"W"

"W," I'm afraid in today's context refers to 'Waste of time.' I can't remember being so disappointed in a movie, although I honestly don't know what I was expecting. It is truly hard to believe that the combination of one of Hollywood's most controversial liberal directors and perhaps America's most controversial Republican President since Abe Lincoln would produce nearly two and half hours of utter boredom.

I remember Dennis Kucinich's famous words during the second Bailout vote: "Why, why, why !!!" This plea for sanity rang out in my mind as the movie trudged forward, lurching unevenly from one event in W's life to another:

• Why didn't Oliver Stone use the two hours to build W's character ?
• Why did Stone constantly show close-ups of W eating sandwiches and slurping down beers?
• Why did the actress playing Condi Rice pretend she was on Saturday Night Live?
• Why did they turn Dick Cheney into Darth Vader, at times I thought he was going to refer to W as Anakin?
  
• Why didn't someone write a script? The plot here seemed to be as hard to find as WMDs in Iraq.
• Why did the movie leave out the single defining moment in W's life - 9/11 (or even the 2000 election for that matter) ?
• Why did we have to watch a 40 year old Josh Brolin pretend he was an 18 year old fraternity pledge getting hazed?
• Why did we have to see W sitting on the pot (not part of the drug war, the bathroom)?
  

So many questions, so few answers, so many lost opportunities - it is a real shame on a number of levels. Making movies is not just about entertainment, it is also in many cases a way to document living history and I think this film missed out on both. At the end of the film I came out not much clearer on any aspects of President Bush's life and bored out of my mind.

More importantly though, I think Stone missed the character study entirely - despite spending all of that time, Bush's character seems just as vague and shallow at the end as it appeared at the beginning of the film. Perhaps that was the point Stone was trying to make, that W was a completely clueless, somewhat vulgar guy with really big sibling rivalry issues. But, as most of us realize, President Bush is not a mere stereotype, he is a much more complex guy than many have given him credit for and he did win the Presidency twice. This movie writes him off as a hopeless loss in 2004 before his reelection - if he was such a failure then, how come he won (swift boat didn't do all of it) ?

My point isn't to make a plea for a more compassionate portrayal of George W. Bush, but rather to note that a superficial examination of his life does not do history justice. Our recent history is almost trivialized in this movie, something that shouldn't be allowed to occur. What has happened over the past eight years has had a remarkable and long-lasting impact on this country. I for one, would like to know Mr. Bush better - I don't care whether he drank too much when he was younger, I want to understand the ambition and the drive that led him and us into our current world situation. George W. Bush is a study in ambition, a man who has comfortably worn his controversies and continued to move forward. W changed the world. His is an incredible story, and one that remains to be told properly.

Regardless of what your political beliefs are or your opinion of him may be, W is not the cartoon character this movie portrays him as. If Mr. Stone was trying to make some sort of point in this biopic, it got lost in his own personal cynicism.



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