SYRIANA (****)
To watch SYRIANA is to be dropped into the path of a tsunami. It cares not what you think of it as it rushes towards you with urgency. Getting caught up in it is maddening, and trying to make sense of it takes a Herculean amount of focus. But dealing with it is necessary and worthwhile. And realizing just what it is, where it comes from, and what it has wrought, is humbling.
Trying to recap the movie’s plot is itself a formidable task. I won’t attempt to summarize it, just merely give its ingredients. It involves two oil companies (Connex and Killen, pun intended apparently), an unnamed Middle Eastern country with vast huge reserves (guess which), two of its Emirs (played by Alexander Siddig and Nadim Sawalha), and an energy analyst (Matt Damon).
Now only if it were that simple, as the plot also includes a Washington law firm hired more or less by the two oil companies to iron out their merger. Its head (Christopher Plummer) assigns one of his prized lawyers (Jeffrey Wright) to make sure that no obstacles lie in the way of a Connex-Killen union, as the US Department of Justice scrutinizes whether their dealing violates anti-trust laws.
Also thrown into this mix is Robert Barnes (George Clooney), a CIA operative who is used in the earlier part of the film to stop illegal arms trafficking in the Middle East, and in the later part to assassinate one of the Emirs mentioned above. Another prominent figure is Wasim Khan (Mazhar Munir), one of many Pakistani migrant workers working at Connex. His company’s maneuverings have many unwanted effects on him and his father (Shahid Ahmed), causing him to go down a fundamentalist path that we know all too well.
I’ll leave it at that, but if the devil is in the details, Beelzebub would feel at home in SYRIANA, as the amount of its fine points and information is staggering. It bears strong resemblance to David Mamet’s great SPARTAN, where its world and characters could hardly give a damn about what its audience thinks. Politicians, Intelligence officers, clerics, energy analysts, lawyers, construction workers, all speak the lingo, and we come to understand how everything is connected not because it is spelled out for us (which the film never does), but by how each subplot is juxtaposed against the other. If we can’t get it, tough.
Another remarkable feat the movie achieves is how despite its wealth of characters and storylines, it is still able to treat each of its characters with equal importance. From the prince to the pauper, practically every point of view is given great care, nuance, and inspection. It might be easy to miss that each prominent figure has a father-son backdrop. I at first found it unnecessary, but later realized that it was a simple attempt to humanize them. Emirs, lawyers, businessmen, and spies may do dastardly things, but they’re also family men and many of them (if not all) recognize how what they do will affect their children.
Though it might have sounded as if I found fault in the film for indulging in its thoroughness, I found its approach necessary and intriguing. It is usually not a good sign when a film leaves you confused. But like a massive jigsaw puzzle, confusion is the film’s intention and not a careless result. It doesn’t leave us perplexed because it haphazardly leaves out important information (all of its loose ends are tied up as far as I can tell). Like the great MASTER AND COMMANDER, it immerses us in an uncompromising yet frighteningly real environment, and leaves us to our wits to figure it out. If we leave the film bewildered, it will be because we couldn’t handle its pieces.
The film’s authentic feel is shored up by its steely frontline of actors (Matt Damon, Christopher Plummer, Amanda Peet, Chris Cooper, and Jeffrey Wright), and their talent is more than matched by their lesser known counterparts. George Clooney, an underrated leading man valued more for his presence than talent (nominated for Best Supporting Actor here), has a torture scene so unsettling that it will have you sitting on your hands. The one actor who stamped himself into my mind (however brief the moment) is Tim Blake Nelson, whose “Corruption is why we win” speech will be forever remembered alongside Michael Douglas’s “Greed is good”.
It’s hard to believe that this is only the second time Stephen Gaghan has directed a film. I have not seen his previous work ABANDON, though I’m sure that its scope could hardly compare with that of this one. Though it is true that he wrote his Oscar-winning screenplay in TRAFFIC, directing and writing are two entirely different things (David Goyer’s BLADE: TRINITY is painful proof). He seems to have taken a lot of notes from Steven Soderbergh (Executive Producer on this one), as TRAFFIC and SYRIANA are almost eerily similar in terms of looks and technique.
If the film has any failing, it is that it doesn’t have moments where we can deeply connect with its characters (despite its allusions to fathers and sons). Some have said that how can it, when with its method, it has so much to say and so little time to do so? Well, Fernando Meirelles’s THE CONSTANT GARDENER is a better film that does so, with a global conspiracy that is just as labyrinth and important (if not more so). What it has that SYRIANA hasn’t is a central character whose emotions we can latch onto. There, when Ralph Fiennes’s character has his realizations and feels his outrage, we’re there right with him.
Nonetheless, what SYRIANA does is too impressive to discount, and its message, though not new, too important to ignore. It shows the hold oil has on all of us. How the West enjoys its benefits, and how ordinary citizens of the countries that produce it (as shown in a haunting title shot) hardly do. Now that $60 a barrel is considered cheap, and Islamic extremists are funded from it, isn’t it time we found an alternative?
Posted by FLIPCRITIC at March 1, 2006 08:51 PM