AFTER THE KNEE-JERK
DEATH OF A PRESIDENT
Directed by Gabriel
Range; written by Gabriel Range and Simon Finch; director of photography,
Graham Smith; edited by Brand Thumim; music by Richard Harvey
With: Hend Ayoub, Brian Boland, Becky Ann Baker, Robert Mangiardi, Jay
Patterson, Jay Whittaker, Michael Reilly Burke, and James Urbaniak. Rated R.
Running time: 93 minutes
Reviewed by Joel Johnson
1/2
Death of a
President is a fascinating and incisive film from director Gabriel Range
and his coscreenwriter Simon Finch. They have made a mock documentary about
an assassination of the president of the United States. Many
Americans—especially those who lived through the national wound of President
Kennedy’s assassination— hardly find such an event to qualify as a suitable
subject for an evening’s entertainment at the movies. When the president is
not a fictional creation—but the current occupant of the Oval Office—the
stage is set for bitter controversy and knee-jerk rejection.
My first exposure
to this film was during the Toronto International Film Festival. To blunt
the controversy, the festival program listed it as DOAP—as if the
very name could incite violent reactions—and the festival website carried a
special disclaimer statement. However, I avoided the film because I did not
want to confront the intense negative emotions that I thought this type of
event could elicit because they seemed incompatible with enjoying our
vacation. Not that my wife would say that I shied away from films with dark
themes and selected an abundance of happy little comedies for us to see.
Since we did not try to get tickets to DOAP, we do not know if we
could have seen it in Toronto. What we do know is that the film attracted
sell-out audiences in Toronto, so my absence was not missed. We also now
know that it won the festival’s FIPRESCI Prize for “the audacity with which
it distorts reality to reveal a larger truth.”
Many of the film’s
detractors have concerns about what it is saying about President Bush, what
it says about his administration’s policies, and even whether it is
advocating for an assassination. It certainly does not advocate for the
latter. It does show the unintended consequences of violence that can be
far-reaching and devastating. This should provide a cautionary message for
anyone even entertaining the abstract possibility that an assassination of
any president could make things better. President Bush is seen as a man
capable of inspiring deep loyalty from his staff but also very passionate
protests from a wide spectrum of the general public. Although the film was
finished a few months ago and is set about a year from now, the issues of
Iraq, Iran, and North Korea are amazingly current. In the film’s vision, the
policies related to Iraq have had a unique power to anger the public. This
is shown by archival footage of protesters and their confrontations with
police. There’s not really anything said about the president and his
policies that isn’t drawn directly from protest footage or that isn’t an
accusation that has been in the news frequently enough so that film viewers
wouldn’t have common-knowledge awareness about it.
Using a sitting
president does make the issues raised within the film especially powerful.
Although not quite real, they have a much higher sense of reality than using
an ersatz president. President Bush has been a polarizing figure on the
American political landscape and, more than most presidents, has generated
strong opinions both for and against. This capacity for arousing strong
antipathy makes it highly believable that someone could make the leap from
hating the president to hating the president enough to form a plan to
assassinate him. However, the reality is that every president has taken
actions that have had negative consequences for an individual or a group of
people. The hatred that would fuel a potential assassination could be based
on the real or the imagined perception that the president has caused harm.
Thus there are aspects of the film’s story that may be unique to President
Bush and our current political situation, but it also has a much wider
applicability.
In a similar vein,
the events subsequent to the assassination have a particular resonance based
on the known track record of the administration. It is hardly surprising
that a Muslim from a country (Syria) with an unfriendly regime who also has
possible Al Qaeda connections would quickly emerge as the prime suspect.
What happens when evidence emerges that suggests someone else? However, the
desire to quickly find the guilty is a characteristic broadly shared in
humans, and first pinpointing known enemies is an easy extrapolation from
that. The Kennedy assassination has had widespread and lingering speculation
about wider conspiracies due to the perception that the original Warren
Commission investigation rushed to judgment.
The filmmakers
have done a terrific job in painstakingly assembling this film, with much of
it drawn from existing archival footage. Key segments of this have been
altered to make it better fit the filmmakers’ purpose. For instance, the
state funeral where the now-President Cheney eulogizes President Bush
actually was footage from the funeral for former President Reagan. They have
also created footage that fits seamlessly with the archival material and
then classic documentary talking-head pieces telling the audience about the
events that have occurred from that character’s unique perspective. The
casting decisions have been superb, selecting individuals that fit perfectly
in their roles. A bad fit for one of these talking-head characters could
totally derail the film, but that never happens.
This is an
outstanding film that falls just short of making the audience experience the
full trauma of a presidential assassination. It makes us consider not only
the reality of this time and this president, but also how there is a truth
that extends well beyond this specific reality. Seek this film out because
it says something important and challenges us. Do not be scared off by
outrageous accusations and the calls for a boycott. Watch the film and make
up your own mind. Though I tarried a bit in making it to a theater to see
this film, I am very impressed. 
Joel Johnson
grew up in Hallowell, Maine. Not even poor typing skills can keep him from
inflicting his opinions about movies on unsuspecting readers, but his “day
job” in state government does get in the way.
