To hear Freke discuss “W” in a podcast, click here.Critical appreciation of popular individuals is a historical process — only with the necessary hindsight can we hope to understand their impact. The central issue surrounding director Oliver Stone’s new film “W.” revolves around this point. Is it possible, living under the current administration, to gain additional perspective on how President George Bush transformed himself from a patrician’s sire to a Texan cowboy and became the leader of the United States? The answer is clearly no, but before going further, it is necessary to examine the film under a microscope.”W.” is about Bush’s ascent from the Greek halls at Yale, his rebellious turns following graduation and his largely unsuccessful two terms in office.Stone transports Bush through narrative time shifts, jumping from his youthful days to his present stint in the White House. The film starts with an initiation ceremony at college, where Bush is asked to name the officials of the fraternity he is pledging to. Bush does it with aplomb, reciting not just their names, but even adding nicknames.This incident exposes the lack of introspection that is normally necessary in making this kind of film:  Should we believe Bush to be politically adroit or simply a dolt? Is he for real or just faking it?Stone has no answer for us, but we are asked to applaud him for not leaning along his well-known political biases to make a hatchet job. Unfortunately, this is no cause for celebration: Though “W.” is a middle-of-the road film, it is a film facing incoming traffic. “W.” is an ahistorical, political film — a film that has no real sense of the past and gets bogged down in the present. Instead of challenging our partisan prejudices, we are not asked to do much more than sit down and have our biases reinforced.”W.” fails as a concept because of Stone’s vulgarity, his literal-mindedness, his pop psycho-analysis and the inadequacy of the source material. It sputters in epileptic fits, alternating between trivialities and tads of sense.In satirizing Bush, it becomes obvious that Stone disdains Bush the man. Americans who have gotten used to Clinton’s escapades in the Oval Office will have no qualms laughing at a scene where Bush chokes on a pretzel, but one wonders if that scene was necessary. Having choked before, I know it is not a funny experience. Besides serving as a cameo for the LSU Tigers, the scene adds nothing to the character; as a joke, it walks like a duck on a skating rink.Does anyone think we could learn something about George H. W. Bush’s life because he threw up at a state dinner in Japan?Beside his lack of decency, Stone cannot resist the lure of the obvious. To show Bush’s dangerous Christianity, Stone gives us a low angle shot where Bush clasps his hands and above his head rests a halo created by a fluorescent filament. Again we are left in the dark — should we consider Bush a messiah?The characters also fit this mold. Each of them is chosen to confirm our naïve conceptions of them. Richard Dreyfuss plays Cheney the Devious, Jeffrey Wright plays Powell the Skeptic, Thandie Newton plays Rice the Bland and Toby Jones plays Rove the Gnome.But is nuance a poison to be feared in a film like “W.”? Before Cheney was Dr. Evil, he was a defense Secretary; before Powell became a supine secretary of state, he was a 4-star general who stood up to Bill Clinton against integration in the army. Before Rice was a brownnose, she was a professor at Stanford University.Instead what we get from “W.” is a caricature — a potluck of tired mimicry and obfuscation. Even director Oliver Hirschbiegel’s “Downfall” manages to make Hitler sympathetic.Then there is also the psychological exposition — Bush fails at everything he does, cannot measure up to an over-achieving parent and even loses out on paternal love to a younger brother.All of which might be true, but that doesn’t make the man.Many of us have had such parents, yet how many of us have parlayed our experiences to become president? The unintentional effect of the mental exercise was that one comes out believing Bush to be a distant dad’s revenge on America.The paucity of the source material ends up being the film’s undoing. Vignettes of Bush’s life are taken from the public domain, the best-selling exposes of Bob Woodward and the memoirs of retired officials with axes to grind, but there is no narrative backbone to make the contraption stand upright. Hence, while “W.” might be true to facts, it still exists on the ledges of untruth.Stone’s “W.” is not a total disappointment. The film succeeds as an escape from reality, but as a snapshot taken during the twilight of a wartime president it is a boring blur. —-Contact Freke Ette at [email protected]