W.

(2008)

Directed by

Oliver Stone

Review by Zach Saltz

The W. in the title of Oliver Stone’s latest film, a biography of the 43^rd US President, refers not to the middle name Walker, but may stand for two antonymic epithets Bush is called through the course of the fact-based dramatization: Winner and Wussy.  Bush Jr. is a winner because he was able to get into Yale and Harvard possessing stunningly little capacity for intellect (his befuddled first response to learning that a pretty girl named Laura Welch is a librarian is “Uh oh”).  He is a winner because he doesn’t have to work a steady job, and wins at becoming the owner of the Texas Rangers, the Governor of Texas, and eventually the Presidency.  But Stone’s point is that Bush is a wussy as well, precisely for these very things that makes him a winner, because whenever he finds himself at the edge of personal, public, or financial disaster, Bush Sr. (“41”) is always able to pull the appropriate strings and narrowly avoid a major jam.

But W. is not a particular indictment or ridicule of George W. Bush, as some might expect it to be.  Bush is lampooned so much in mainstream American media that simply going for cheap jabs about his mispronunciations or spoonerisms would be perfunctory.  What Oliver Stone wants to tell is the story of an American aristocrat who rejects his societal expectations until a series of events (whether genuine or exaggerated) enable him to realize his full potential as a leader and as a Christian. 

The story begins in the Oval Office one day in 2002 presumably, when Bush and “the Hawks” come up with the brilliant catch-all phrase for the hostile nations of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea: “The Axis of Evil.”  Colin Powell (played by Jeffrey Wright) warns against invoking World War Two language, but his reservations are ignored by Dick Cheney and Karl Rove (Richard Dreyfuss and Toby Jones); this is not the last time Powell’s advice will be disregarded.  The film proceeds to alternate between significant episodes in Bush’s life to the lead-up of the Iraq invasion in March 2003.  Stone presents a stunning dichotomy between a drunken frat-boy failure through the majority of his life (until an encounter with Jesus, the second film of Stone’s in a row to feature a cameo by Christ), and a dignified, stately President who breathes a sigh of relief when he is told that the Armed Forces’ torture policy he must read and sign is only three pages in length.

The centerpiece of this film is the remarkable title performance by Josh Brolin.  It is easy enough to mimic and impersonate a real-life figure, which Brolin of course does effectively, but he also gives Bush a dimension that is entirely speculative and convincing: A certain unexpected malaise and discontent about the seemingly outgoing and gregarious President – that beneath the cowboy mentality lies a man deeply wounded by never living up to the promise of “the Bush name.”  Indeed, in one of the film’s lighter moments, 41 scolds 43 after a night of drunken partying and proceeds to remind him that he’s “a Bush, not a Kennedy.”  The Freudian interplay between Bush 43 and his parents (we are told he gets his inability to keep his mouth shut from Barbara) gives the film a fascinating psychological element, and indeed, more effective than the characters’ deliberations of possible WMDs and engagement of troops are the intimate scenes between Bush and Laura (Elizabeth Banks, also excellent) about how 43 seeks to reestablish the Bush success through his ill-fated entrance into politics.

So is the W. in Oliver Stone’s film a winner or a wussy?  A wussy in the end most likely, Stone seems to argue, because 41, now saddled in his beachside cabin with Barbra at his side watching television, is unable to intervene when Iraq turns into a disaster.  But George W. Bush, more than any leader in recent history, is truly a man of the people – as middling, inarticulate, and irrational as the next average American – and to his failures we must attribute the failures of ourselves.

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