With 'W.,' Stone jumps gun on history

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By Scott Galupo

Not only is the ink not dry on the history of the Bush administration, it's still being written. Banner headlines with the word "crisis" appear in newspapers seemingly every other day. There are ongoing wars in two highly unstable countries.

Yet, with the feature film "W." (reviewed on B4), Oliver Stone has attempted to pre-empt popular history's verdict on George W. Bush.

In the first major review of "W.," which opens in area theaters today, Variety magazine's Todd McCarthy wrote that, while "inescapably interesting," the movie "feels like a rough draft" that Mr. Stone should revisit 10 or 15 years from now.

After all, the Oscar-winning director had decades' worth of distance from which to cinematically sum up the legacies of John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon.

Mr. Stone replied, in an interview with CNN this week, that "W." is not merely about the last eight years; rather, it's a "character study" — and George Bush, the character, is a consequential man of 62 years. What were the critical life experiences that predate his years in politics? How did growing up in the shadow of a famous and influential family shape his personality?

These are the psychobiographical questions that "W." most concerns itself with. Mr. Stone and screenwriter Stanley Weiser (who bragged to Reuters news agency of having read 17 books about the president) fashioned a classic Oedipal rivalry between George H.W. Bush — the stern patrician, the World War II hero - and his callow, unfocused, unserious son (played by Josh Brolin).

The elder Bush, portrayed in "W." by the great character actor James Cromwell, is continually, and profoundly, disappointed by "Junior," whose younger brother, Jeb, seems a more suitable vessel to uphold the Bush family name.

Stung by parental rejection and numerous professional failures, "W." holds, George W. Bush gave up drink and took up evangelical Protestantism, becoming a dry drunk and religious fanatic with shallow certitude about complex matters like life and war. From there, it was a short march into a Mesopotamian debacle — fought, fundamentally, to prove that he was both stronger than and worthy of his doubting father.

Despite Mr. Weiser's formidable syllabus, "W." is highly speculative stuff. Its central narrative won't surprise anyone with even a passing familiarity with the president's life story. The question becomes not whether certain biographical elements of the story are true, but, rather, whether they are magnified beyond all proportion and context.

"W." is entertaining in a flakily propagandistic way, but its writing feels oversimplified and its performances unexpectedly — and frequently jarringly — glib, almost Pythonesque in their comic staging.