Chronicle of a: Misunderestimated Man

by Gaetana Caldwell-Smith / November 2008

You go to director Oliver Stone’s latest film, "W.," prepared to laugh or take umbrage, depending on your political affiliation or loyalty to George W. Bush, one of the most unpopular U.S. presidents ever.

Known for his controversial work: "Salvador," "JFK," "Platoon," and "Born on the 4th of July," Stone has crafted a fictional biography about a troubled, seemingly clueless, incurious man. One would have had to have lived on another planet for the past eight years not to have seen or read about Bush’s foibles, and the "misunderestemations" (his word) of his intents; or heard his gaffes, misspeaks, and bad grammar; or experienced the results of his dangerous self-imposed power—backed, if not instigated, by Dick Cheney.

Early in his first term as the 43rd president of the United States, Bush wreaked havoc on the world, first by bombing Afghanistan allegedly for its involvement in 9/11. To make this now fragile situation worse, less than two years later, Bush ordered a "preemptive strike" on Iraq based on fabricated intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s WMDs.

Stone makes clear in his film what many suspected: Bush wanted to take down Hussein to finish the job his father, George H. W. Bush, had started with the First’s Gulf War.

With the aid of some archival footage, Stone begins his film in the 1960s and moves it unevenly from the past to just after the take-down of Hussein. An early scene shows young George W. Bush (Josh Brolin) alone in an empty baseball stadium, wearing a warm-up suit and cap. He imagines the roar of the crowd and the excited sportscaster announcing the play as he goes back for a high, fly-ball.

The next scene is late 2001, after the World Trade Center tragedy. Bush and the usual suspects are at a cabinet meeting: there’s Rumsfeld (Scott Glenn); Cheney (perfectly and evilly captured by Richard Dreyfuss); Condoleeza Rice (Thandie Newton, the only portrayal of a real person, unfortunately, to come off as a caricature); Colin Powell (Jeffery Wright does what he can in the role of a dissed Cabinet member); and Paul Wolfowitz, among other warmongering neo-cons (Powell, excepted).

The "architect," Karl Rove (a miscast Toby Jones), lurks in a shadowy corner. There are scenes of Rove orchestrating Bush’s win for governor of Texas and his subsequent run for president.

Stone illustrated the coerced religious aura surrounding Bush’s cabinet by showing him closing meetings with an unspoken, silent prayer; members’ heads bowed, eyes shut, brows furrowed in phony sincerity.

Josh Brolin plays W. straight. He neither takes the easy road of caricature nor does he overdo Bush’s snarky laugh, smirk, or his way of holding his arms out from his body as though waiting for sticky deodorant to dry.

Elizabeth Banks does a believable performance as Laura Bush. She is a woman who holds her own, yet, at the same time, comes off as a true "Stand By Your Man" gal (as do all presidents’ wives, or at least they are good actors).

W. meets Laura at a barbecue. She smokes, drinks beer from the bottle, and is proud of her push for education reforms and libraries. What could she possibly see in this guy whose Yale education was bought by his father? Sure, he’s rugged in a cowboyish way, a wanna-be rancher, a charmer with the ladies, and he comes from a "good" family.

George H. W. Bush, number 41, is played by James Cromewell, who doesn’t bother trying to get H.W.’s voice or mannerisms yet gives a sincere performance of a father disappointed with and frustrated by his oldest son’s fuck-ups, admonishing him to shape up. "You’re not Kennedy! You’re a Bush!"

The well-documented evidence of Dad getting W. into the National Guard, and the bail-outs to save his son’s ass are touched on, but, thankfully, not belabored.

The Freudian thread of Bush’s feeling that he’s never good enough for his Dad, whom he calls "perfect," is highlighted throughout, as well as the sibling rivalry with bro Jeb, who became governor of Florida just ahead of Bush’s governorship of Texas. When H. W. tells him of Jeb’s win, Junior whines, "Why can’t you ever be happy for me?"

Stone depicts Bush as a drunken womanizer until he finds religion at the knee of his evangelical Christian pastor, Earle Hudd (Stacy Keach in a wonderful role as a Texas cowboy boot-wearing preacher). W.’s religious fanaticism truly confounds his parents. "God wants me to run for president," W. tells Barbara Bush. "You’ve got to be kidding!" she exclaims in disbelief.

In an interview on BBC, Oliver Stone said that he had to get foreign funding for "W." He admits and accepts that he is not well liked in the U.S., because of his leftist politics and well as his controversial films.

He went to Yale the same time as Bush Jr. but never met him. He derides Bush for not serving in Vietnam. There, Stone said, Bush would have witnessed the horror the U.S. wreaked on that country, and that maybe W. wouldn’t be so cavalier about starting wars on a whim.

Stone also said that though Bush comes off compassionate and empathetic when visiting the wounded in the hospitals (he includes such a scene in his film), he doesn’t seem to feel for or say anything about the millions of lives the U.S. has destroyed (and continues to destroy) in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Is the United States a Christian nation?" the interviewer asked. "No," Stone, a former Protestant and now an avowed Buddhist, replied. "There are spiritual people in the United States, but a country that has two wars going on simultaneously is not a Christian nation."