The President's Last Bang

When word got out that the Toronto Film Festival was going to screen a film called Death of a President (early festival materials simply listed it as D.O.A.P.), a made-for-British-television faux-documentary that tells of the assassination of U.S. President Bush, right-wing pundits went berserk. "SHOCK!" was Matt Drudge's predictably monosyllabic response, which he splashed across his front page in giant red letters. Others called it "snuff cinema" or "liberal porn", while Rush Limbaugh predicted that democrats would "demand that elected politicians actually endorse the movie, at their own peril if they don't." Even so-called liberals like Hillary Clinton denounced it as "despicable...and absolutely outrageous." The thing is, had any of them actually seen the film, they would realize the whole affair is a bit of a tempest in a teacup. October 2007. George W. Bush arrives in Chicago to give a speech to an economic club — a speech that contains a veiled warning to North Korea, supposedly eighteen months away from nuclear warhead launch capability. An alarming number of protestors have taken to the city streets, and there are continual violent clashes with riot police. Later that night, Bush is assassinated, Cheney is sworn in as President (shudder), and the investigation begins. Though 300+ suspects have been taken into custody, the focus is on a Syrian-American man spotted near the scene of the crime. All we know about him is that his parents were deported after 9/11, and that he recently took a trip to the Middle East. However, this is enough for the FBI and media to run with, and it's not long before Syrian "experts" are on TV proclaiming this a state-sponsored assassination. Yet is the Syrian truly guilty, or is he merely a patsy? Though hardly the liberal porn that some believe it to be, the film's sentiments do lie somewhere left of center, and the film is openly critical of Bush-era policies and the reactionary media. Shortly after Cheney takes office (shudder again), Patriot III is passed, which further guts civil liberties and broadens the definition of terrorism. We learn that Cheney has been itching to get rid of Assad for years, and this Syrian connection is a perfect opportunity, even if the evidence against the alleged gunman is questionable at best. In other words, what we see played out in the film is a repeat of the path to the Iraqi war — speculation, shoddy evidence, and an unquestioning media all-too-eager to comply. Interestingly enough, there are no voices from the left heard in the film, nor are any positions challenged. The protesters are portrayed solely as young anarchists who, in the words of a Chicago police chief, must be dealt with forcefully. Then there's the FBI agent who openly says that looking for Arab suspects isn't racial profiling, but common sense. The closest thing to a dissenting opinion comes from a forensics expert (James Urbaniak, Henry Fool) who argues that the investigation began with a hypothesis of guilt, followed by a retrofitting of evidence. Yet (perhaps unfortunately) the film isn't an exposé of this imagined post-Bush America, which has evolved into an even greater Orwellian state, and this (ostensibly) position-less stance is a bit frustrating. This isn't Gabriel Range's first foray into the speculative documentary format — he's directed several for British television over the past few years. Yet Death of President never approaches the frighteningly real quality found in the work of Peter Watkins, who mastered the format with such groundbreaking films as The War Game and Punishment Park. Though mainly comprised of talking head interviews, the drama unfolds like an episode of CSI, and this might be the film's greatest shortcoming. We are meant to be watching a documentary about a significant event, one that had global resonance. The existence of a third act reveal shatters the illusion, for nobody watching the documentary after the fact would be unaware of the identity of the real assassin. Don't get me wrong — Range has directed an extremely well made and entertaining procedural. However, it shouldn't take an entire film to merely point out America's tendency, need, and/or desire to vilify a Middle Easterner. With a twist ending that somehow manages to be both poignant and maudlin at the same time, Death of a President can best be described as an opportunity wasted. Neither polemic nor satire, it's a film that will only offend those who refuse to see it. The decision by Regal Entertainment Group and Cinemark to ban the film outright from their cinemas says more about life in Bush's America than the film itself.

Comments

[miranda]

James Urbaniak = also the voice of Dr Venture on The Venture Brothers, which is probably the smartest and geekiest animated series out there today. More pop-culture than strictly film-obsessed, though.

[Jack Meoff]

Sounds like a must see.

[ROBERT DEININGER]

WHY IS THERE EVEN A DISCUSSION ABOUT THIS,ITS ALMOST LAUGHABLE....GET A GRIP ON YOURSELVES, ITS ONLY A DAM MOVIE.......SEE IT OR DON'T ITS AS SIMPLE AS THAT.......IN FLA. TODAY A GROUP OF CUBANS ARE ANGRY BECAUSE THEY HAD BOOKS REMOVED FROM THE SCHOOL LIBRARY THAT SHOWED WHAT LIFE WAS LIKE IN CUBA TODAY AND THEY SAID IT WAS ALL LIES, THE ACLU SUED AND THE BOOKS WERE REPLACED, FOR ONCE I AGREE WITH THE ACLU [AND THAT'S RARE] BUT THE FACT IS IF EVERY BOOK WAS REMOVED BECAUSE SOMEONE DIDN'T LIKE IT, THE SHELVES WOULD BE EMPTY, SAME THING WITH MOVIES, THERE WOULD BE NONE IF EVERYTIME SOMEONE WAS OFFENDED IT WAS NOT ALLOWED TO SHOW....ITS YOUR 10 BUCKS, IF YOU WANT TO SEE A PRESIDENT OR A MISSIONARY GET SHOT, THEN SPEND IT, IF NOT, DON'T GO, THIS IS AFTER ALL AMERICA, A FREE COUNTRY LAST I LOOKED.........R.E.DEININGER NJ RD1064@AOL.COM
Comment from rd1064 - 10/26/06 9:51 PM

[Edward Stengel]

It's a fictional account of an assassination of
a president, no more and no less, and it so stated
in the movie. Rush Limbaugh and all the rest of
the right wing fascists would have us believe that
this is a democratic conspiracy to really assassinate the president. He must be back on
drugs.

[Frank W]

Wonderful reference to the work of Watkins. That leads one to consider as well, that the closer to a 1:1 reality in the fiction, for example by way of the subject - the death of the current US President - the further from allowing the film to transform into a powerful format (if that is what is demanded of the film). After all, Watkins films were powerful in their time, and stand the test of time today, due to the conditions they address, and then the way they do so. They are fictions that border on documentary, and to the point they were kept out of cinemas (Punishment Park) because they hit home, they were disturbingly real. And they were fictions pointing to a plausible reality in the near future, confusingly close, which allows for a kind of conceit in the framework (somewhere in the near future) for fiction and for political commentary to be close enough to striking range in the here and now.

[mike fried]

sometimes bad taste is just plain bad taste, regardless of politics.