Syriana
I’m going to do it. I am going to come out and say that I did not understand a good deal of this film, and as a result, I found it nearly impossible to get engaged with the elements I did understand (fearing the rug to be pulled out) and I was unsurprised by many of the revelations purportedly sprung by this movie. The fellow who ladled my companion popcorn at a later time said he loved it, but he was also a Navy intelligence officer (hence the moonlighting). Until he said that, I would have said that anyone who say they love this film is afraid to admit that they couldn’t follow it. I am not afraid to admit it. My very smart companion was bored and confused as well.
That said, I really appreciate what Syriana did succeed in doing. It is evident from the interconnected vignettes that oil companies get rich off Middle East instability. How? It’s not clear. Lots of guys seem to be talking to lots of other guys, some of whom I thought I had the number of, until they take a meeting with that guy, who I thought was doing something completely else. Assumptions are made about the audience’s ability to discern who characters are working for, but sadly, they are all working undercover, so to speak, so we don’t know if we are inferring their real role, or their feigned one. It’s quite vexing.
I will also admit that I am not able to differentiate Farsi from Arabic when it is spoken quickly and heatedly. You can call me racist or ignorant if you want, but you watch a scene and tell me if you could tell (actual Arab and Farsi speakers need not apply) until someone identified the language being spoken specifically. It became further confusing when non-Arabic speaking characters apparently decided to start hanging out in a mosque with Arabic written everywhere.
Suits, ties, greed, pain, fear, desperation, profit, oil, under the table dealings, and danger. We already know the oil business and the government and the Middle East are terribly entangled. I came away from this movie perhaps with a greater sense of entanglement than I walked in with, but I can’t say that I am more informed about the delicate and complex politics involved with keeping multiple nations at each others’ throats just so we can charge American drivers higher prices and make record profits. It was aggravating. A final, climactic event (not on land, on water, though both were effective) drove home more the horrible damage we do to the innocent in our dependence on this Cold War of Oil, including the environment and the poor. It made me sick to think that so many people put their lives on the line for white fatcats to get fatter, and for no other gain. The movie did not succeed in making me angrier about the situation, except that the machinations of these groups is so involved and double dealfish that it doesn’t even make a decent narrative, despite its inherent drama.
MPAA Rating R-violence and language
Release date 12/9/05
Time in minutes 126
Director Steven Gaghan
Studio Warner Brothers
