W. (2008)

Oliver Stone's habit of mining the recent and familiar for his fictionalized histories requires a leap from his audience. I think that the strengths of W. become clearer if it's viewed as an alternate history, if we pretend for a couple of hours that we're from a calmer, saner universe where George W. Bush was only ever the son of a President, a semi-public figure of fun, instead of a world-historical fuckup. Imagine, we say, just imagine what would have happened if Dan Quayle had become President! Or Jesse Ventura! Or worst of all George W. Bush! Someone that feckless and callow and lazy—what dystopia would reign!

Stone presents Bush (Josh Brolin) in scenes from throughout his adult life, moving back and forth through time as we see how his formative experiences and demons and flaws shape his actions. These scenes, mostly, are intensely personal: and, while they present Bush, especially younger Bush, as a grotesque, they are careful not to damn him for that; Brolin plays him with such confidence that he becomes a preternatural charmer even through the slouching and loudness and mouthfuls of food. Two scenes at the beginning neatly lay out the Bush dynamic: one, a golden moment on a baseball diamond where Bush receives full and absolute adoration from the crowd before he throws out the first pitch as President; the second a fraternity hazing where Bush is seen to be a peculiar interpersonal genius. Bush craves love but will accept deference; and if he cannot compete in the world of ideas and reason he will resituate all his problems from there to the realm of personal connection where he is nigh unrivaled. Bush's struggle for the respect of his father (James Cromwell in a nice performance of some heavy-handed scenes) is the key to this dynamic: GHWB seems to be the only person who both refuses W. affection and does not fall for his charms; in Stone's telling, it is approval from this distant father that motivates the striving of an unfit man for office but is not enough to overcome shallowness and incompetence.

Of course W. would not be an Oliver Stone film without a little wackadoodle read on l'affaire Bush, one he here situates within the national security apparatus of the administration. These scenes are where the feel of alternate history comes in; the odd impressions and recontextualized quotes identify this as parodic; the murderous absurdities calmly dropping from the mouths of Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz reminded me of nothing as much as Dr. Strangelove. Most of these criminals don't come off well, of course: Colin Powell (Jeffrey Wright) gets the best treatment, with his Iraq war arc being presented as tragedy-lite; Condi Rice is shown as less conspirator than enabler, though Thandie Newton's distracting impression makes her thoroughly a figure of ridicule. Karl Rove, wow: Rove is not only a villain, he is a malevolent corrupt elf; casting Toby Jones here is one of Stone's most interesting choices in the whole film.

Throughout the film, we come, as we expect, to feel sympathy for W. He's a man wholly out of his depth, whose personal psychodrama became treasonous only because of the family into which he was born. His interpersonal instincts are so right that he cannot realize that his intellectual instincts are so wrong; in manipulating those around him to give him love (or deference, that Splenda to his soul), he opens himself up to their manipulation to war. But those very scenes with his advisers and cabinet pull us back out of any sympathy. The jarring satire reignites our anger at regular intervals. Nixon was part tragedy, part Grand Guignol, but the character was given an amoral macabre dignity. Bush's dignity, hinted at in the sympathy Stone give to his rise through life, is utterly undercut by the clowns by which he is undone; and we in our alternate universe laugh at the criminals and cringe at Bush, thinking What a bullet we dodged, then, didn't we?