Hey folks, Harry here - This at some levels is one of the best films of the year, but at another level - I find it coldly clinical. It is an incredibly smart film with terribly important things on its mind. Filled with truth and reality, but it's so coldly in the middle - not willing to really step in and take a side - that you can walk away with your personal political view of the Middle East and America's Oil Policies intact. That's a remarkable achievement - and shows a great deal of restraint, and a helluva lot more realistic. The result felt notably lacking in passion to me. Although the passion of the research necessary to make a film this unwilling to choose sides and be even handed - well, it's undeniable. Anyway - here's Massawyrm on it...
Hola all. Massawyrm here. You know, there are those that are going to say Syriana is a lot like Stephen Gaghan’s academy award winning film (for which he wrote the screenplay) Traffic. But I’m here to say unequivocally that it is not a lot like Traffic. It is Traffic. The Same. Exact. Film. Beat for beat. All you need to do to get a sense of what exactly Syriana is, is simply watch Traffic and replace the international drug trade with the world of international oil. But is that actually a bad thing? I mean Traffic was really good. Some would say great. Is effectively remaking it something of a worthwhile venture?
Yes. Yes it is. That is, if you liked Traffic. Me, I liked Traffic a lot, but didn’t love it as much as others did. I thought it was a really good movie that covered a lot of ground, but wasn’t perfect. Then again, I was never very interested in the world of the international drug trade. It’s just one of those topics that never grabbed me. The film had an amazing cast and was well written, but was never anything I was in complete love with. Syriana on the other hand, plays exactly into my realms of interest. I’ve always had a keen interest in back room politics, shady deals and government black bag – including false flag – operations. (oooh, I just put the words False and flag together on the internet. I now have my very own FBI file. Isn’t that cool?) So for me, the idea of a film covering the wide ranging effects of the oil trade through several of its major and minor players is absolutely fascinating.
Syriana is the story of Oil, from the guys who pump it, to the guys who sell it, to the guys who lobby for it and ultimately on up to the guys who kill for it. And yet, it manages to accomplish a lot more than one would think. In our current super charged political climate, one would expect this to be an extremely preachy liberal mindfuck of a film – a steel jacketed shell, locked and loaded, ready to be fired at the very heart of the Republican party. But it isn’t. What is most surprising about this film, is that much like Traffic before it, Syriana tells every facet of its tale with even handed care, making sure that every character, both well intentioned and vile, is human. Everyone is flawed and everyone is rational. There isn’t a character here that is completely detestable or beyond logic. Even the most unlikable among them have rational arguments, reasoned beliefs that you have to actually think long and hard to contradict. Never do you sit in your seat, pulling your hair out at the raw, insipid, stupidity of anyone on screen. No one is a cardboard cutout and there isn’t a single side that is really under represented. Sure, there are characters that are total scumbags, irredeemable men who have fallen too far. But they’re real. And they exist on all sides of this story.
Which ultimately becomes the tragedy of this film. Because the knee jerks on both sides of American politics are going to pervert this to their own agenda. The ReRe Right, as I mentioned in my Narnia review, are simply going to ignore this and chalk it up to more liberal Hollywood Bullshit. They’re going to chalk up Clooney and Damon with the likes of Affleck and Sheen, screaming “Why don’t they just STFU!?!” The Wingnut left, on the other hand, are going to celebrate this as this years tentpole film for their beliefs, and convince a whole mess of people that this is the must see film of the decade, because it’s exactly what they’ve been talking about, while screaming “No blood for oil! No blood for oil!” And really, they’ll both be wrong.
Syriana does in fact have a message, and while on the surface it is about just how fucked up the oil trade is at every level, what it’s really about is corruption. Like Traffic before it, this is a film about the various levels of corruption of the human soul. It is about how sane, rational men – patriotic men, family men, men of honor and virtue - become corrupted and caught up in things they always swore they would never do. There are few people in this world that really set out to do bad things, very few people that want to release untold bloodshed or ruin the lives of others. Sadly, as the cliché goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Syriana is about the trip down that road. It is about why a 19 year old would want to strap a bomb to his chest. It is about why a good hearted business man would get involved with spoiled royalty. And it is about why a family man would high five a coworker after blowing a family off the face of the planet. It’s about what we do, not just we as Americans – but we as people do, to maintain our quality of life. And what we do to improve it.
And that a film as important as this, a film as truthful as this, comes out in such a climate – well, the real message is going to be lost. To most people who watch this, it is going to entirely be about Oil. Of course, that’s probably the reason it got made in the first place, but whether by design or pure accident, the film transcended the material and became something to really chew on.
Gaghan finally got it right again. After being attached to three miserable failures – Abandon (which he directed), The Alamo and Havoc – he finally manages to attain the promise he showed when he first won Oscar gold almost 5 years ago. Sure, it’s for doing the exact same thing he did before, but some people are only really good at one thing. Perhaps for Gaghan, wide ranging character dramas about current events is it. It’s certainly not a bad thing to excel at. But as a sophomore effort as a director, this is a jump to light speed. Of course, it helps that he’s taking his visual cues from Soderbergh - as if that were a bad thing. What Gaghan does with Soderbergh’s style, however, I really love. Soderbergh is a brilliant director, don’t get me wrong. The man can take some of the most notoriously bad actors in the industry (like Casey Affleck, Jennifer Lopez and Scott Caan) and milk truly inspired performances out of them. He can talk some of the biggest actors in the industry to take on the strangest roles. And he can blend looks together to make truly unique, uncompromised visual styles. Of course, Soderbergh also tends to get just a tad too experimental every now and then. With Traffic, he over saturated different story lines with different colors to accentuate mood, while completely over exposing another to give it a blown out look. And while the effect was, as I said, unique, it was also a bit too jarring for some and turned others completely off to the film altogether. It’s the type of thing that requires you to know who directed it before you call it “Genius.” Because, well, lets face it. It could have been an amateurish mistake. What Gaghan does, however, is borrows Soderbergh’s realistic, gritty style – filled with plenty of handheld camera work and personal “right in the thick of it” angles – and leaves out anything gimmicky. He chooses a style, a look and a color scheme right in the very beginning and he maintains it the whole way through. While some may come to refer to it as Soderbergh lite, I like it quite a bit. The film feels very personal, very up close and real, without feeling like the director ever succumbed to his inner-film student.
And Gaghan gets some truly inspired performances out of his actors as well. I mean, he’s getting George Clooney his first Oscar nod, if not his first Oscar. Sure, you’ve already heard a lot of the buzz, and you’re going to be hearing more. Much more. Because this is George Clooney’s career making film. Clooney’s always been great. He showed us Slick cunning cool in Ocean’s Eleven, funny stupid cool in O Brother Where Art Thou, and just plain fucking cool in From Dusk Till Dawn. Hell, I even love him to death in the time honored camp classic Return of the Killer Tomatoes, where he pulled of sleazy best friend cool with all the panache Willie Ames in Zapped. But here, George Clooney is not cool. Hell, he’s decidedly uncool. He’s an overweight, paranoid CIA agent who’s spent way too much time undercover. He’s starting to become a liability to the agency and just absolutely doesn’t see it. His career is just about over and then all hell breaks loose and he finds himself in way over his head. And Clooney is just completely fucking awesome. And the thing of it is, is that despite the trailers and posters selling this as a George Clooney film, it’s not. Not really. It’s an Ensemble piece. Just like Traffic. But also just like Traffic, there is one absolute stand out, one person who’s character may seem small and trivial in the scheme of things, but that turns in a performance so powerful that the movie really, in your mind, becomes about them. For Traffic it was Benecio del Toro. For Syriana, it is George Clooney. Anyone who’s never given Clooney the credit he deserves, anyone who doesn’t feel Clooney’s ever lived up to his hype, owes it to themselves to be proven wrong by Syriana. It proves to be his most wonderfully textured performance to date, and the one I’m certain the Academy will finally recognize him for.
Other stand out performances come from Matt Damon (who is so good here he might actually get an Oscar nomination that can be put in trailers that actually refer to his acting), Jeffrey Wright (who is one of those barely recognizable actors due to his tremendous talent to switch from one character to the next), the always solid Chris Cooper, a great creepy old Washington insider performance from the classic Christopher Plummer, and a really surprising dramatic turn from someone no one ever seems to take seriously – Amanda Peet. And there isn’t a weak link in the bunch. Even the relative unknowns plucked for this film (many of which are Arabic actors whose previous work is exclusively in Arab language films) all deliver amazing performances. Nobody is bad. There isn’t a single wasted line or subpar delivery. The acting is perfect, perfect, perfect.
So the acting’s perfect, is the movie? Welllllllll…..no. It does suffer from a few small flaws. First and foremost, anyone who didn’t like Traffic isn’t going to like this one bit either. It covers an awful lot of ground in a very short amount of time, and much like its predecessor feels like there’s an hour or so missing that would wrap things up completely. In Traffic, that was actually the case, so I suspect that it’s entirely possible that there’s a much longer cut of this sitting around somewhere, waiting for a special edition DVD release. There is one seemingly incomprehensible subplot involving Jeffrey Wright and his father that comes across as if it were cut to hell. Why it still exists I’ll never know, as it is the one part of the film that really doesn’t add anything to it, nor is ever explained enough to warrant keeping. These truly feel like scenes Gaghan loved so much that he didn’t have the heart to cut them when the bulk of that subplot ended up on the cutting room floor and prove to be the one real misstep in the film. With virtually every other scene being of vital importance to every other character in the film, this becomes the sore thumb that can’t seem to be explained away by anything apart from Gaghan’s vanity or his will to keep a beloved actor in the film after his character was deemed irrelevant. Fortunately, these scenes are quick and bookended by much more important material that pretty much allows you to forget about it. But it’s there.
And as this covers so much ground, there are times when some might think it’s merely meandering. There came a point towards the end in which I actually became convinced that Syriana was in fact going nowhere whatsoever. It was approaching the two hour mark and I began to get nervous – just for a second – that this was a lot of jerking off with no money shot. But then, things shifted dramatically, and almost every story came together in one, amazing, final conclusion that left me with my jaw on the floor. I actually jumped in my chair and brought my hand to my face in utter shock. And the payoff was well worth the wait, well worth the set up and the staggering amount of characters.
Syriana IS one of the best films of the year. Well made, potent and truly incendiary stuff. Gaghan’s finally on the right track. Clooney’s finally going to get some recognition. Critics finally have something substantive to debate this season. And best of all, we as an audience finally get something deep and important to chew on.
Until next time friends, smoke e’m if ya got ‘em. I know I will.
Massawyrm
I say we put all the politicians beneath the tetonic plates and let the Earth squeeze the oil from these old fossils!
