Syriana
Syriana, a character-driven spy thriller about the political and financial machinations surrounding the international oil trade, is too taut for its own good. It's one of those movies where the filmmakers deliberately leave out information so that the viewer is aware of the conspiracy swarming around but can't quite figure out what it is and how each character is involved.
It reminded me of Roman Polanski's Chinatown, which is in the same family as Syriana, except the 70's classic dealt with the [local] implications of a [water] scandal rather than Syriana's international/oil subject matter. But Chinatown, with its highly-respected script by Robert Towne, manages the conspiracy far more professionally, cloaking in it in the guise of film-noir with Jack Nicholson as the chief investigator.
Syriana instead takes the approach of Steven Soderbergh's Traffic -- no coincidence since Syriana's writer/director Steven Gaghan was a co-writer of Traffic -- following several seemingly disparate storylines and various characters of different nationality/class/profession all at once. This technique worked well in the sometimes overly didactic Traffic, but falls a little short here, mostly because of the difficulty cramming it all in during the 126 minute running time, 21 minutes shorter than that of Traffic. While the overall sense of the conspiracy is mostly clear by the end of the film, we're not entirely sure how we and each character got there.
But perhaps this is just one of those movies that demand a second viewing (like, say, the first Mission: Impossible, which Robert Towne also wrote). Certainly all the other ingredients of the film are great: the acting (with good performances from George Clooney, Matt Damon, Jeffrey Wright, and Alexander Siddig - yes, there are no major female roles), the photography, the plot (when figured out), the subject matter, etc. Yet, I still have this feeling that this movie should've been great and came very close, especially when challenging movies with politically relevant subject matters are so hard to come by, and even more so from a major studio.
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The movie sounds interesting. I heard somewhere that Clooney gets credit
for it. Is that accurate? And you are
right, Mission Impossible made more
sense the second time around, but
that does not excuse it from being
somewhat abstract (just as you point
out with Syriana).
I wanted to see the other movie associated
with Clooney right now, Good Night and
Good Luck. However, my father told me that he heard great things about it from other
people and then saw it and found it "extremely boring." He said it was well acted though. That seems to be the problem
with making serious movies though. It's
hard to get the right medium between
education, art, and entertainment.
Clooney was one of the executive producers of Syriana.
Good Night and Good Luck is on my list of things to see. Funny about what your dad said about it, because i've also been told that it's incredibly to the point and taut.
[...] A surprisingly good interview with Stephen Gaghan, writer/director of Syriana, over at AICN. There are some spoilers, so you may want to wait until after you see the movie. The interview actually made me more excited to watch the movie again (my original thoughts here). [...]
[...] Stephen Gaghan, writer/director of Syriana, has his first blog post up (about corruption) at the Huffington Post. My initial thoughts of Syriana here. [...]
[...] Roger Ebert writes the best review of Syriana yet, convincingly selling the obfuscated plot (without spoilers). Perhaps there’s a tad bit of rationalization, but it’s a great review nonetheless. (And again, my original thoughts, now looking simplistic.) [...]
[...] After seeing Capote tonight, I snuck in to rewatch the last half-hour of Syriana. As I guessed it would after I first saw the film during Thanksgiving weekend, it makes much more sense the second time around. But more than that, since I (and, I think, so the average moviegoer) was so busy trying to piece together the plot details the first time I saw the movie, I missed the horrifying emotional impact of the ending. I still believe adding ten or fifteen minutes to the running time would have made it a better movie, but I have much more respect for the outright ballsy-ness of Stephen Gaghan. [...]
So Clooney is thinking about running for office? I know he's pretty politically active, but with his party past I can't see him going far.
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