"W" - a film about a devastating legacy
By Joyce Glasser - 07/11/2008
Oliver Stone is the self-appointed chronicler of post WWII America’s darkest moments. He directed Salvador about American involvement in South America, Platoon, and Born on the 4th of July about Vietnam and its war veterans respectively, two films about era-defining presidents, JKF and Nixon, and World Trade Centre about 9/11. And now, rushed out in time to correspond with, if not influence, the US Presidential elections and George W. Bush’s ousting from power, W.
On election eve, Barrack Obama reflected that he was not the most likely president. The same could be said of George W. Bush with a lot more conviction. W. got into Yale thanks to his money and political heritage. At a drunken frat party he was asked whether he had political ambition. ‘Hell, no’ laughed W. as he opened his mouth for more booze. After graduation, a long trail of odd jobs abandoned for a pint of beer, accusations of getting a woman pregnant and (oddly, not dramatised in the film), a very dodgy military record backed up that response.
After Dad pulled more strings for W. to get into Harvard Business School he bought The Texas Rangers. W., whose real love was baseball, wanted to become baseball commissioner, but an increasingly manipulative Dad stepped probably to ensure his son wouldn’t ruin his own or brother Jeb’s political prospects. At age 40, W. turned his life around, went on the wagon, became a born again evangelist, and ran for Governor of Texas. The oedipal complex in full gear, the next step was to run for President and finish the work left by his father, namely Saddam.
The movie dramatizes all of this biographical information in flashback from the vantage point of Bush’s critical years in office, the long run up to the war in Iraq culminating in March 2003 when Bush Sr. (James Cromwell) and Barbara (Ellen Burstyn) watch the statue of Sadam come tumbling down on television. Even then George Sr.’s praise is tempered with disparagement. “They got the statue’ he smirks. ‘Now they have to get the man.”
W. is not the indictment of the outgoing president that Michael Moore might have made or that many would have liked. Stone’s decision to dramatise his life means that he must create a character as opposed to a caricature. Despite Josh Brolin’s brilliant, Oscar worthy interpretation, this attempt is not entirely successful. The flashback scenes are the best in that we can sympathise with W. perhaps because he’s not in a position of power and is doing no one but himself any harm.
Moreover, we can empathise with the young man growing up in the shadow of his critical father and his favoured brother, Jeb. Quite accurately no doubt, W. is charming in his flirtatious scenes with Laura Bush (well portrayed by Elizabeth Banks) and shows good instincts when his father recruits W. for his presidential campaign, mainly one suspects, to keep him out of trouble. However, the cabinet scenes are paraded like a series of comedy sketches or spoofs of what really happened on Pennsylvania Avenue while an uncomfortable press briefing is so close to the truth that we struggle to separate the fiction from the record.
We are given the familiar gaffes and malapropisms and glimpses of how shallow W. is, such as giving up sweets until the troops come home. We hear him proclaim ‘Iran is not Iraq, Iraq is not Iran, I know that’ to an astonished room of advisors. The war in Iraq is presented as a blatant attempt to take over the country’s oil supplies and when the matter of an exit strategy comes up, W. is told ‘there is none, we are there to stay.’ Only the most cynical viewer is not going to hear Oliver Stone’s and script writer Stanley Weiser’s voices in these scenes.
The flashback structure was probably the best alternative for handling the material, but hampers the dramatic flow because both the flashback scenes and the ‘present’ day scenes are episodic. This results in some confusion as we struggle to identify where we are. The editing doesn’t help as we cut from Bush losing the first congressional election to a baseball pitch, or two scenes in which W. collapses, the first, after choking that has no follow up or explanation.
The dramatic transformation in W.’s life at age 40, from the family black sheep and loser to two-term Governor and then President, is not apparent because the unconnected and seemingly randomly chosen scenes blend into one another. We are only aware that there was a life-changing transformation because we hear W. declare that he wants to run for Governor and decline a drink. We don’t discover why he became born again or see W.’s admirable willpower at work combating alcoholism. At times, between the episodic structure of the film and the familiar allusions to Bush’s foibles and weapons of mass destruction in the cabinet scenes, the film becomes tedious.
My major objection to W. however is more fundamental. Whatever the artistic and practical reasons for ending the film in 2004, with Bush’s realisation that the war might not be the big success he needed to guarantee his reputation and vindication, W. does not leave us with Bush’s real legacy. Call it bad timing, but 90% of Americans exiting the polls were more concerned about the economy and the state of the country than Iraq.
Certainly Iraq was W.’s single biggest blunder and drain on the US economy, but it is the impact of the falling dollar on prices, unemployment, W.’s incompetence in the face of Hurricane Katrina, the nationalisation of the mortgage banks and the collapse of the financial markets that caused many moderate republications and undecided voters to shun the republication party in record numbers on November 4th. None of these events are included in the film.
The film’s release will be eclipsed, not enhanced, by one of the most historic elections – and dramatic rejections of an incumbent -- in American history. Against the magnitude of events, and the wounding reality of W’s years in office, the film doesn’t pack the punch required to produce the catharsis audiences will want. All the Freudian insight in the world won’t begin to explain or excuse W. and his devastating legacy.