Perhaps most remarkably, he made me feel bad for the man without softening
the edges that make him so maddening: whether you'd explain it as
an immunity to the concept of guilt or a pathological aversion to bad news,
both the real and cinematic Bush plow forward no matter how clear it is
that they shouldn't. It's W.'s achievement that it's able
to put the word “tragic” in front of that “flaw”.
No
one else is as successful at reproducing the physical presence of the characters,
but there are several excellent embodiments of their essence, led by Dreyfus,
who's got Cheney's dismissively sinister nature down to perfection.
Though she doesn't resemble her at all, Banks nails the stillness of Laura
Bush, does a great job of reconciling her contradictions and helps
to make the Bushes seem like a real, vital couple. Glenn captures
the oblivious eccentricity of Rumsfeld, although perhaps coming across
as a tad too cosmopolitan. And Wright is really good at the Powell
contradiction: honest and ethical, but either too gutless or too
loyal to push those ethics beyond the level of advice. The film's
best scene (and one of the year's best) is a lengthy war room strategy
session among Bush and his brain trust that leads to the decision to invade
Iraq. Positions are stated, policies are bandied about, but in the
end, it all comes down to Powell's integrity against Cheney's opportunism.
Dreyfus nails a bravura speech about energy and empire that administration
fans might dispute. Whether he actually spoke those words or not,
the affect has been the same, and the sequence combines the power of great
acting with the chill of watching how easily history can wander off course.
A couple
other performances are worthy of discussion. Cromwell is really nothing
like George H.W. Bush, but being a master of disapproving elitists, creates
a fascinating character all his own. You can take the movie's Shakespearian
tragedy as his: the son is seemingly an Oedipal guided missile, but
his father has every opportunity to set W. on the course to a happy life
by simply laying off his blatant favoritism of brother Jeb. Instead,
he ends up with the younger George living the dream he had for his favored
son, and ruining both it and the family legacy. Cromwell does a wonderful
job of showing the weight of sitting by and letting the younger Bush's
administration go awry. On the other hand, the one performance that
misses the mark is Newton's impersonation of Rice. Unlike most of
the actors, content to remind us of the people they're playing without
aping them, her Rice impression is quite detailed and a bit labored.
So focused on the little details of her speech patterns and an odd tick
where she seems to be making a show of giggling to herself, Newton never
feels spontaneous.
Some
will find the structure, with dueling timelines moving forward toward Bush's
inauguration (flashbacks) and the collapse of the original Iraq strategy
(present) to be too anecdotal, and some will wonder how you can make a
Bush movie that addresses neither the 2000 election snafu nor the events
of 9/11. But both arguments miss the point. When the movie
asks how we ended up with this man as President, it's not talking about
hanging chads. W. rightfully senses that before George W.
Bush, we knew anybody could be President, but assumed that someone wildly
unqualified would never even bother to seek the office. But Stone's
Bush could never feel validated by anything other than being President,
and a perfect storm of circumstances made it possible for him to seek that
validation, to all our misfortune. These are lessons we need to reflect
on, whether we want to or not, and as such there's no better time than
the eve of the next election for W. to be released.
It's
not a perfect movie. Attempts to pump up the comedy with wacky music
are unwelcome. And a late-game dream sequence where the two Presidents
Bush meet in the Oval Office is both too on the nose and too broadly acted.
But there are impressive flourishes as well, most notably a recurring motif
with Bush at Arlington Stadium playing baseball before an invisible crowd
that cheers him on. It seems both surreal and unnecessary until the
movie returns to it for a final scene that puts the perfect cap on both
the story and the man, as Brolin's eyes silently scream the words “What
happened?” Indeed.
You
don't exactly need to read between the lines to get that I'm no fan of
the Bush Administration, and no matter what would-be “impartial” critics
might try to tell you, the film plays a lot better for people like me than
the ever-dwindling portion of the population that still approves of it.
As we prepare to turn the page on the Presidency of George W. Bush, leave
it to Oliver Stone to remind us that mistakes were made, and not just by
the people in Washington. A country that's become almost pathetically
willing to settle when it comes to politicians needs to start expecting
more. There are 300 million people in this country and only one President.
Shouldn't he at least be better than average? |
