The problem with "Death of a President" is that, no matter how effectively it makes its case, there is really only one road it can go down. It may be deeply sincere but this is the same woolly-minded liberal thinking we have been accustomed to since, well, certainly the 1950's from a certain kind of film-maker. We can't argue over issues such as 'truth' since it deals in purely fictitious scenarios; in this case, the assassination of President Bush and its aftermath, or rather simply on who did it.
That it sides with a right-thinking, open-minded liberal 'Left' is admirable and that it is very well made of its kind is to be applauded, but as someone who sympathizes with its political point-of-view I was somewhat disappointed by the sheer bland matter-of-factness of its arguments. I agree with its sentiments; I just wish I had been forced to think more.
Production values throughout are first-rate particularly since it was obviously made on a limited budget and the performances, essentially 'talking heads' filmed in the style of a documentary, are superb. It never quite manages that leap whereby the line between fact and fiction is totally obliterated and by using the assassination of a currently serving President as its starting off point it demands a lot from us in terms of acceptance of the scenario that follows. Essentially what it is attempting to do is to give us a 'mockumentary' akin to those early films of Peter Watkins. That it only partly succeeds makes me wonder if something more totally fictitious, along the lines of, say, Tim Robbin's "Bob Roberts", would not have been preferable.
That it sides with a right-thinking, open-minded liberal 'Left' is admirable and that it is very well made of its kind is to be applauded, but as someone who sympathizes with its political point-of-view I was somewhat disappointed by the sheer bland matter-of-factness of its arguments. I agree with its sentiments; I just wish I had been forced to think more.
Production values throughout are first-rate particularly since it was obviously made on a limited budget and the performances, essentially 'talking heads' filmed in the style of a documentary, are superb. It never quite manages that leap whereby the line between fact and fiction is totally obliterated and by using the assassination of a currently serving President as its starting off point it demands a lot from us in terms of acceptance of the scenario that follows. Essentially what it is attempting to do is to give us a 'mockumentary' akin to those early films of Peter Watkins. That it only partly succeeds makes me wonder if something more totally fictitious, along the lines of, say, Tim Robbin's "Bob Roberts", would not have been preferable.