Death of a President

Since Orson Welles’s 1938 radio broadcast of ‘War of the Worlds’ (a fake alien invasion which had thousands of ordinary Americans literally running for the hills), the mockumentary or faux documentary has been an underused and undervalued form of artistic commentary. The form’s potential for parody and satire has been expertly exploited in Rob Reiner’s ‘This is Spinal Tap’ (1984) and Rémy Belvaux’s ‘Man Bites Dog’ (1992), but despite its obvious flirtation with the blurred boundary between fact and fiction, mockumentary as a genre nevertheless requires a set of rules and parameters to govern the successful fusion of these two discrete principles. The most immediately apparent of these is that mockumentary must, to a greater extent, maintain the illusion of reality for the viewer; the characters, situations and performances must attain a high level of simulated realism, and they must be complimented by equally convincing levels of technical design and production. If the viewer is to focus on the ideas that the filmmaker is trying to convey, we should not be constantly questioning the authenticity of what we see and hear. We turn to Gabriel Range’s 2006 mockumentary ‘Death of a President’.

A mix of staged scenes, archive material and CGI, ‘Death of a President’ is a fictional film which makes exclusive use of documentary codes. Predominantly in the mode of a TV expository documentary, the director also uses a few cinematic conventions to induce the tone of a political thriller. With its controversial subject matter and unusual format - a futuristic documentary about the assassination of George W. Bush - it is likely that anyone sitting down to watch the film will have suffered their share of the film’s hype. With this in mind, we pay special (and cynical) attention to the film’s beginning; we immediately look for flaws in the realism. We would expect a strong opening sequence which, despite its content, would dispel our scepticism. Unfortunately, we get a hollow and highly contrived pre-credit sequence - some aesthetically satisfying aerial shots of a large US city and the voiceover of a slightly distressed female with a Middle Eastern or South Asian accent. She speaks evenly and flawlessly, there are no blemishes or stutters in her enunciation and her tone is dramatically stylised. It is hard to distinguish the exact difference between an actor and a real person, but to most people it is intrinsically obvious – a hazy glint in the eye, exaggerated gesturing, or an insistent tone? Few of the actors in ‘Death of a President’ are convincing; some, like former White House correspondent Sam McCarthy (Jay Patterson), are simply laughable and others, like Yemeni protester Samir Nasri (Seena Jon), are embarrassing and patronising. In order to maintain the illusion of reality in mockumentary, dialogue must be fresh and natural with the spontaneity of improvisation. Perhaps hampered by the need to convey lots of precise narrative information logically and succinctly, the writers’ dialogue is over-scripted, and the actors’ performances are over-rehearsed leaving the presentation weak and deflated. Since Range relies heavily on talking head interviews throughout the film, this is a major obstacle to achieving authenticity.

A second problem arises soon after the film’s introduction. Archival footage of President George W. Bush landing at Chicago O’Hare Airport amidst crowds of media, security and onlookers is convincing because, of course, it is a real event that has been recontextualised to suit the film’s objective. The secret service agent’s voiceover description of the security arrangements builds the tension and interest, but the realism is short-lived. For me, one of the film’s weakest claims on authenticity follows as the president’s motorcade leaves the airport and travels to central Chicago where it encounters a horde of anti-Bush protestors and riotous activists. I am definitely in no need of the DVD special features to tell me that the majority of the protest scenes are acted. There are palpable differences between the real protest footage and the staged footage, some of which can only be explained as grievous oversights by the production team. For instance, in one sequence the camera is positioned directly in between the front line of the volatile protestors and the front line of the armed, riot police – a space of about two or three feet. An acceptable angle for a fiction film, but as a mockumentary we can assume that these shots are intended to function as (fake) archival news footage. In reality, apart from being the most dangerous place for a news crew to be, it is extremely unlikely, even amidst the disorder that they would be permitted to occupy that space. As a result, the shot looks preposterous. Similar examples are abundant. The director also chose to cover the protests using multiple formats – the extended sequences include standard DV, high-definition and mobile phone footage but, rather than cementing an authentic look, the technique draws attention to itself. In one ‘mobile phone shot’, the supposedly ordinary member of the protests had a remarkably privileged position of events, a very steady hand and excellent compositional skills, even more remarkable given the chaotic surroundings. In truth, during the protest scenes I began to test myself to see if I could discern which was the real footage and which was staged – it was an easy game to play.

In the hands of a true expert computer-generated effects can, amongst many other things, seamlessly blend images into one another; but (to say the least) the CGI effects in ‘Death of a President’ are hardly amongst the best examples of cutting-edge, technical wizardry. The graphics of the CCTV footage, the television broadcasts and the newspaper headlines are amateurish at best, but the most reprehensible use of computer software comes when Dick Cheney reads the eulogy at Bush’s funeral (actually President Reagan’s eulogy and funeral). His words are accompanied by strikingly sombre and magisterial images of the ceremony itself; but this atypically realistic sequence is then desecrated when the action cuts to Cheney’s face just as he says the name of “George Bush”. Cheney’s mouth makes an outrageously unnatural manoeuvre and his lips become temporarily cartoon-like; why did the editor cut to a close-up of Cheney’s face at that precise moment and how could the director have sanctioned the edit? This is a truly astonishing and inept breach of the film’s realism.

Admittedly, an interesting component of the film’s claim on authenticity is its subtle intertextuality. Range draws on a number of familiar images, concepts and historical occurrences in order to ground the events of his fictional film in reality. When Bush’s motorcade is travelling through the high-sided streets of Chicago, it is difficult not to be reminded of the lead up to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Unlike the adoring crowds in Dallas, the protestors lining the streets in Chicago are hostile, but the image of the motorcade and the dramatic irony of the situation nevertheless provoke plenty of associations with recognisable (and shocking) actual events. Similarly, the tall building opposite the Sheraton Hotel hints towards the elevated vantage point of the Book Depository building in Dallas from which Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly shot JFK. The infamous footage of Oswald’s eventual murder by Jack Ruby is also reminiscent of Bush’s assassination in terms of the claustrophobia created by the tight camera positioning and the ensuing panic in the crowd. Previous media texts dealing with the effects of post-traumatic stress on war veterans (notably Scorsese’s ‘Taxi Driver’ (1976) and Cimino’s ‘The Deer Hunter’ (1978)) also help to create a credible environment for Aloysius Claybon’s (Tony Dale) vengeful motives in ‘Death of a President’. Range has not attempted to take whole events and transfer them directly to his film but, in addition to constructing an aura of imminent danger and mystery, the number of subliminal associations made by the viewer help to give the events a modicum of plausibility and hence believability. The sense of subconscious familiarity generated by this intertexuality lends authenticity to the fictional events portrayed in the film.

Despite its premise, ‘Death of a President’ does not provide us with much genuinely insightful political commentary. It covers the gamut of political and socio-political issues – civil disobedience, the power of the media, impingements on civil liberties, racism and paranoia, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea to name a few. I cannot fault Range’s motivation for making the film. Since the 9/11 attacks, the world has seen radical change and, in the West at least, we are inundated with images and information on the War on Terror. It is important that people can access information from sources and perspectives other than those thrust at us by ideological institutions and biased news corporations. The political films of Michael Moore and John Pilger are effective (and successful) because their authentic material – injustice, corruption, hypocrisy – frustrates and angers the viewer. But Range’s film does not provide any fresh perspective on any of the issues it superficially examines and, taken along with the perforated veneer of authenticity, it lacks both intellectual and dramatic impact. It seems to me that the form and style of the film superseded the quality of potential content and, because it lacks genuine political or social insight, ‘Death of a President’ is unlikely to hold much value for the average viewer in years to come – if not already! Generally, Range stomps clumsily over generic boundaries and his subordination of content to method does not result in much beyond mediocrity. Even the most ardent left-wing activist must guard against the possibility of their political views acting as a smokescreen over a mediocre film.

Watch

Country: UK
Budget: £1 Million
Length: 93mins

Filmography:
‘The Deer Hunter’, 1978, Michael Cimino, EMI Films
‘Taxi Driver’, 1976, Martin Scorsese, Columbia Pictures Corporation
‘This is Spinal Tap’, 1984, Rob Reiner, Spinal Tap Prod
‘Man Bites Dog’, 1992, Rémy Belvaux, Les Artistes Anonymes

Pub/2008

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'Hearts and Minds' 1974, directed by Peter Davis
'9/11: The Falling Man' 2006, directed by Henry Singer
'The Wonderful Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl' 1993, directed by Ray Müller