W (dub-ya).

I was nervous about seeing this film as I felt that it would sit on the fence too much and become clouded by a haze of admiration for the subject matter. The other reviews I’d read so far seemed to say that it was neither a glowing biopic, nor was it a portrayal of the effects of the world-wide devastation of the Bush era. What I found was that although it did attack the Bush Administration, it cautiously approached the subject through subtle and often not so subtle ways. The narrative structure for example, one the surface may seem to be a simple crossing of the sections of his life that the film purposely chose to explore or it could be shown as being an in-direct attack: the way in which it shows all the stupid and humiliating things he has done runs parallel with the serious and political scenes and culminates with the scene whereby at a press conference he cannot answer questions that doubt and penetrate him right to the heart of the matter. This scene also interrogates the notion that not just his political life, but his personal life has been a complete shambles. It’s also constructed in a way in which welcomes an unexpected sense of sympathy – something of which I didn’t think would occur.

The film itself shows a strange hybrid of genres, whereby it is essentially has elements of documentary – the rioting and bombing shots are clearly real footage taken from news and television footage – but it also has a sense of the traditional biopic whereby established actors are brought in to portray a section or sections of an iconic life. This biopic nature of the film worked effectively in showing a sympathetic side to his life (of course it is obvious this had to be explored so that a release can be given) but it this sympathy that seems quite terrifying. This terror is a strong vein through the film that is not so much directly concerned with the war itself, but rather the justification for actually going to war and the way in which they blind the population of America into believing that it really is worth it.

The indirect attack on Bush is also present in the way in which you never really see Bush himself lending an opinion or ever really engaging with the subject of war himself – simply lending weak and unsupported actions such us “I have the last say around here”. This itself is worrying because as you see in the film, he was encouraged and manipulated by the people around him; both in his political life with his administration who clearly acted the way they did to boost their own egos and careers, but also in his personal life with the triangular relationship he has with his father and the Middle-Eastern conflict which has been present through the majority of his political and adult life.

The only aspect of the film that didn’t quite sit well was the writing of Colin Powell’s character. Although Jeffery Wright pulled out an amazing performance, it was just too difficult to believe that Powell himself was as level-headed an objectionable to the entire war and to think that he hid it all from the public eye with a Bush-supportive guise seemed too far-fetched and hazy.

Aesthetically, the film seemed quite cartoony which a picturesque quality to it that is only really seen in Sirkian melodrama. Although this can be argued as being quite a weakness to the film, I would argue it as a positive because it adds to the ridicule and falsity of the era that it is showing us. Of course the problem with this is that it seems rather obvious and if a trend begins then sadly the nature of this would become ubiquitous and as always the nature of these is that the element ultimately watered-down so that it is lost in world of inappropriate and disparate contexts. Because of the cartoony nature of the film mentioned earlier, you could say that it ties in quite well with other contempory political films such as Persepolis and Waltz with Bashir, although the blinding difference being that the latter two are literally animated, W. is not entirely different in the way it deals with the subject matter: a self-mocking way and ridiculing manner whilst displaying the flaws of the society and characters that surround and create it.

On the whole it was a worthwhile and unique experience and the way it directly chose to sit in the middle and analyse both sides was a positive as it could have so easily fallen into the trap of being a fictional Fahrenheit 9/11. W. is an intellectual and discussion-provoking film with an unintentional but welcoming roller-coaster emotional ride of even-handedness coupled with sheer unashamed outrage at one of the most contentious and iconic world leaders of the last ten years. It truly showed a young boy who never wanted to grow up.