Death of a President review
Bush and Beyond
Two months back this movie won the International Critics Award at Toronto. Los Angeles Times reported that anticipating the controversy this movie could cause, organizers referred to this film as D.O.A.P instead of the title. New York Times called it a “fake-umentary” and CNN refused to run its promos citing the “extreme nature of the subject matter.”The director, Gabriel Range calls it a “documentary set in future”.
Yes, Death of a President portrays hypothetical death of the real president George W Bush. Bush is being played by none other than Bush himself! The film uses real footage of Bush and mixes it with staged scenes to create filmic reality in documentary genre.
The film is not about George W. Bush. He just happens to be at the center of unfolding events. LA Times writes, “Far from being the villain of the piece, Bush is portrayed as a tragic victim of circumstance-or at least a tragic lesser of the two evils.”
Bush is assassinated in the film by an unidentified sniper and Dick Cheney takes over as the next US president. A Syrian citizen is caught as a suspect and is put in death row without enough forensic evidence.
The film is constructed in the documentary style. It looks back at the assassination and subsequent prosecution of Syrian citizen. With a clever juxtaposition of ‘˜real’ footage and staged interviews 'Death of a President' examines the administration’s rush to judgement on the basis of suspicion based on political biases instead of forensic evidence.
Some critics have problems with Gabriel Range showing real people to portray hypothetical reality. Range admits manipulating some real events.He had put in his actors in the real anti Bush protests with placards for the movie. Bush’s speech at Chicago is a real one and an amicable president shaking hands with people of Chicago is also the real Bush. Ronald Reagan’s funeral footage is used for Mr. Bush. Here is the best defense I found for the D.OA.P’s manipulated reality, the LA Times writes “the movie manipulates reality to show how easily reality can be manipulated.”
In an era of rising intolerance and a predictable rush to nail culprits, Death of a President, helps us look back at the future, that seems inevitable.
