w.

w is film as scathing political commentary. at the same time, its greatest accomplishment is in humanizing president bush and those around him.
stone essentially imagines who george junior is and brings the character to life on the screen. who he ends up being is at best a regular guy, and at worst a vacuous idealogue with a grossly overrated self-image.

this film is as artistic as anything but in the final moment as bush stares even into the camera but more importantly into space, as if looking for a sign that has never arrived, stone's point is made. w is no different than any college frat guy who failed at several businesses, spent a bunch of time drinking way too much, found jesus and quit boozing, and ultimately arrived at a place wherein he becomes the very definition of the peter principle.

josh brolin gives an amazing performance as w. the entire cast is superb but thandie newton and ellen burstyn are especially remarkable as condoleeza rice and barbara bush respectively.

stone, for his part, seems to have a very even hand with this film. while w may be propaganda, it never comes across as such. not once does stone allow any of his characters to devolve into the caricatures it would have been easy to allow them to be. dick cheney, (expertly portrayed by richard dreyfuss,) never once snorts like the devil or slinks away from a scene like a poisonous viper. laura bush never recoils at the sight of her husband as he gets ready to join her in bed.

in many ways, stone portrays w as a nice, if idealogically misled, guy. he also carefully crafts the relationship w has with cheney and rove, so that w reminds his cohorts that he is in fact the guy who is in charge. w has adopted the idealogy of ronald reagan and so believes himself the architect of his own presidency, never realizing rove got him into office and cheney has been subtly directing his actions from behind the scenes.

the relationship between w and his father, (wonderfully played by james cromwell,) is one of the best aspects of the movie. it seems an honest relationship, one of love and disappointment, one with barriers and imperfections.

stone may have missed all of this. all of these relationships may be as far-fetched as can be. but for an artist who can get meetings with genralissimo marcos in the jungles of chiapas, i have a feeling stone probably had some real insight here. (i couldn't help but wonder if scott mcclellan was a consultant.)

i won't take w as fact, but as possibility it is plenty plausible. as art it is what film is all about. in fact because it deals with so much reality, (i.e. the various events depicted,) the imagining must have required more skill than usual.