This evening I attended the movie, "W," the Oliver Stone biopic on George W. Bush that was released this weekend. I am fairly sure that every single person who knows me well will be a little surprised to hear of my interest, since they have to know, even though I have never expressed it to most people in actual words, that he is not, shall we say, my favorite of the 43 POTUS people who have filled the chair in the Oval Office. I have this goofy predilection toward highly intellectual people in that role, and, well, enough said, then.
On the other hand, you may have thought, for that very reason, that I would have looked forward with anticipation to Oliver's efforts, since he does seem to enjoy throwing stones at flawed people who are in charge. [Yes, that was a pun. And intentional.] His films on JFK and Nixon, for example, were critical and hard bitten.
From the first moment I heard about this movie, I felt it was an absolute certainty where he would go with it. Therefore, sarcastic and cynical as I am, it may surprise you to hear I wanted nothing to do with it. [I certainly surprised myself by my interest, I must say.] But I don't have a taste for hate, even when fictionalized. I do have a heart, of sorts, and I have never liked kicking an underdog, either.
I even feel sorry for Julie Nixon Eisenhower and Tricia Nixon Cox at having to see their father, whom I assume they love as much as anyone loves their own father, however flawed he may be, portrayed so negatively in movies, docu-films and wherever else he is mentioned or made note of. Of course, if they have read his own autobiographies, [a fascinating read, by the way, I highly recommend them if you haven't read them,] it doesn't leave a whole lot to the imagination about his values, since quite clearly the only regrets he ever had were in getting caught, and he died unrepentant about any of it, save not having destroyed the tapes. Stone didn't hesitate to pile on in his Nixon effort, so I expected more of the same in W. But I digress.
I quite seriously do not think it is a particularly good idea to throw spears at our sitting President in the form of an Oliver Stone hatchet job, no matter how notorious the limitations of the current POTUS may be. I think respect for the office itself dictates otherwise, and no matter how inadequate the man (or woman, I remain hopeful,) currently sitting behind the desk may be, the office is one of dignity and deserves to be treated thusly.
Even more, I think public disrespect, [I am talking about outright hateful hatchet job, not disagreement with policies,] is an invitation to our enemies. I am not talking about the false enemies, the ones that are used in campaign rhetoric to scare the other side into voting for our guy. I speak of the genuine enemies of our nation, who would use the disaffection of our own citizens against us to bring us down.
However, over the course of the day today, I read quite a number of reviews, beginning with the one in our own daily paper which was published on Friday, [I fall behind,] and I found myself becoming intrigued. Virtually every review I read, and I read a lot of the them, just by googling the movie itself, used the same terms to describe the movie. Even-handed. Surprisingly thoughtful. Fascinating. Over analyzing.
The most surprising part of all was that review after review mentioned coming away with a new understanding of the man who would be king, and I decided that I must see it for myself. Because I have to be honest, if there is anything I would like to know, it is how that guy thinks, because it is certainly a mystery to me. I went looking for some genuine insight, and one thing Stone usually provides is thorough research, and insight into character, however dark his take on an indivdual.
I came away, as did most of the reviewers, it seems, with a curious mixture of feeings. I don't know that George W. Bush himself would appreciate his portrayal by Josh Brolin, but I think I did. Because Brolin did not play him for the fool, didn't take any cheap shots, didn't make him a caricature of himself.
Instead, he played him straight, and in so doing, by humanizing him, he has made him somehow much more likeable for me, more understandable, more sympathetic of a person. And it felt right to me - that certainty, that confidence, what I have seen as arrogance, even. He played W as someone who did many of the wrong things for all the right reasons, and he did it in a way that made me believe it was real. For the first time, I can see how the most right of intentions could have gone so badly wrong. And while the wrong still has no virtue, it is, somehow redemptive for me.
But first, a note about something in this movie that really bugged me all the way through. The woman who played Condoleeza Rice had the look, but I do not believe she portrayed her fairly nor accurately. I think she must have read Bob Woodward's "State of Denial," another interesting read, by the way, and bought the notion of Rice as a patsy and a fool.
One thing I believe you can say about Rice - she is no idiot. She is Secretary of State for a reason, and has held her own successfully in the political arena for many years, both here and abroad. You may have noticed that she does not have an international reputation as a brainless twit. Take my word for it, if she was, you would know it. There is nothing the foreign press enjoys more than making fun of an American politician who is a dope. I imagine that would go double for a woman.
If anyone believes that portrayal is anything like the truth, then I have a bridge they can buy in the middle of nowhere. I think if John McCain had picked Condi Rice for his Vice Presidential candidate, there would be a different race for the White House going on right now.
On the other hand, I thought Ellen Burstyn did a terrific job in her extremely limited role as Barbara Bush, portraying her as both sympathetic and mercurial at the same time. She showed her as the proud matriarch, but with a willingness to be honest about herself, too, that struck a note of reality for me.
Burstyn played Barbara Bush as I have always thought her to be in real life - brutally honest, straight forward and to the point with others, and unstinting in her belief in the people she cares about, even when she knows they are in the wrong. I don't believe she will allow excuses from them in private, however, and Burstyn made that all look real. I don't think I would want to be her namesake caught with an MIP, that's for sure, and I have no doubt at all that Barbara the Younger has no real desire to sully that name ever again.
But aside from those notes, I honestly thought the movie was a surprisingly fair portrayal of a man I have not found to be especially sympathetic before. In fact, I harbor a sneaking suspicion, after having seen it, that Oliver Stone started out to make a different movie than he ended up with, and in the process, found out that he couldn't make the movie he wanted. His investment may be the worse for that discovery, but perhaps the country is better off that way.
Brolin gave a very strong performance as the lesser Bush, the George that couldn't get his act together, the party guy, the drinker, the gambler, the wastrel. Partisans may not appreciate the portrayal, but the truth of his early years is well known, and it makes him more real, to accept that he is flawed, as every human being is.
The relationship picture that Stone portrayed between George the Elder and his wayward son was very interesting. Although I imagine some of it was artistic license, it doesn't take a lot of imagination to think that a lot of it probably looked fairly much like that in the real life version, too. He was portrayed as a young man who simply could not get his feet on the ground, and as he aged, he continued to flounder even as his parents pushed him to find solid rock to land on. Not unlike most parents, I imagine, when they see a child failing to live up to their expectations.
Laura Bush was mostly portrayed as a thoughtless, smiling face, something that I am not so sure I believe, but she clearly did give him a reason to become more grounded and more focused. I think that she probably had more to do with his presidency than people realize, because I think he found, in her, the supportive believer he had been looking for. In her adulation, he found a piece of himself that had been missing.
On a brief tangent here, have you noticed how the two presidents in recent history that have been most publicly noted for their faithfulness to both God and their wives, Jimmy Carter, and George W. Bush, have also been two of our most ineffective presidents? [Please note my bi-partisan examples. I am not picking on a party here, ineffectiveness is a non-partisan trait.] I have contemplated that a few times as we hear about the affairs and sexual shenanigans in the private lives of our public figures, and whether or not that should be a consideration of their fitness for higher office. I don't have any enlightening observations, really, I just find it interesting.
Stone's depiction, and Brolin's portrayal of W's faith and the role it has played in his decision making was, I thought, a raw, gentle presence in the film. It was in no sense over the top, and I, at least, felt Stone underplayed, if anything, the role that faith has played in this administration. While people who have seen his other work may have been expecting a hatchet job on religion, [I know I was,] on the contrary, I think W was portrayed as a truly faithful man who was following what he believed to be God's directives for him.
The actor who may win the Academy Award, however, was not the star, but a supporting actor who had a rather small role, given what we know about this administration, but a crucial one. Richard Dreyfuss, in his portrayal of Dick Chaney, did a superb job, as he always does, and he should definitely be recognized for his contributions to this film.
Dreyfuss resisted the temptation to portray Chaney as evil, which would have been an easy caricaturization of a man I believe to be extremely complex. Instead, he was coldly calculating, a rather quiet, brooding presence, determined to help W right a wrong that had been an undercurrent in Washington since George H.W. Bush left Saddam Hussein standing at the end of the first Iraq war. I would not be surprised to see him win awards for this role, because in his understated portrayal, he got it absolutely right, I think.
I don't know what other people will think about this movie, but I walked away thoughtful and with a slightly changed perspective. I still don't agree with most of what W has done while in office, but I can, I think, at least understand a little more clearly why he believed he was right, even when all the evidence told him he wasn't. History will be the final judge and jury, and I don't know what people will say in 200 years about the beginning of the 21st Century. But I think Stone's portrayal was an interesting possibility of how W will be seen in the future.
