>>REVIEW
DEATH OF A PRESIDENT
STARRING: Hend Ayoub, George W. Bush, Brian Boland and Becky Ann Baker
DIRECTED BY: Gabriel Range
Opens Friday, October 27
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How you approach British director Gabriel Range’s pointedly provocative, speculative mockumentary will depend entirely on where you stand on the question that’s dominated world politics since November of 2000 – for George or against George?
Supporters of the current U.S. president have already thrown fits over Range’s film as it uses photo-doctoring technology, fake interviews and other tricks to imagine the assasination of George W. Bush in October 2007 and the reaction that event might provoke. Because the film makes no bones about its subject and because the visual trickery Range uses to create his fake scenarios is so seamless, those inclined to be offended from the outset won’t have their minds changed by the film.
However, it’s not for any morbid glee at the notion of a Georgeless world that the film will discomfort Bush-supporters. In fact, Range has chosen the benign form of the television documentary to explore his ideas, giving it an oddly toothless feel – cue up the recent CNN special on Osama bin Laden and you’ll get a sense of how Death of a President is put together.
What will irk Bushites is the way that same televisual format works to highlight the outrageousness of Dubya’s real-life policies. When following the fake Bush’s assassination outside the Sheraton Hotel in Chicago, Range’s talking heads start discussing an attack on Syria and the introduction of "Patriot Act III," the language is so familiar that it seems perfectly logical and utterly normal. The result is a film that can’t be called out for being any more absurd or inflammatory than the stuff of which the current U.S. administration has built its legacies. In the context of today’s global politics, its speculations are disturbingly plausible.
Which isn’t to say it’s a resounding success. Although the first half of the film zips by on the strength of its tense, apocalyptic tone and cool digital gimmicks, the narrative loses steam when it settles into a whodunit formula that gives the filmmakers an out that’s too tidy for the messy questions they’ve raised. If anything can be said about the real-life Bush administration, it’s that it has perfected stringing out problems until any solutions are lost in a morass of media opinion, conjecture and muddled history. If, when Bush leaves the White House, things wrap up as cleanly as they do in Range’s film, we’ll all be lucky as hell. |
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