WHITE HOUSE DRAMA WITH A TOUCH OF SATIRE
Posted December 26th, 2018 at 10:49 pmNo Comments Yet
IN REVIEW
BALE PHYSICALLY TRANSFORMS AGAIN FOR MOVIE MAGIC ON SCREEN
By PETER THOMAS BUSCH
Christian Bale completes a character study for the portrayal of former United States Vice President Dick Cheney, in Vice (2018).
Bale physically transforms by adding forty pounds and prosthetic facial pieces underneath the make up for the film that requires three versions of the character. Bale spent four to eight hours in the make-up chair each day prior to filming.
The method actor also studied original news clips of his biopic character to learn to imitate the monotone voice and passive aggressive demeanor, including the one sided smile and the multiple head and facial ticks.
Bale teams up again with Amy Adams. Adams plays the vice president’s wife. Lynne Cheney.
Adams previously played Bale’s romantic partner in the David O. Russell film, American Hustler (2013), about a New York con man caught in an FBI sting operation to catch corrupt civic politicians. Adams’ character is an irreplaceable moral support in the ongoing hustle.
In Vice, Adams again plays a family matriarch who is strong enough to support her husband to become a better person.
Director Adam McKay also casts Sam Rockwell as US President George W. Bush.
Rockwell won an Oscar last year in a Supporting Role for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017).
Bale and Rockwell deliver mirror perfect performances of their biopic characters. Rockwell even gets that droopy left eyebrow and that short and simple dialogue delivery that Bush had.
McKay recreates a bustling White House atmosphere by filling the cast with well known actors to play the many different characters in and out of the White House during the Bush Administration.
Naomi Watts has a minor cameo role as a Fox News anchor. Alfredo Molina has a cameo role as a restaurant waiter reminiscent of his brief role as Satipo in the opening scenes of Indian Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) opposite Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones.
McKay shows how Cheney negotiated with Bush the delegation of important presidential powers. Cheney then used the 911 Terror Attacks on the New York World Trade Towers to become not just the most powerful US Vice President in history, but possibly the most powerful person in the world who was able to change the course of world history for generations.
McKay uses three linear narratives to bond the audiences with the character. Cheney was almost a ghost during the Bush Presidency although many critics have suggested he had much more power than people may have been aware of at the time.
One narrative is of Cheney as a young man. A second narrative is Cheney’s private life. And a third narrative is Cheney’s political life inside the White House, beginning with the Nixon Administration.
McKay gradually tightens the three narratives into one linear narrative as if suggesting that Cheney was a product of all three and that once the personality is formed at a young age, it is forever unaltered, influencing decision making ever thereafter.
Vice is a sophisticated post modern film deeply self referential to the film industry. McKay departs from the linear work produced in the Big Short (2015), also starring Bale, and shows influences from filmmakers Oliver Stone, Terry Gilliam and Michael Moore.
McKay won an Oscar for Adapted Screenplay in the Big Short.
Stone uses multi-media to dramatize biopic material. Gilliam has a dark satirical wit. Moore uses both influences in a deeply subjective documentary approach to political polarized contemporary issues.
McKay uses dramatizations, as well as original news reels and also dramatizations of news reels, which is most evident in the Fox News anchor cameo portrayed by Watts. Still photography and the dramatization of family photographs is used in between scenes.
Computer graphic technology is also used to put the head of Rockwell on the body of Bush as he lands a military plane onto an aircraft career to declare victory to the troops.
The 172 minute film moves fairly quickly through the narrative, constantly entertaining and stimulating audiences’ senses with the use of a variety of film techniques and different treatment of the subject matter.
The movie is not entirely a satire although some scenes are satirical to the point of being macabre.
The majority of the script draws from never known dialogue that might have occurred in the secret offices of the White House and in the Cheney’s private home.
While the liberalization of the facts to convey the story line always occurs to a certain extent in Hollywood, particularly in dialogue, the film might not fairly be classified as a biopic, but rather somewhere between a satire and a biopic.
The film also has an original score which is a pleasing addition to the scenes behind the dialogue, but the narrative is not necessarily compelled by the score.
McKay definitely has an overall vision for the film with the use of multi-media as well as intertextuality, including some self referential scenes using the young Cheney’s delinquency as a symbol.
However, the use of so many different influences almost has a cluttering effect – to the point of being pastiche without any real connection to the subject matter other than to create an entertaining satire.