Death of a President

Marcy and I went to see Death of a President yesterday. It won one of the awards at the Toronto International Film Festival last month. It has generated quite a bit of controversy as a couple of the movie theatre chains in the United States have refused to screen the film.

After seeing the film though, it’s hard to understand why they would have those major objections. It’s not really as controversial as you might expect. If anything it’s fairly neutral to the policies of Bush and it’s actually more harsh on the media and protesters than anyone else. It felt to me like I was watching a documentary about the Kennedy assassination. I’m not going to give any of the plot away but there were quite a few parallels in this film to what Lee Harvey Oswald went through before getting gunned down. The atmosphere was also quite similar.

I’d recommend the film because it’s a pretty interesting piece of film work but don’t go in expecting it be an anti-Bush/war/oil/terrorism propaganda movie because it’s not. It presents a more simple plot and asks you to think about what kind of questions would you ask and what would you do if you were in a position of power and had to deal with the assassination of a president.

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