From the strange but true archives. This movie just won the International Critics’ Prize at the Toronto Film Festival:
British director Gabriel Range’s “Death of a President” stirred up a strong reaction even before it premiered at the festival and won the Prize of the International Critics (FIPRESCI Prize). The jury of film critics cited the film “for the audacity with which it distorts reality to reveal a larger truth.”
“Death of a President,” which was bought by Newmarket Films and is slated to air Oct. 9 on an offshoot of Britain’s Channel 4 network, chronicles the sniper shooting of Bush on Oct. 19, 2007, during a trip to Chicago and the ensuing investigation.
I can’t imagine why international film critics would laud a movie about the fictional assassination of George Bush. Can you?
Actually, that’s a trick question. We all know the international community has numerous reasons to hate George Bush. Policies which promote torture, global warming, and illegal wars will do that for you.
What’s more interesting to me is that our neighbors to the North (and particularly the organizers of the Toronto Film Festival) chose to screen the movie in the first place. It’s not everyday that people in the country with which the United States shares its longest border and friendliest relations decide to include in their premier film festival a made for TV movie about the assassination of the current US President. Or that a British film maker would choose to make such a movie in the first place. Or that the Britain’s Channel 4 Network would choose to air it nationwide in Britain, the country closest to actually being a “willing” ally among Mr. Bush’s Coalition of the Willing.
George Bush, the “uniter,” has finally succeeded in uniting one of the groups that most prides itself on its divisiveness — film critics. They all agree that a film about his fictional death is a great thing. At least this film makes no bones about its fictional status. Unlike the so-called “true” The Path to 9/11 docudrama whose producers had trouble admitting that large parts of their retelling of events that led to 9/11 was nothing more than a a conservative’s wet dream on celluloid, Death of a President doesn’t pretend to tell the real story.
I don’t imagine Bush cares for this film’s premise much (who after all wishes to imagine himself the victim of an assassination plot). I have to believe that behind the scenes the Bush administration put pressure on the Canadian government (now in the hands of conservatives) to put pressure, in turn, on the organizers of the festival not to include this movie in their schedule. I guess the Canadian authorities have a greater respect for freedom of speech than does our current rulers in America.
In any event, if you are curious, here’s the Toronto Film Festival’s official (and somewhat glowing) description of “Death of a President.” Regardless of your politics, it certainly sets a new standard for political filmmaking, for better or worse:
An unknown gunman assassinates George W. Bush. A couple of years later, an investigative documentary is made. It features all the people involved that fateful day: the protestors outside a Chicago hotel; the suspects in the shooting and their families; the Secret Service men who failed to protect their charge; the press; and an array of experts, desperately seeking meaning in this horrible act of violence. We learn, agonizingly, what happened to America… after the death of a president.
This is easily the most dangerous and breathtakingly original film I have encountered this year. Director Gabriel Range’s 2003 project The Day Britain Stopped – which asked what might happen if Britain’s transportation grid was suddenly halted – was his first experiment with this style. He assembles a vast array of media, manipulating and subtly altering it to act as a continuous background illustration of falsified history – and then employs the conventional, after-the-fact style of History Television and its ilk as narration.
But it’s a long leap from Britain’s trains to a gunned-down Commander-in-Chief. Range is up to the task: collaborating with some of the finest special effects wizards in the world, he inserts his characters seamlessly into existing footage. His narrative is also airtight. Cautionary tales are too often flights of fancy; as they push the envelope of credibility, the lessons gleaned from dark speculation become somehow tarnished. Not here. Every moment is completely believable, every comment is somehow appropriate – to the point of chilling, horrifying certainty.
As one might expect, Range is ultimately interested in addressing today’s political issues through the lens of the future. Xenophobia, the hidden costs of war and the nature of civil liberties in a hyper-media age all come under the microscope. The film is never a personal attack on Bush; Range simply seeks to explore the potential consequences that might follow from the President’s policies and actions.
It is the very technique of D.O.A.P., finally, that poses the most haunting questions of all. Not only do we feel the authenticity of mass media imagery slipping away, but Range suggests that his manipulation is merely a more radical example of what we encounter every day.
– Noah Cowan
