Review of "W."

I saw "W." this past weekend. In the movie, Oliver Stone humanized Bush in important ways (it's too easy to demonize him) by presenting Bush's large personality, his wanting to do better, his relationship with his family, and, most importantly, the relationship with his father. But Stone didn't do anything beyond that. He told us Bush was human, but that's something most of us already knew.

It's hard to tease out the good and the bad from a political movie with such a specific focus. Should it be judged as a movie entirely without factoring in the reality on which it is based? If it is factored in, where does a review of the movie become a criticism of the life it is based on? I'm inclined to do the former, to judge it as a movie removed from its inspiration, but every time I try to do that I find my thinking bleeding into the latter.

The movie is structured in a fragmented chronology, jumping backward and forward in time (like "Lost" or "Damages"). The fractures help to contain the largeness of Bush -- the movie holds what it can, and whatever it can't hold together, it lets leak out in between the time jumps. Josh Brolin's performance was very good, if not great, and he occasionally disappeared beneath the Bush character. Although, the times he wasn't able to disappear, I couldn't help but think of Will Ferrell doing Bush on SNL.

Review of "W." continued after the jump.

Thandie Newton, who played Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, was allowed by Stone to do a disservice to the real Rice. Newton's version was a bird-lik and sycophantic caricature, and she really did belong on SNL. That performance was a gaping hole in the cast of supporting characters. Scott Glenn as Donald Rumsfeld, Toby Jones as Karl Rove, Richard Dreyfuss as Dick Cheney potrayed their real-life counterparts with a finer-tuned understanding. Jeffery Wright (of "Angels and America") as Colin Powell seemed awfully young and did strange, distracting things with his voice, probably in an effort to add the gravitas that the real Colin Powell possesses naturally. As some of the portrayals morphed into impersonations, the difficulties of portraying living breathing people became more and more apparent.

As funny was this movie often was, Stone also did a disservice by keeping the exploration of Bush's character an external endeavor. Based on this movie, W.'s was intimidated and overwhelmed by his father while being simultaneously and remarkably competitive with him. W. used is relationship with his father to polish and sharpen his own claws, but Stone misses an opportunity to add dimension when he refuses to offer the internal, nearly-pathological motivations of a man like W. If W. blames his father for all of his problems, then what kind of mentality exists that would use his father in such a way? W's representation of his father is an excuse to misbehave, to fight, and, ultimately, to be President. W's ego led him to the presidency, and it is his ego that will force him out of it so disgracefully.

But Stone's focus on the Iraq war as the ultimate symbol of W.'s failure as a leader points to a misfired arrow by Stone, one that went more than just shy of the personality bullseye. The same man who could invade Iraq so recklessly is the same man who could refuse to lead us during the financial crisis. What we did learn from this movie, which comes out at a time when we are hungry for information, is that W. is human and not pschypathic. What we needed to know is how an unchecked ego and a sense of entitlement can lead us to where are now. We do get that, eventually, but only when we combine the fictions of the film with the rest of the facts of W.'s presidency.