DEATH OF A PRESIDENT
October 19, 2007: A future of "chickens coming home to roost"?
PopcornReel.com Movie Review: "Death of a President"
By Omar P.L. Moore/October 27, 2006
Almost a year from the date of this film review, the 43rd President of the
United States will be assassinated -- so say the filmmakers in their
documentary, docudrama, or "fake-u-mentary" (call it what you will) entitled
"Death Of A President", which opened today in select theaters around North
America.
The film's title is both ironic and provocative. By the end of Gabriel
Range's compelling, moving and shrewdly manipulative Court TV "Investigators"
series-like drama, the president's position as an executive has grown stronger
than ever before to greatly ironic effect, in the wake of the assassination.
And it's provocative because the title is "Death of a president", not
"Death of The President". This may or may not reveal that the
filmmakers' might personally feel that George W. Bush is not the legitimate
president of the United States of America. [After all, in 2000, outgoing
vice president Al Gore won the popular vote for president over Mr. Bush by half
a million votes.] Given the tenor of many of the world's citizens as they
react to a series of well-documented blunders, wrongs and indifferences by the
Bush Administration over the last six years, Mr. Range is certainly not alone.
What Mr. Range is alone in however, is creating a heartfelt, probing mystery, in
which its subject is seen in a remarkably human and sympathetic light, even as
those in his fictional on-screen administration are jumping to conclusions in
trying to solve the assassination. Mr. Range examines how the climate of
violence comes around to harm those who bring it about, or as Malcolm X once
said, "chickens coming home to roost" following Kennedy's assassination in 1963.
This comment is amplified by a Muslim woman at the film's start who says, "when
your finger was on the trigger, didn't you stop to think about the consequences
of your actions?" Her words may inevitably force us to think of the
present commander-in-chief and the depressing news in Iraq, but by the time that
Range's film is over we may be thinking of her words in a different context
altogether. The investigation whodunnit? is the most interesting and
fascinating aspect of "Death" -- reminding one of the investigation of what took
place in and around Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.
Then, the Texas Book Depository Tower was one of the main focuses in the JFK
assassination investigation. In 2007, it is a tower across from Chicago's
Sheraton Hotel, where the president has just given a speech on the nation's
burgeoning economy before the Economic Club of Chicago -- a speech actually
given in January 2003. Against a Secret Service agent's doubts and
advisories, the president decides to work a crowd of people standing behind a
rope line.
For all the interesting and engrossing investigation-style narrative, very
real-sounding somber reflections and recollections from several Bush
administration "members" including an FBI investigator, a chief of staff, a
Secret Service agent, and a forensics expert, there are some highly
preposterous, or at best, unreal scenarios -- like the paucity of police
standing on the rooftops surrounding the hotel -- and the idea that city and
street blocks surrounding the Sheraton where Mr. Bush speaks would not be
sufficiently shut down is implausible, given real police cordons that have put
protesters a good five miles away when the president speaks in certain cities
hostile to his presence -- the closeness here of some very passionate and
physically aggressive anti-Bush demonstrators to his official motorcade and to
the Sheraton is patently unbelievable. Therein however, lies the rub --
"Death Of A President" might play as a "real" documentary but the way it is both
lit and shot lend it a feel of a hypothetical imagining of what the consequences
of violence brings to a society which has seen lots of violent events in the
last six years -- whether it be 9/11/01, Hurricane Katrina, the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq, etc. And when the Chicago police start to waylay on
anti-Bush protesters who get too close to the scene, it echoes the violence
committed by police against protestors at the 1968 Democratic National
Convention held in the same city, where at least a dozen protesters were killed
just yards from the convention site. The scenes in "Death" featuring
protesters have a particularly heightened sense of power and visceral punch to
them.
Indeed, Mr. Range is proficient at staging events that evoke memories of
real-life events, and is so because it lacks self-consciousness and is abundant
in its spontaneity, so much so that it doesn't feel staged at all, in a curious
sort of way.
In many instances, there are digital insertions of Mr. Bush's face on an actor's
body, mixed with live news footage of Mr. Bush -- who apart from the speech at
the Economic Club is seen only once more in the film. More precisely put,
the film is not about Mr. Bush's assassination, it is about the events
surrounding it, including how the media, politicians and the public rush to
judgment in matters that can affect lives in devastating ways. A real-life
example of this was in the Oklahoma City Bombing of April 1995, where many law
enforcement officials, some media news organizations and members of the public
assumed the violence was being perpetrated by Muslims.
Mr. Range is at his best when he weaves investigative threads together with the
fictional characters -- the actors whom play them are compelling in their own
right.
Right before the film starts there is a very clear disclaimer that says that
"Death Of A President" was not endorsed by the White House, the Secret Service
or the Chicago Police Department, and not endorsed by the United States
Government. It seems to go without saying, but Mr. Range and company seem
intent on making it clear that there is no confusion.
The very worst thing that can be said about "Death of A President", which opens
in over 110 theaters in the U.S. today (some media and theaters have refused to
show, advertise it or review it) is that one member of the public audience that
this reviewer saw it with applauded at the moment the assassination occurred,
while one woman raised her arms aloft in joyous triumph, as if she had just won
the lottery. Such sick reactions, while people have a right to react to a
film in a non-violent way, are sad -- even if the current president and his
administration have, as the documentary says "been responsible for over 100,000
deaths." And that's the true test of "Death of A President":
violence begets violence -- and the costs and spiraling repercussions are ever
so dear. Does anyone really think that killing the president of the
United States will make America and the world a safer place?
The protesters and dissenters (like the two in the theater audience who
celebrated the "event") are sometimes as misguided as the president has been
accused of being. Interestingly, Mr. Range actually shows no blunders by
Mr. Bush -- going in we know what will happen to him in this film, so there is
an element of melancholy. While many hold Mr. Bush politically responsible
for all that ails America and parts of the rest of the world, can they also
plausibly hold him personally responsible, and thus justified to be engaged in
violent reprisals against him? Questions like this might be ones that the
director intends, but the ultimate answer probably depends on many things,
including whether you are prospering or are in dire straits in the U.S., or
elsewhere in the world because of policies which have affected people in many
regions.
"Death Of A President" is not instantly forgettable, yet it won't soon be put in
the annals of all-time greats. Still, Mr. Range has done more than a
half-decent job -- a very impressive job in fact, chronicling this scenario,
which is not all that much of a fantasy, considering the levels of anger that
the actions of the Bush administration have stirred up among some. While
the film should be seen, it is tough to say that it is highly-recommended
viewing, but it is a film that will keep you thinking and talking for a while.
The film was originally shown on British television earlier this month and was
produced and released by Film Four a British film company arm of Channel Four in
England.
Copyright 2006. PopcornReel.com. All Rights Reserved.
"Death of A President" is curiously rated R by the Motion Picture Association
of America, for "brief violent images" -- there aren't any except for a quick
shot of surgery being done for a second or two. The film should have been
rated PG-13. The film is written by Gabriel Range and Simon Finch.
The film runs for one hour and 35 minutes.