Syriana
Directed and written by Stephen Gaghan
With George Clooney, Matt Damon and Jeffrey Wright
Screening nationally
REVIEW BY LACHLAN MALLOCH
Syriana is part of a new wave of political films coming from Hollywood that are more or less critical of US politics and society from a progressive viewpoint. Stephen Gaghan's highly anticipated thriller was funded by billionaire Jeff Skoll's company Participant Productions, which also funded Good Night, and Good Luck. It has also produced a global warming documentary scheduled for release in May.
With Syriana, Gaghan has gone to great lengths to authentically portray the web of corruption and intrigue in Middle East oil politics, centering on the most powerful players, from the US.
Aside from the political intrigue portrayed in the film's several connected storylines, Gaghan's techniques keep us guessing. This is supposed to build authenticity, by partially replicating the sense of being amidst the action, instead of granting the audience their usual position of omniscience.
At first, I resented Gaghan for making such a seemingly amorphous piece. A second viewing and some critical reflection revealed that while Syriana skillfully articulates serious questions about the way in which US policy operates, it is ultimately a thoroughly liberal film.
Gaghan's reflections on the "normal" operation of US policy are damning. Whenever interventions are made abroad, the interests of US corporations are paramount. "The illusion of due diligence" is all that's required to keep the system running in the interests of those who run it. The US can and will carry out assassinations of foreign leaders in order to manage "regime change" in their own interests. Even the names of the two fictional US oil companies in the film — Connex and Killen — suggest that corruption and violence are part of the Yankee way of doing business.
The film's central character, if it has one, is Bob Barnes (George Clooney), based on real life former Middle East CIA operative Bob Baer, who says the dirty tricks played out in the film "hit home the truth".
Barnes's assignment in the fictional Gulf Emirate, which might be Kuwait, goes wrong and he's tortured almost to death by his Arab contact. The reality of the past few years is of course the opposite, only on an obscenely greater scale, with the torture and killing of innocent Iraqi prisoners of war at Abu Ghraib.
Gaghan also replicates the double standards of the Western media in general when dealing with violence. We see and hear every brutal moment of Barnes's torture, in nauseating close-up. But when Pakistani guest workers are being beaten by Arab security forces, or when a US guided missile annihilates the reformist Prince Nasir and his family, we are swept away to a wide angle view as evocative music swells, stylising and masking the violence.
Syriana is one of the most sophisticated of recent Hollywood films. But it is nevertheless a Hollywood film, underplaying resistance to the established order and the possibility of social change. It's encouraging but not explosive. It lacks the power of inspiration. That's why films such as Ken Loach's Spanish Civil War epic Land and Freedom, or the all-time political classic The Battle of Algiers, are in a different league.
George Clooney articulated the liberal framework of the recent Hollywood movement well when he said, "I believe that my country loses its mind every thirty years but then we get it back, which is why I'm actually very proud to be an American". It's probably also why he is proud of this film.
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, March 8, 2006.
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