Review of W.

Oliver Stone's "W."

Talking about "W." is really a way of talking about Oliver Stone. True, the forty-third president is always in this biopic, always a presence on the screen, but the film's unabashed portrayal of George W. Bush's rise to the White House belongs undeniably to its director.

"W." is the American filmmaker's twentieth feature. It's predecessor, "World Trade Center," a gauche and saccharine sixty-three million dollar 9/11 vehicle starring Nicolas Cage, seems insulting in comparison. But whereas the earlier film uses the destruction of three thousand people to warm our hearts and dull our aptitude for reality, Stone's most recent effort wants to satisfy disgruntled political appetites that have been developing over the past eight years.

James Brolin is George W. Bush. He likes his alcohol; he chews with his mouth open; he looks like a devil in a white cowboy hat (so says Elizabeth Banks, as an enchanting, ageless version of Laura Bush). As the President, Brolin feels much like the rest of this film: cumbersome and unfocused, and given to bouts of absurdity. The result keeps Stone's script in the realm of political lampoonery, as though Mencken himself had been given one last shot at yahooland.

Like the American satirist, Stone writes in caricatures, not prose. The satire, however, is flat; the caricatures incredulous. In effect, Stone sucks the gravity out of his characters, robbing his film of the kind of seriousness and depth that makes for otherwise more responsible, more effective satire. Watching Bush Jr. carouse and fumble his way from fraternity, to oilrig job, to governorship, to the White House leaves gaps to be that Stone seems uninterested in filling. Where, for example, is the historical arch of this film? While "W." interlaces its re-creations of Bush's press conferences and cabinet meetings with those of his pre-White House years, the effect is underwhelming.

Although different films, with different intentions and tones, both Stone's "JFK" (1991) and "Nixon" (1995) seem larger in comparison. That is, their scope is larger, their ideas are richer; Nixon is always situated within the context of his particular historical moment. Even at its most disappointing, Stone's portrait of the man who gave us Watergate is also a portrait of the world outside the Oval Office. Similarly, "JFK" makes use of an anthology of archive footage and cut-away images to pay attention to other concerns: in this case, post-Kennedy America, with its assassinations and unpopular war. "W.", in comparison, is narrow in its historical awareness. What little space there is for a wider perspective is reduced to a series of images of Iraq war protests that do little to enlarge the focus of this film.

Speaking of images, cinematographer Phedon Papamichael keeps his interiors bright, his colors crisp, and his shots close. Characters are often framed from below, their upper bodies leaning towards us and their heads haloed by overhead lights. But far from endowing these people with austerity, the restlessness of Stone's hand-held camerawork puts them in settings that seem perpetually afloat and conducive to seasickness.

Like its cinematography, "W." often feels over-saturated with color, with playfulness: all Frank Stella, no Bernini. The film wants to have fun. Not that there's anything wrong with having fun; Robert Altman had fun, too (think of almost any of his films from the 1970s). But, unlike "W.", Altman's fun was dead serious, it threw America to the sharks. Stone's film, in comparison, won't even stage a mutiny.

Posted on 11/11/08 by: Ricky D'Ambrose 12:13 AM