Kelly Wand"W." review
October 20th 2008 10:38
The best Oliver Stone movie about a U.S. president since "The Hand"!
Though brilliantly acted and never boring, “W.” is about 500% more sedate than you would expect from Oliver-Stone-on-Bush. There’s something about PG-13 Oliver Stone that just doesn’t feel right; who in real life would ever say “motherfricken” and why? Wasn’t this the first administration with a Vice President to tell a senator on C-SPAN to “go fuck himself” and shoot a guy in the face? Hell, neither of those even happen in “Platoon.”
Nervertheless, “W.” is worth watching, for the ingenious reason that Stone and screenwriter Stanley Weiser found the idea of an average-but-well-connected Joe Douchebag like Bush being capable of causing such enduring havoc more interesting than the havoc itself. In fact, compared to Sarah Palin, Bush’s assiduous debate preparations with Rove in the movie make him come off as nominally competent, not to mention his ability to land a jet on an aircraft carrier without killing anybody. (Maybe if not for 9/11, he would’ve bumbled his way through, although probably not.) And as a fairly simple-minded look into Bush’s psyche, the movie is more interesting than the expected hatchet-job (and though the movie’s production was cruelly rushed, it feels surprisingly polished). This movie’s not so much about Bush’s policies as Bush the lost boy-child with daddy issues and an eidetic memory that only manifests itself when it comes to fraternity brother nicknames. Stone doesn’t make him likable but he does humanize him, something never before tried even by Bush himself. He may be the boss’ son who gets you fired but deep down, even Bushes hurt. (There’s a great scene where Cromwell’s Bush, Sr. reacts to losing to Clinton in ’92 that actually makes you feel sorry for this ex-head of the CIA. By contrast, even Stone and Brolin can’t visualize Bush, Jr. crying. Try it.)
Much as I loved the concept, I chafed at how much they left out. There’s no reference to cocaine; the events of the 2000 election whereby Bush circuitously, rather luckily came to power are just mentioned in passing, and though Stone sprinkles in a few classics like the “Mission Accomplished” banner aircraft-carrier hijinx and pretzel-clogged esophagi, we’re not shown Bush on 9/11, or anything from the last three years (no Katrina?), or the Bush twins. Maybe Stone thought we know that stuff so well and some of it’s so recent that it didn’t bear repeating (maybe he’s punishing us for not seeing “World Trade Center”), but all of those elements, at least in passing, need to be part of any thoughtful motherfricken consideration of Bush as a human. In many ways Bush seems unaffected by his own rise. He doesn’t change his eating habits or become more christ-like. He always decides from his gut, before and after his religious conversion. It’s not even quite clear that he really did stop drinking (obviously it didn’t help). I felt robbed of scenes depicting the real descent. The Bush we see on TV now is a frail, haggard, woeful man compared to the tempestuous redneck who swaggered his way into the White House eight years ago. His facial deadness tells us volumes more than Stone guesses at. And there’s a lot of guesswork, of course, and things shifted around, and lines said at different times on occasions different from our memories.
But such is the reductionist nature of biopics, which I confess a hard-wired aversion to. You get skilled famous actors doing joke-less impersonations of famous still-living statesmen, along with motivations and Hollywood story arcs relentlessly compressed from decades into the space of two hours. Truly revealing portraits mostly come from books and documentaries, from watching footage of the actual people where available and studying their faces; bio-pics are marketing-driven costume pieces. Still, as such exercises in makeup, accents, and body language go, “W.” is a good one. Josh Brolin disappears heath-ledgerly into the role, playing Bush as a hard-drinkin’ good-for-nothin’ job-quittin’ draft-dodgin’ college-drop-outin’ buffalo turd forever frustrated by his father’s disdain and overshadowed by his brother Jeb (not in the movie much), the one whom Dad is actually grooming for the presidency. Even when Bush, Sr. tries to express affection, it infuriates W. As Pop presciently, dangerously puts it to Jr. one night in the ballpark, “Maybe it’s better that you’re not in the barrel.” “Better how?” Jr. asks suspiciously. Cromwell, with a sad smile: “Just better.”
Ellen Burstyn plays Barbara Bush as a wise, feisty spitfire who ends a lot of the family scenes with, “Both of you!” Elizabeth Banks (whose role is minor) plays Laura Bush as a supportive, warm librarian bearing little resemblance to the doll-eyed Stepford Wife occasionally trotted out in TV interviews prior to 2001; her pet-name for him is “Geo.” Richard Dreyfuss’ Dick Cheney and Scott Glenn’s Donald Rumsfeld do stuff with their chins and hair and laser-pointers to underscore their amusingly blatant scumbaggery, although their ties to Bush aren’t delved into (he seems to have inherited his father’s staff along with the same conference table and overhead projector). Thandie Newton does Condeleezza Rice, aptly, as a sexy female Urkel. Jeffrey Wright plays the reluctant, ignored voice of reason James Earl Jones. Mr. Fantastic plays Tony Blair, only in this movie it’s his credibility that stretches*! Toby Jones, that guy who played Capote in 2006 but wasn’t Philip Seymour Hoffman, plays Karl Rove as an unctuous mole-man always hefting plastic binders of Newspeak “matrixes” and focus group data, which he calls “fairy dust.” And Brolin’s anchor, James Cromwell, deftly plays the senior President Bush (with whom he has so little in common vocally) as a long-suffering man of principle who finds Junior’s behavior so disappointing to the Bush name that he can’t even bear to address his son directly when passing along generational heirlooms (“Who do you think you are?” Bush, Sr. explodes at W. after the latter drives through a mailbox and shambles in at 3 a.m. stone drunk to challenge him to a fistfight. “A Kennedy?”). It’s a stellar cast, brilliantly performing as caricatures of soulless bureaucrats.
The cinematography evokes all the time periods and Bush’s varying mental states in creepy hazes of epiphany, alcohol, sweat, and lies. The score is unobtrusive, ironic, funny, sinister. But the ending’s abrupt, too pat; it’s an over-obvious metaphor, like the rat at the end of “The Departed.” And the movie lets the news media off way too easily. Instead of showing footage of actual news commentators who wrapped themselves in the flag after the Iraq invasion (not just Fox News hacks but those “liberal” corporate pundits on MSNBC, CNN, and the major networks), we’re given two fake cartoonish Fox News-ish anchors with names like “Jack Hawk” to effuse over Bush’s ostensible masculinity. Making up fictitious newsreaders isn’t nearly as stirring as the later sight of Hillary Clinton and John McCain applauding Bush’s Iraq resolution with matching tranced-out expressions. Maybe Stone’s trying for “classy” (i.e., PG-13). Because nothing says classy like fast-tracking a biopic about a sitting unpopular President into release two weeks before an election.
Pretty much all Ollie Stone movies have been biopics, although the best to watch tend to be the least factually accurate. “JFK,” is almost entirely, albeit entertainingly, fabricated. Stone’s worst movie, “Alexander,” is so boring, the facts seem irrelevant. Like “Nixon,” “W.” feels over-scripted, and perhaps in that sense it’s true to its subject. There’s probably far less to the real Bush than this movie credits him for, and that was Stone’s dilemma. It’s hard to make a compelling, dramatic movie about an uncompelling, sub-par man. The power of Brolin’s performance makes Bush seem, though flawed, enthralling to a degree that the real W. can only dream of. It would be nice to think that the real Bush’s subconscious is as wholesome and relatable as an empty ballpark full of thunderous bodiless applause. But after eight years, two wars, ten trillion dollars, and countless enervating speeches, the only people who will see this movie (i.e., non-Republicans) may feel that psychoanalyzing the mediocre is kind of like putting lipstick on a pig.
*And his hair.
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Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
I do like several of Oliver Stone movies very much so.
You think JFK was entirely fabricated? Where'd you spring that from?? Do you discount both the non-fiction books it was sourced from? Personally I find JFK one of the best Oliver Stone movies. But that does have something to do with being personally fascinated by the conspiracy theories that surround it. Sure, Stone was channeling his own stance, but it makes for riveting cinema.
Platoon and Salvador are still his best movies. The Doors was entertaining too. And I do love his screenplay to Brian De Palma's seminal Scarface.
Comment by Kelly Wand
Sprocket Holed
Anyway, on the History Channel thing Stone defended his deviations from historical record on the grounds that he was "a dramatist and not a historian." Which isn't at all how I remember him talking when it first came out, but hey. All bio-pics are chained to the same narrative restrictions, and "JFK"'s more watchable than most of them...But they're self-described as fiction "based on" history. They freely throw out or change anything that's not cinematic and add stuff that is. The movie ends with a speech by Costner that Garrison never made. The magic bullet wasn't really magic. A car would've hit Bigfoot by now. The matrix is reloaded and revolving.
I liked "From Hell" a lot too but not because I believed it to be true but because it was skillfully made.
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile
Interesting that Stone made that statement after the movie.
I suppose Vietnam never happened either, but it made for an damn entertaining war.
Comment by Kelly Wand
Sprocket Holed
I consider myself a U.S. patriot. Ergo, it's not that I believe the U.S. government's too moral to assassinate a President, just too dumb. A real cover-up wouldn't be so overly fishy. Oswald making those shots blindfolded is way nearer-fetched than the preposterous suggestion that the Republicans would find a guy like him and not run him for President.
Comment by Bryn
Horrorphile