Opening Night at Oliver Stone’s “W.”

It was Friday night. The workweek was over. We were in Washington, DC. Obama was 10-14 points ahead in the polls. And it was the opening night of Oliver Stone’s “based-on-a-true-story” cinematic biography of Bush Junior, titled, “W.”

I was surprised to find two tickets still available for on-line purchase at 5:20 pm for the 7:30 show. When we arrived, the lobby was mostly empty, not even a line at the concession stand. I mitigated my disappointment by ordering the large popcorn, which, this being the United States, was enough to fill the trunk of a Smart Car.

In the theater, I was both reassured and mildly annoyed that the room was so full, the only two seats together were in the very last row and against the wall. But, no matter. I was cozied up in a room full of democrats, who I knew must have been seething along side me over that day’s reports of the McCain campaign’s robo-calls claiming Obama voted to deny medical care to dying babies. I’m not particularly proud of this fact, but I was ready to enjoy a comedic, mocking portrayal of the sitting president. And I really needed it, because it’s been getting harder and harder to use our eight-year, underdog status to rationalize mocking the republicans, when an Obama win in November is becoming more certain every day.

And worse, earlier in the week, when I watched the real-life W. hunched over the warm, amber-colored, wooden, talking-to-the-nation-on-TV desk, he looked strange and humble. I didn’t see the customary twinkle in his eye—not the “we’re gonna kick your ass” twinkle, the “we just kicked your ass” twinkle, the “I’m so charming, and if that doesn’t convince, I’ve got God on my side” twinkle, not even the catch-all “can you f-ing believe I’m the president, this is so much fun” twinkle. What I saw was the so-called and generally agreed to be “leader of the free world” facing not just his own utter and complete irrelevance in the current world crisis, but it seemed from the other side of the television, the final realization that his legacy was fated to be a series of mishandled calamities, each one worse than the next (Invading Iraq; wrong reaction, Katrina; no reaction, Economic meltdown; arguably, caused by his actions). And in spite of an incredible effort not to, I felt sorry for him. Like, really, genuinely sorry for him.

But now I had a mockumentory! All sympathetic emotions could be reversed. But when the lights went down, and the picture came up, Oliver Stone did not deliver the shallow, exaggerated, slap-stick satire I was longing for. Instead of two-and-a-half hours of John Stewart meets Saturday Night Live acting out W’s life as an arrogant, power-hungry, idiot-made-king, I got the prequel to the story I saw playing out on the President’s face behind the amber desk earlier that week.

The film begins with W. kneeling naked in a stainless steel tub of ice water while being raucously insulted by three-dozen soon-to-be-fraternity brothers. And if you haven’t made the mental connection to Abu-Graib yet (Stone has it come up in dialogue later in the film, just in case), he and the two pledges with him are also being required to keep their hands behind their heads (stress position) and being force-fed whiskey straight from the bottle, often through a funnel stuck down their throats (whisky-boarding). But through it all, the boy with the magic memory is able to recite the first, last, and nick name of all forty-something of his sadistic, soon-to-be “brothers.”

This initial scene of a boy smilingly enduring humiliation and torture in exchange for acceptance is followed by an entire film’s worth of scenes of a boy-turned-man suffering through humiliation after humiliation while battling his own prodigal nature and trying to gain the respect of the people around him, first and foremost among them, his father.

Oh, sure, there were some laughs. Condi Rice’s character delivers the over-the-top, late-night-comedy satire I was looking for. And when W.’s fully-suited entourage is hustling along after him, up and down a dusty Texas-ranch road because he’s lost, I think I had a spontaneous belly laugh. But through most of the story, the humor was too ironic, too raw. W.’s character was too naïve and sincere, too tormented by his quest for his father’s elusive love, to really enjoy a giggle at his expense. I, and I felt many of those around me, tried to find it funny, wanted to find it funny, but the laughter died out too soon and felt increasingly awkward as the movie went on. If I wasn’t entirely sure I’ll never meet anyone reading this in real life, I would never admit it, but by the time Poppy gives W. his own father’s cuff-links with a note saying, “These are my dearest possessions. I want you to have them. I’m proud of you son,” I cried…a little. I mean, very little. But tears were present. I about choked trying not to sniffle and give myself away.

At about the second hour, we reached the scene of W. holding his head in his hands, looking up, and screaming, one of the clips from the trailer that promised classic slapstick humor. Instead it was a dream about his father’s continued disappointment in him over his handling of the war. And when the credits came up, and Bob Dylan started singing in his lonely, sad voice, “My name it means nothing. My age, it means less,” I flashed back to President Bush sitting at that desk, sincerely trying to reassure the country that he knows they are suffering, he knows they are angry, and he’s doing everything he can to keep them from losing their jobs, houses, retirement, and healthcare. But the way I remember it, the words seem to fall out of his mouth rather than be spoken. His hunched posture with the back of his suit riding up over his shoulders, his ambiguous facial expression, and his dull, dull eyes seem to say that he knows the T.V. audience is flipping channels to find out if McCain or Obama is anywhere on television saying something comforting about the crisis, because no ones really listening to him anymore, and that he, himself, is no longer convinced that they should.