This weekend I finally got around to giving Oliver Stones W. (2008) a chance, having been banished from my apartment this past week it was nice to stay home and catch up on a few films.
I can honestly say I did not have high hopes for W. as a result of reading some fairly scathing reviews of the film; reviews that for the most part called into question the relevancy of the film with its sympathies for such an “undeserving” individual as George W. Bush. I think my patience to actually sit down and give it a chance was enhanced by my screening of Frost/Nixon (2008) the previous week. The film however did not begin well. Andreas over at filmstars.se (for those of you that speak Swedish) is spot on in describing the difficulty involved at the start of the film to see beyond things as being just an SNL skit minus the laughter. This changes somehow about half way through the film when suddenly Josh Brolin, who plays W, becomes believable and immersed in an almost “impossible” role . One can also give praise to Richard Dreyfuss‘s subtle portrayal of the “super villain” Dick Cheney and Thandie Newton‘s portrayal of the “stone cold”, “I didn’t get shit from the civil rights movement” Condoleeza Rice.
How much truth one can draw from the film is, as always, questionable; the format, medium and style all lend a hand in one being able to question the incompleteness or concreteness of the story. Oliver Stone’s biopic is therefore questionable in its accuracy of portraying W via the details, but this is neither here nor there, we are speaking about the details, I am more interested in the essences of how the film does succeed.
W. for me provides possible answers and perspective on what fueled George W. Bush’s rise to the presidency followed by his subsequent fall from grace to become a “lame duck” president. These aforementioned answers provided by Stone are simply put, political inbreeding and egoism. I had never thought of the bit players surrounding Bush as being quite as retarded and incompetent as they are portrayed by Stone; I figured they had to be smart to cover W’s ass. This however does not seem to be the case, the fact that many of these individuals have been kicking around Washington since the late 60s and 70s I believe really does make W sympathetic; he is and always has been a proper representative for America and Americans for the past 20-40 years. That is a president, just like the populous he presides over, manipulated and reliant upon capitalistic scavengers; to this extent Oliver Stone hits a home run. The whole thing is really summed up best by W himself,
