You’re doin’ a heckuva job, Ollie!
Oliver Stone’s satire of the George W. Bush administration arrives this Friday, with current headlines potentially giving the film a big marketing boost. Bush’s disapproval ratings are now the highest of any U.S. president in seven decades, while the ongoing financial crisis looks set to dominate his final hundred days in office. As the next election looms a little over three weeks away, the time seems right for a cathartic skewering of the last eight years. Hopefully Stone, who’s never hesitated to vault giddily over the top of anything, delivers a film that’s edgy and biting enough to do those embattled years justice.
But from the witty trailer to the spot-on casting and costuming of the principal players, it appears that mission was accomplished. Time was, even just a few years ago, such an attempt to satirize the kingly Bush White House would’ve been met with indifference at best and hostility at worst (Anyone remember Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s That’s My Bush?). Times change, however, and the satirizing of the nation’s most controversial president could wind up something like the All The President’s Men of its time. Some will love it simply for attacking the president; others will hate it for the same reason. Stone has always wanted his films to stir public debate, so in that sense at least he’ll get his wish.
George Walker, Texas Ranger: Brolin
The film reportedly follows Dubya from his college days through his 2000 presidential “election” and into the days of the Second Iraq War. Stone has wisely - and deliberately, we’re sure – stacked its cast with both veteran and up and coming actors to create an ensemble that well reflects back on star Josh Brolin. (We imagine Brolin, finally reaping long-coming acclaim after powerful performances in No Country for Old Men and American Gangster, knows something about the shadows cast by famous fathers.) Surrounding him are Richard Dreyfuss as Vice President Dick Cheney, Toby Jones (Infamous) as “Bush’s Brain” Karl Rove, and Thandie Newton (The Pursuit of Happyness) as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. James Cromwell (L.A. Confidential) and Ellen Burstyn play George H.W. and Barbara Bush. Elizabeth Banks (The 40 Year Old Virgin) plays first lady Laura Bush.
Satires, especially political ones, rise and fall on the strength of their tone and the self-discipline of their voice. The most effective political satires – Michael Ritchie’s The Candidate, for example, or Tim Robbins’ Bob Roberts – exploit the absurdities of their subject matter while remaining firmly detached from intrusive commentary. Politics being an inherently illogical set of events anyway, the comedy derives from watching the improbable assume great importance. Given the right set of events, it’s sufficient to just “tell it like it is,” making the film a straight talk express that explains a series of events in a couple of hours. But keeping that detachment is the difference between satire and polemic, the distance between Wag The Dog and Bulworth. And therein lies the jeopardy of W.: “detachment” and “objectivity” are terms seldom applied to Stone’s approach, and his well-known left-leaning politics could sink the whole endeavor if allowed to overwhelm the events depicted.
And what events they were. John F. Kennedy was fond of quoting the Chinese admonition “may you in live in interesting times.” America leaves the Bush years all but exhausted from so much that commanded our interest, with both current presidential candidates promising above all else to enact substantive change. Such cries may not resonate all the way to the Executive Branch, however, and if they do they may not be heard anyway. ”History we don’t know,” Bush told Bob Woodward in 2004. “History we’ll all be dead.” Or maybe not. If film is a means of interpreting the times we live in, W. might constitute an early return from history.
- Michael Kabel
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