W. offers viewers cheap laughs, little insight

Despite Oliver Stone’s attempts to delve into the disgraced president’s past and draw Oedipal connections to our country’s present, chances are viewers still won’t feel like they know George “Dubya” Bush after watching W., Stone’s latest political biopic. Though presenting a few examples of real character study, this film spends most of its time holding a mirror up to what the public already thinks of the 43rd president. The only reason to see this movie is to be reminded again that, yes, you are smarter and more articulate than the most powerful man in the West. Penned by Stanley Weiser, who worked with Stone on Wall Street and Any Given Sunday, the script draws its strength from the deft weaving of episodes from Bush’s life, infamous moments of his presidency, and fantasy speculations of his inner thoughts. There are hilarious if not thematically heavy-handed moments, such as when Bush leads his inner circle of Rove, Cheney, et al through his Crawford ranch and gets them all lost, as well as pockets of poignancy, particularly in the scene or two that show Bush’s ability to introspect. Weiser and Stone’s thesis seems to be that our president grew up as the least favorite son in his family and has struggled his entire life to earn his father’s respect. Once he undergoes his spiritual conversion and finds a “higher father,” as he puts it, Dubya seeks to be better than Dad, and the only way he knows how is to finish what he thinks Bush 41 didn’t: the Iraq War. Weiser’s smartest move in this family drama is the ubiquitous Jeb Bush. Jeb appears only once and very briefly, yet his name comes up over again, always eliciting a clearly negative reaction from George, suggesting a haunting standard to which he can never live up. If this movie is accurate, the elder Bush wanted Jeb, not Dubya, to be president. Josh Brolin (No Country for Old Men) displays his long undervalued talent and great range as he’s really playing two characters. For part of the film, he’s Bush the human being, silver-spoon fed, but empty inside. Dumb? Probably, but earnest as he wrestles alcoholism and tries to make something of himself. Most of the time, Brolin embodies Dubya the archetype-a perpetual man-child hiding his insecurities behind a bellicose certitude, the intellectual sloth continually propped up by the bookish Karl Rove. Brolin’s accent reflects this dichotomy, at times credible, at times bordering on Saturday Night Live. The strongest performance belongs to Richard Dreyfuss as Dick Cheney, who owns the single most chilling scene in which he explains the Iraq War as necessary for American world dominance. Most of the dialogue here sounds directly from an Internet manifesto often attributed to the ultra-right think tank The Project for The New American Century. Rounding out the cast, Jeffrey Wright plays Colin Powell well. However, the biggest problem is that much of the real Powell’s gravitas comes from his voice, and Wright operates at a higher register. Thandie Newton, on the other hand, is horribly miscast as Condoleezza Rice. Few British actors (Kate Winslet comes to mind) pull off a good American accent, and Newton’s attempt, combined with imitating Secr. Rice’s pitch and subtle lisp, results in cacophony. With few notable exceptions, the film presents many of these important players on the periphery, countering the puppet-on-a-string concept of Bush. The film squares him in the driver’s seat with those around him riding along in exasperation or devilish glee, depending on the respective agenda. I’m amazed at how the film itself doesn’t so much as present the American public’s perceptions of Bush but instead mimics it. Normally cartoon depictions of history end up skewing how people view those historical figures, not the other way around. Once Bush got us into war with the wrong country, he deservedly became little more to us than fodder for the comedians, and it’s at that exact point in his presidency that W. loses steam and grinds along as a worst-of-Bush trolley ride, stopping at his most embarrassing statements, all of which we’ve heard before. Though most of these Bushisms are presented out of historical context (he mangled the “fool me once” adage at a speech, not over lunch) I sense dramatic, not political motives. By the way, am I the only one who notices Stone taking some editing cues from Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9-11?Whether inebriated by Jim Bean or Jesus Christ, Bush lacks what Oliver Stone lacks as a filmmaker: sobriety. Distance. Dispassion. We’re still too caught in the thick of this Bush to want anything but a character roast, and Stone largely delivers. His admitted rushing of the film to release it before the election betrays not his politics, but his own reverence of The Almighty (Dollar). To my knowledge, nobody’s spoken critically about Americans’ need to laugh at Dubya other than Christopher Hitchens, who as a writer and public figure occupies seemingly incongruous roles as Britain’s foremost atheist and a Bush apologist. Hitchens once said Bush can call it Jesus all he wants, but it was a remarkable woman named Laura who got him off the sauce. If Laura Bush really is remarkable, you’d never know it watching W. Years ago when World Trade Center opened, I read Jim Emerson’s “Why Doesn’t a New Oliver Stone Release Matter Any Longer?” in which, among other things, he slams Stone for defining all his women in relation to their men (wife, mother, hooker). If anything, W. presents only the latest example. Elizabeth Banks is ten times prettier than the real Laura, who the film presents as five times less important in this man’s life. She only appears exactly when Stone needs her: to flirt with a young, Stensoned Dubya, to freak out over his temper, to coddle him and whisper, “Things will be better when the war is over.” Is she the only one who believed it was ever intended to end? Ger