The movie is not bad but it fails to show the evolution of the inscrutable psychopath within the rarest of the rare--the family of psychopaths--Lynne, Dick and Liz. In particular, nothing is told about his family and influences before his marriage to Lynne. This cannot be surprising--after all there is no rational explanation of the behavior of psychopaths other than some people enjoy hurting other people. Low IQ psychopaths become serial killers and hurt dozens; high IQs go to the media, Wall Street, the CIA and the State Department and, in the case of some, to the Presidency and hurt millions.
However, Cheney in the Dreyfus cameo in W is really shown as a pure evil without any explanation or comment. Paolo Sorrentino in Il Divo is superb in showing another inscrutable, Giulio Andreotti in minute details such as him attentively reading obscene graffiti on himself on the Roman wall or discussing household finances with his wife after the day of plotting corruption, treason and murder. But Sorrentino is the greatest director after the death of Italy's generation of the greatest (Fellini, Rosselini, Antonioni, De Sica, Visconti and Zavattini). Christian Bale is a fine actor but he was not given enough substance to work with.
The writers and directors erroneously assumed that Cheney was always that way. I do not insist on my hypothesis that he suffered a brain injury following one of strokes but he was a voice of reason on the political right, for instance, abstaining from a continuation of the 1991 Gulf War after evicting Saddam from Kuwait or objecting to the enlargement of NATO during Bush I.
ReplyDeleteI doubt that Bush II wanted him to be a Vice President. But he cleverly compromised every candidate in a Machiavellian way until he remained the only option. He completed his takeover of the foreign and defense policy during 2001 World Trade Center bombing as aptly as Hitler took complete power after the arson of the Reichstag (before, he was considered a temporary compromise) or as Stalin initiated Great Purges in the wake of the murder of Kirov in the same year of 1934, which he probably desired himself but was beaten to it by a deranged jealous husband of Kirov's mistress.