Watching this movie was a bit like attending a college lecture as opposed to most films which leave room for the waxing and waning of attention spans without major penalty of blank holes that may haunt them later. I felt a little guilty not taking notes but was reassured by the similarly remiss audience that had assembled for a late night showing to keep me company and reaffirm my faith in the Hudson Valley. Surely they too were aware of the reviews of this movie which have made it abundantly clear that it is very hard to follow and almost impossible to understand. And yet they came. During a 10 p.m. showing and in its 3rd week of release no less. You don’t normally go to the movies at that time on a Tuesday night unless you have a committment to the product and know a little about it. So they must have been prepared as i was, but simultaneously feeling a smug confidence that they, like I, would be able to follow the movie better than some of the professionals paid to conclude, as some of the lesser versions of critics did, that the film was virtually unreviewable. On some level we all believe we’re smarter and more intuitive even if we don’t always express it well. Hell we’re not paid too like them. No, it’s not that complicated. It’s only a movie. We’d do just fine. I wonder if they feel as stupid as I do right now.
Ok, first off there are many who did review this film wel and with understanding of plot and theme. It’s doable. Some of them are like unto gods to me right now.
I’m not saying it’s the most complicated flick I’ve ever taken in or that I didn’t get it, but this was as hard for me to follow as a calculus formula at times. Stephen Gaghan wrote the screenplay for Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic, so it should come as no surprise that Syriana, which he not only wrote but directed, shares some of the first movies labarynthine storyline and multiple plot threads. While he probably could have used some of Soderbergh’s more layered attention to characters nuances and establishment of relationships, the film still manages to be coherent and of a piece. But by not establishing character, or cementing relationships, i often found myself not sure of who was talking to who or why. Alot of the players talk in political code, euphemistically swearing to carry out due process as a morally ambiguous lawyer for a firm that is a key player in the Byzantine plot does, while he at other times seems to indicate that all that matters is the illusion of due process.
This of course made me think of the Plamegate investigation as well as the current Congressional scandals, which took a turn today with Jack Abramoff’s plea bargaining. I didn’t need this movie to make me wonder if all these things amount to is finding sacrificial lambs to throw to the wolves while the big players go right on using the system to enrich themselves, and-contain laughter here-their country. It just reminded me of htat danger. And i don’t know about you but I find that kind of stuff scarier than loonies with sharp knives and masks, or spooky tapes that kill people. And I think we all like to end a night out at the movies feeling angry and pessimistic. And don’t forget stupid.
The webs of intrigue in Syriana left me feeling all these things at times, and in the case of scapegoats for criminal investigations I was left wondering just who the second necessary sacrifice for the oil merger investigation that is the hub around which the movies many spokes travel, was. I think it was revealed I just didn’t get it. I also never quite figured out that lawyers stance and wheather or not he sold out to the firm to gain his foothold and completely turn away from his last vestiges of outsider status his black father hoped to see him preserve, and his color stood for.
Those relationships, like many others in the movie are never really delved into very deeply, but they do manage to be clear. I guess I have to give Gaghan credit for making them so with so little dialogue and effort in that area. Whether purposeful or not, it’s almost like everyone was filling a niche, or even an evolutionary station. So no need to go beyond what was required. Events unfold with the imprecise but fatally unyeilding inevitability of natural selection. Everyone from Washington D.C.’s politicians, it’s lawyers, to Texas oilmen, to Pakistani youths, to Arab Emir’s, to CIA agents, to economic advisors, play their natural part in a drama whose outcome seems so unstoppable. The powers at play are too big to stop. Never in the film is there thought of foiling any of these plots. Never is there doubt that the merger will be completed after a scapegoat found, and never is it implied, much less suggested dramatically, that the young Prince (played by the Dr in Deep Space Nine), who is Western educated and planning on true reform, will be allowed to live.
Matt Damon’s character is the economic advisor who is rewarded the position to the young Prince by his American firm as recompense for his son’s death. He starts to hope for change after a growing cynicism makes him blunt and condescending towards the Prince. Damon is disgusted by the economic incompetence of the Arab world, which could so easily save itself from it’s lesser world status and future regress to past centuries, by investing in its infrastructure and not America’s. This is a liberal film, and Damon makes the previously made liberal point that the best way to become democratic, to grow a viable economy, is by investing internally, and not, to paraphrase Damon, putting millions into American planes and $40,000 a night hotel rooms. History would seem to bear this out with its lessons on diversification of economies and need for a middle class for democratic reforms to blossom.
But when Damon discovers that the Prince is on the same page, a much different man than most of the traditional Muslims and Arab oilmen, he champions him. Of course this is not a plan that American politicians or the good ole boys at the oil company headed by Chris Cooper’s character, can allow. George Clooney plays the CIA agent now on the outs with the agency who is at one time assigned to take out the Prince, though he doesn’t do it. Clooney put on weight and really looks haggard and beaten down, which is appropriate enough for a guy who has been through what he has, seen what he has seen, and is facing his obsolescence. He gets tortured in one pretty gruesome scene, though in keeping with the films impression, I’m not exactly sure why. Had something to do with Hezbollah, though I don’t quite remember Clooney being in Lebanon. That’s not to say he wasn’t, but the film jumps around between locations as much as characters, and there were times I was not sure of where people were talking to each other. This was a nice distraction from wondering who was doing the talking and what they were talking about.
When the inevitable assasination does take place (and if you think I’m spoiling plot then wake up and smell the crude, this movie isn’t The Bourne Identity), an incident with goats and vehicle switches left me a little more confused. For the answer why, I will let you go spoiler free, though it is possible that there is nothing to spoil except my own misunderstanding of what was going on and how they did it. Needless to say, if you see this film (yeah I know you wont), bring your attention span. Bring a couple of them because I haven’t even begun to get into all the many webs of intrigue and connections.
For instnace there’s China. One of the biggest players in the movie though their representatives have only a minor role in it. China’s oil interests in Khazakstan possibly trumping America’s, seems to be one of the motivations for the illegal merger between U.S. oil companies and its tacit approval in Washington. That and of course the politicians cut in the deal, which as many official records in real life indicate, is a commonplace area of corruption and conflict of interests. It is of course these conflicts that play a role in our Iraq situation, which gets a bit of a nod as a secret group that seemed to echo a connection of the Project For The New America Century, Cheney’s secret energy task force, and the CIA, called the Committe for the Liberation Of Iran, exist in the cracks and crevasses of Syriana. Maybe it’s a nod to the shadowy and clandestine world of real politics from which it was drawn, but this groups role and its players never seemed entirely clear to me,
though its nebulous nature was also explicit and obvious.
But it was clearly not liberation of people they were concerned about. At least casual ties to big oil make it clear just what needs liberating. Ultimately it may be our dependence to foriegn oil that is the star of Syriana. When you got right down to it the message of Traffic was that we should be more concerned with cutting off the reasons for the demand of drugs, rather than the supply. Likewise, our demand for cheap energy has a manifold effect that we see from elegant Georgetown townhouses, to the D.O.J,, to Texas corporate boardrooms, and on down to poor disenfranchised Muslim youth turning to charismatic leaders teaching them the Koran, and using it to spur on their acts of terrorism. Damon’s character makes it clear to the Prince how dangerous America is, as gas supplies diminish and motivation to get it from those that have most of it gets sharper and more dangerous.
That is at war with what seems to be the common sense advice for the Arab world to stabilize itself. Those two outcomes are mutually exclusive in our current political and economic paradigms. But as one Arab put it, when you have a country that has 5% of the population but controls more than half the wealth and resources, that country is going to find itself in trouble eventually. Right now it seems as if this cycle of destructive relationships can’t be stopped. The ties will continue to get more and more tangled, the blood more and more red with vengeance, the corruption more and more widespread. It is those seemingly inexorable forces that permeate this movie and its almost interchangeable cast of characters who play their assigned roles as ably as the system that has shaped them intends. But paradigms do change. Syriana does not address this. But it does give a little instruction in how much it needs to, and how it may be catastrophic events that force it to happen.
The movie is probably not as optimistic as I sometimes am that this can still happen with wisdom and invention. Technological advancement continues to race along exponentially, and self preservation of our increasingly luxuriant lifestyles give me hope that men and women of great intellect and creativity exist that will push that envelope and gradually change that paridigm both from outside and inside the corridors of power. As technology speeds its growth, I also think our own wisdom and intelligence can do so as well.
As I write this, some connections do start to form i guess, and I can see where a 2nd and 3rd viewing would be very helpful. There is talk of an extended version on DVD, which I may hold off on until getting a Masters.
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