Topic: Misc.
On March 20th I wrote "I've little or no desire to see the issue films of George Clooney, as I don't want to be subjected to their biased point of view" and never got around to explaining what I was talking about. In case it wasn't obvious, I was referring to "Syriana" and "Good Night, and Good Luck". Today I changed my mind about the former.
I was in part prompted by an article by Max Boot in the LA Times, in which he argued that several of the earlier films in which George Clooney stars make the opposite case to the views he expresses in person. It was something I had noticed myself with respect to Three Kings, a film that pointed out the pointlessness of defeating Saddam Hussein in 1991, only to leave him in power on the dubious grounds of 'stability'. I also found it disturbing the way that so many of the Iraqi characters in that film scream 'Where is George Bush?' when their uprising against Saddam fails to get American support, despite previous promises.
So I went to see Syriana and came out ... bewildered frankly. I loved the visuals - the streets of Beirut, the vast expanses of desert in the Persian Gulf, the huge oil refineries and so on. It was also interesting to see the dynamics of the Pakistani migrant workers who are treated as second-class citizens, except by fanatics who aim to recruit them as suicide bombers. Alas however, I fear that most people will come out thinking that they have seen a cogent polemic against western oil interests in the Middle East, when actually that's the weakest part of the film.
SPOILER WARNING - A key plot line is the US plan to assassinate a young Royal from an oil-rich state who intends to turn his country into a pluralist, secular state where women are educated and allowed to vote. This man is a neo-con's fantasy! Yet he gets killed because the US would rather have his much younger brother in power. How does that make sense? Someone that young could never be relied upon to stay loyal. His opinions could change at any moment. And the killing of the older brother at the end is so 'high-tech' that only the US could have done it. Surely the brother would figure that out? It's just nonsense. The argument is made that the younger one is more open to having US troops on his country's soil. Why would the US care about that when it's already walked out of Saudi Arabia? The only time that the older brother makes a remotely anti-American remark is when he says in public that Middle-East countries should reform at their own pace rather than at one set by Washington. If I were an American politician I would welcome that being said in public by a sincere reformer, as it would make it more likely that he would be accepted by his own people.
By all means see it if you have a few hours to kill. But be prepared to come out completely confused. The film would have made a great deal more sense had it been made about 20 years ago. Shame nobody made it then.
_ DY
at 10:41 PM BST
Updated: Thursday, 13 April 2006 10:47 PM BST
