Movie Review: W.
W. (2008)–***
When I told a co-worker that I was going to see W. this weekend, he asked why anyone would want to see a film about George W. Bush. It’s a good question. Why would anyone voluntarily endure another two-hours hearing about the life of an almost universally reviled president? My answer to him was simple: If we go see the film while Bush is president, we won’t have to think of him once he’s out of office.
Director Oliver Stone’s W. does us the added favor of being a film we won’t necessarily want to remember. It’s not a bad film. In fact, it’s Stone’s best narrative work in more than a decade. But its claim to fame as the first picture about a sitting president doesn’t make it entertaining. Watching W. is at times like watching a film about you and your soon-to-be ex while you’re going through the bad break-up. For both Stone and the audience, it’s impossible to prevent the outside world from encroaching on the experience.
W. follows our current president from the frat house to the White House with a focus the relationship between Dubya (Josh Brolin) and papa Bush (James Cromwell). We see the moment when Bush, the younger, calls his dad from prison after a rowdy Yale football game, facing dad’s disapproval. It won’t be the last time he’ll feel like disappointment. In a later scene, one where papa Bush accosts Dubya over pregnancy rumors and boozing, he even tells Dubya that he’s disappointed.
Dubya is imperfect, for sure. But he’s determined to be something both for his father and in spite of him. For Dubya, this father/son dynamic turns everything into a personal crusade.
If W. does one thing well, it makes the audience empathize with a man whose actions are considered by many to be beyond the pale. We see that he can never measure up to his father’s lofty expectations. He’s not the favorite son. He’s not the heir apparent. Even when he’s on his way to becoming president he seems lost. Brolin’s earnest portrayal is mesmerizing because he captures Dubya’s haphazard nature, his lack of leadership and foresight, while entertaining the idea that maybe, just maybe he went after the presidency for the wrong reasons.
There are great moments that don’t have to do with the father/son relationship, too. In one war room scene, Colin Powell (played by the always fantastic Jeffrey Wright) urges the president and his security team to stop the march to war in Iraq. In that same scene, Dick Cheney (Richard Dreyfuss) explains why a war in Iraq (and Iran) is necessary for America’s future prosperity. “Empire,” he says with a map of Middle East military bases on a screen behind him. It’s the only scene about the Iraq War that pulls me into the movie instead of pushing me out.
What Wright and Dreyfuss do in that scene is exceptional because it’s the only scene where the actors are given the time to perform. The scene unfolds naturally while most others are quick, contrived vignettes. Short scenes about planning the war only make performances like Thandie Newton as Condoleezza Rice, Scott Glenn as Donald Rumsfeld, Bruce McGill as George Tenet, and Ellen Burstyn as Barbara Bush feel more likeSNL parodies than well-developed characters.
Some people criticized Stone’s Nixon for being overlong, but occasionally a story needs to be told with patience and consideration. W. is one of those films. Though W. is photographed and often performed as a comedy, Stone’s heavy-handed direction and overt symbolism clash with the attempts at humor. Stone could have created the contemporary equivalent to Dr. Strangelove. Unfortunately, he never directs a “Gentleman! You can’t fight in here. This is the War Room!” moment. There was opportunity, but sometimes simply laughing at Dubya doesn’t quite capture the complexity of this life misunderestimated.
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