Title: Death of a President
Genre: Crime/Drama/Fake Documentary
Director: Gabriel Range
Release: (2006)
I’m no George Stephanopoulos, but I like to think I know at least a few things about reading political tea leaves. For example, I know that if you are a politician struggling to raise your sagging approval ratings and several dozens of people from all different walks of life decide to get together and invest two million dollars and many months of their lives to just see what it would look like if you were dead, you’ve probably still got some work to do. And if, in doing so, their efforts necessitated the cooperation of a few major lenders and a major metropolitan city along the way, and then the finished product was greeted with nearly half a dozen awards on behalf of audiences in almost as many countries, you’ve probably still got significant work to do. No need to double-check with Reuters/Zogby on that one.
Death of a President is director Gabriel Range’s controversial 2006 mockumentary, shockumentary, dream-of-some-in-Iraqumentary about the fictional assassination of George W. Bush and an imagined fallout from it. That fallout most notably including the ascendancy of Dick Cheney to the Oval Office and an ongoing struggle between personal and political interests that propels Cheney to use the hunt for Bush’s assassin as an excuse to force our way into uninvolved Syria and to push through the authorization of “USA Patriot III”, an ominously broadened new version of the Patriot Act.. Through the lens of a documentary filmmaker trying to make sense of it all a few years after the fact, we are left to watch helplessly as the decisions made unilaterally by each of the men in charge continue to compound some already tenuous situations both at home and abroad. How very, um … imaginative?
Using a combination of largely unrecognizable actors, real archival footage of Bush and Cheney, and a little CGI magic, Range creates a convincing reality of life in the aftermath of such an event. His true achievement, however, is not in the visual but in the emotional. As storytellers, Range and co-writer Simon Finch do an amazing job of weaving in a multitude of perspectives on life before and after Bush (and before and after 9/11, as well) by using each individual character as a proxy for the voice of a larger population in the country. Perspectives of the African-American community, Muslim-American community, U.S. Military and Veterans community, political activists from both sides of the aisle, and a number of other populations are given voice through characters we meet along the way. And, remarkably for a film that wraps up in a taut 90 minutes, few of these voices reflect simply one-dimensional perspectives.
Nor does the film ultimately advocate a one-sided political view. What I had expected to be some kind of supreme left-wing snuff film, actually turned out to be a fairly balanced consideration of the potential legacy of the Bush presidency. While still leaning somewhat to the left overall, the film does give plenty of voice to those staff members and supporters who admire and “remember” Bush as a leader and a human being. Even as a Gen-X grad student and Daily Show fan from the Democratic bastion of Massachusetts (making me legally obligated by the standards of the 1993 International Convention on Human Predictability and Stereotypes to spit on the ground whenever I hear his name), I have to admit that I found myself feeling twinges of dread as the moment of W’s assassination drew near in this film. That kind of reaction is a tribute to Range’s ability to humanize this story and move it beyond the realm of abstract political venom. And even if you’re not inclined to bring more political drama into your leisure time, or pontificate about the ramifications of such events, the ongoing search for the assassin weaves in an additionally captivating conspiracy angle that is slowly revealed and worth following on its own.
The only downside I would mention to you is that I couldn’t shake the feeling as I rented it that I was somehow being red-flagged in a database somewhere for doing so. (That, sadly, is not a joke.) But at the very least it is worth seeing, if not for a conversation piece, than at least for its impressively convincing realism. But don’t worry, even though it looks real, it’s all just new-fangled special effects. President Bush is still here and doing just as good as ever. (Sigh.)
Grading
Story: A
Acting: B
Visuals: B+
Originality/Innovation: B
Enjoyability: A
Overall: A-
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