I dislike few buzzwords more than mockumentary, which even academics now use casually and uncritically. People often assume it’s a neutral descriptive term, but unlike pseudodocumentary—an honest and serviceable label—mockumentary leads many to conclude that the documentary form that’s being imitated is also being made fun of. Most of the works that get labeled mockumentaries are actually honoring the form, by using its techniques to make them seem more real.
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Gabriel Range’s pseudodocumentary Death of a President has no trace of mockery, so I’m not sure why so many critics are labeling it a mockumentary. It was controversial even before it premiered at the Toronto film festival, because it purports to describe the aftermath of the assassination of George W. Bush on a visit to Chicago in October 2007. Early infotainment reports gave the impression that the movie assassination was a good thing, a cause for celebration. In fact it ushers in a good many bad things, starting with Cheney becoming president and his Patriot Act III legislation further curtailing civil liberties in the name of security. Moreover, the story is supposed to get the viewer thinking about issues, especially the degree to which anti-Muslim bias inflects American thought.
The film’s main novelty is its mix of stock news footage (slightly doctored) and fictional interviews that create a believable dystopian scenario. There’s no obvious political slant. No one’s truly a hero or villain in the rush of events: angry anti-Bush demonstrators, cops, FBI agents, and one of Bush’s speechwriters are all shown with equal detachment. B. Ruby Rich argues in the Guardian that an important part of the film’s agenda “is to demonstrate how efficiently technology can be used to misinform.” But Death of a President is actually inviting us to be swept along by the news format, trusting the interviewees as much as those we normally see on TV news shows.
“The second film was the first of my works to deliberately mix opposing cinematic forms (in this case, a series of static, high-key lit, recreated interviews with establishment figures, colliding with jerky scenes of a simulated nuclear attack). Which—if either—was ‘reality’?—the fake interviews in which people quoted actual statements made by existing public figures, or the newsreel-like scenes of a war which had never taken place?”
Directed by Gabriel Range
Written by Simon Finch and Range
With Hend Ayoub, Brian Boland, Patricia Buckley, Jason Abustan, and Chavez Ravine
