Two films on release show how brilliantly and how badly film can capture recent history. In Obama week, Oliver Stone’s W ought to have been the ideal Friday night flick, and, being a fan of his magnificently paranoid series of US political movies, from Salvador via JFK to Nixon, I had high hopes. But his account of George W Bush’s rise to the presidency and decision to go to war in Iraq is thin fare – not least because David Hare’s play Stuff Happens has already covered this ground with much more authority.
Stone takes a clunkingly Oedipal approach to the whole business: Bush Sr or ‘Poppy’ is the domineering father whom Junior can never truly please. Even Dubya’s embrace of born-again Christianity is presented as a transference of affection from one father to another.
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