Editor’s Notes: TIFF: Who shot Bush?
Tuesday, September 12th, 2006TORONTO — “Death of a President,” the documentary-style speculative fiction about the assassination of the 43rd President of the United States, is seamless, intelligent and maybe even necessary to an understanding of George W. Bush’s role in the world today, and his place in the wider scope of history. Especially when public awareness of the facts about his administration lags so far behind what has already been documented.
Written and directed by Gabriel Range, this very convincingly staged television “documentary” falls into a tradition of fictionalized British films (going back to Peter Watkins’ famous “The War Game” and “Punishment Park” in the early 1960s) that use nonfiction techniques to explore contemporary social and political issues. Range himself made a film in 2003 called “The Day Britain Stopped,” about what might happen if public transportation stopped. Before that, he made “The Menendez Murders” (2002), described as another form of docu-drama.
