Sally Hawkins

Sally Hawkins and Rosamund Pike shine in a frustrating mix of heart and hokum

It never rains, it pours. This week the big screen is teeming with history and politics. From America, fairly recent events are mythologized in two docudramas: Oliver Stone spins an instant-replay of George W. Bush’s life and times in W., which could be subtitled Attack of the White House Clones. And Stuart Townsend dramatizes the anti-globalization movement’s 1999 baptism of fire in Battle in Seattle, which conjures a pre-9/11 era of uncomplicated protest. In Canada, meanwhile, Paul Gross launches Passchendaele, his strained but valiant attempt to honour Canadian heroism in the First World War. These three films are radically different in tone and substance, but they are message movies—movies on a mission. And they all attempt to fuse entertainment with politics with mixed results.