Yesterday, I watched the fiction movie Death of a President (2006). The link provides a decent summary of this very good movie. The screenplay is extremely clever. It imagines as a central event the assassination of George W. Bush in 2006. This allows the writers then to imagine an insightful and suspenseful docudrama that sheds light on several groups of people: White House officials like Bush, Cheney and Bush’s speechwriter, the major media, the FBI, the Secret Service, the Chicago police, Iraq veterans (especially a black family with 3 vets), American Muslims (especially a suspect who is tried and falsely convicted), and anti-war demonstrators. I can only hint at the layers of subtle criticism in the apparently even-handed scenario that the writers have written.
The movie is, in one sense, unbiased by devoting a lot of time (more than half I’d say) to the authorities involved, letting them speak at length in their interviews and having them say things as we are accustomed to hear American officials speak. But those of us familiar with this official-speak will realize and sense the enormous gap between it and reality. The film lets the officials sound as they really do sound, but to an experienced observer who is not taken in by it, they condemn themselves. The media and authorities, including the justice system, are subtly shown for what they are if one has eyes to see it, even though on the surface there is no overt criticism, no exaggeration and no name-calling.
The movie, in another sense, is very much anti-Iraq War and anti-Patriot Act. It allots ample time to members of the justice system too, but this too only ends up condemning the system. It doesn’t advocate assassinating Bush, but it shows how a disillusioned veteran might come to such an act. He has two sons in the military, one of whom was killed by a roadside bomb during the vain search for weapons of mass destruction. The surviving son has some of the best heartfelt lines in the movie about the futility of the war and the lies behind it. Coming from an American black man and spoken in the typical American black intonation and accent, this has an honest impact. By contrast, Bush’s speech and his interactions with admirers after his speech come across as supremely fake and manipulative.
Here is some of what the black vet had to say:
“I went down to the veteran one-stop center. I was a mess. I broke up with my wife.
Couldn’t stand to be around my parents. Caught back up using drugs again. Biggest conversation we had when I first got to Iraq was, ‘how are we going to be looked at when we get back home?’ You know, are we going to be looked at as heroes, or these fools over there fighting for Bush? You know, that’s what was going on through my mind that day. You know, these people are not looking at us as heroes. We look like fools to them.”
