The cinematography by Phedon Papamichael is pedestrian- even W.’s moment of revelation- an attack while jogging in the Texas woods, cannot invoke the beauty and awe behind W.’s conversion from drunken playboy to religious teatotaler. Just compare the sunlight through the color tree branches moment to a similar set of shots from Akira Kurosawa’s black and white Rashomon, and the power of a good shot is evident, and evidently lacking in this film- also, likely a byproduct of Stone’s desire to get the film out before the end of the 2008 election.
The basic problem with the film’s narrative is that it simply goes nowhere for no reason, and this is summed up in the film’s final dream scene- and the film is so pointless that my iterating its end will not matter one iota. W. dreams he is playing centerfield for his old baseball team, the Texas Rangers. A ball is hit, he runs back to the wall to catch it, as he did in an earlier dream scene. Except, this time the ball never comes down. W. just looks up into the heavens with a goofy look on his face, clueless as ever. While the ending may simultaneously capture the real confusion of the real President as well as Stone’s caricature, it also recapitulates the superficial glibness of Stone’s whole film. It is shallow, dull, and cannot even induce the hatred inspired by the real W.
Yet, even if one accepts that there is no ‘there’ there, inside of the President, could not Stone have at least turned his guns on the American electorate for electing such an idiot. In an earlier film of Stone’s, Natural Born Killers, Stone really tore the American consumerate a new asshole. Granted that film was over the top where this film is too reserved, even as both are broad in their portraits. But Natural Born Killers, at least, had balls, and skewered the average American. W., by contrast, is a eunuch, and Joe Average gets off as easily as W., the real man, has.
That stated, the two extremes mentioned in those two films are not the only way Stone could have gone. As example, look to Nixon, and the scene where Nixon (Anthony Hopkins) forces Secretary Of State Henry Kissinger (Paul Sorvino) to pray with him during the Watergate tumult. Now, if there were ever two real men ripe for parody (especially at such a moment) it was Nixon and Kissinger. Yet, the scene, as played and filmed, is actually quite moving. Granted, part of this is because Hopkins and Sorvino are great actors, whereas Josh Brolin and the bulk of this film’s cast are not. But, the screenplay was also far better, and showed Nixon as a complex if base, man. W., by contrast, is the aforementioned cipher, and, given that so much of this film relies on the fact that its audience will know much of the political minutia, for having lived through these years, this does not bode well for future viewers to whom Bush’s usual suspects will seem bizarre creatures from another dimension.
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