***1/2 (out of ****)
Starring George Clooney, Matt Damon, Jeffrey Wright, Alexander Siddig, Chris Cooper, Christopher Plummer, Tim Blake Nelson, Akbar Kuthra, and Amanda Peet
Directed & written by Stephen Gaghan, from the novel by Robert Baer
2005
126 min R
In broad outlines, “Syriana” and “The Constant Gardener” sound about the same. Both movies use splashes of story amidst evocative imagery to describe that place in the Third World where corruption, politics, big companies, spies, and Western interests meet. Both movies turn into great cinema subjects that could be needlessly dry, sensationalist, or self-important if handled by a TV drama. Both movies are essentially about what a mess the powerful have made out of the world, and how the mess might well be irreparable.
But part of the fun of seeing more movies than a healthy person should is that you learn that broad outlines sometimes can’t possibly describe how differently the same subject can be treated. “The Constant Gardener” is a virtuoso display of self-conscious direction: a washed-out blur of oranges, reds, and greens, amidst howling singers and whirling cameras, peopled by memories turned into out-of-focus handheld shots filled with strange shadows.
Meanwhile, in a world of loud movies, “Syriana” is hushed. Its colors are drained to pale blues and grays. The all-seeing eye of its camera is detached and nonjudgmental. Its music is a series of percussive rumbles. Men who function as dispassionate automatons whisper to each in brightly lit rooms. “Syriana” is a movie so subtle that some of the audience members in my theater didn’t even notice it was rolling. It’s not a movie that encourages every viewer to know every single thing that’s happening, and has as its goal, not a specific story, but an overall mood of problems so byzantine that they spill outside the frame.
Or, another way to look at “Syriana” broadly is as the story of oil. Like “Mad Max,” except without all the post-apocalyptic future world insanity, “Syriana” is about how the oil is running out and everyone with the power is doing everything to get as much of it as possible. In place of Mel Gibson, the Great and Powerful Humongous, and the Feral Boomerang Kid, we have America, China, and the appropriately named Middle East, forever stuck in the Middle.
Specifically—let me see if I can get this all straight—two Middle Eastern brothers are vying for the throne of their father, a powerful oil emir. The elder brother (Alexander Siddig) is progressive, the younger brother (Akbar Kuthra) is regressive, and the American oil conglomerates and the politicians who serve them want the regressive one in power real bad. Also, while these two human brothers are being driven apart by oil, two inhuman entities are drawn together by oil in the form of a huge American energy merger. I saw “Syriana” two days ago and, while some characters from the emir plot and the merger plot spill from one story to another, I’ve already forgotten if the two stories ever link up directly. That’s the kind of flick it is.
Which means that another big difference between “Syriana” and “The Constant Gardener” is that “Gardener” constantly follows one character (the gardener), while “Syriana” has four basic threads, three primarily American and one purely Middle Eastern. American threads seem to follow what could almost be described as a single personality in different places on a progression from idealism to cynicism. Matt Damon is a energy analyst who becomes advisor to the elder brother. He is on a quest to use the situation to make, not just a better America, but a better world. He bets on the progressive prince who wants to emancipate women in his country and create a parliament.
More compromised is the lawyer investigating the big merger (a remarkably contained Jeffrey Wright). He sees the giant merger as good for America and recognizes that his duty is sacrifice the most wayward and ostentatious players to the gods of propriety. An unapologetic capitalist (Tim Blake Nelson) eventually becomes his target. Like a gunfighter in the Old West, Nelson’s loudmouth is abandoned by society, but only after has been useful to it.
Outside these stories is a migrant worker left unemployed by the big merger who gradually moves from poverty to a place among the fundamentalist terrorists. His situation is all the more touching because it is shown distantly and with a light hand. Christophers Plummer and Cooper also show up to remind us what bad asses they are; Cooper as a cocky oilman and Plummer long enough to perfectly pronounce the word “imbecile.”
Writer-director Stephen Gaghan is on familiar ground with competing story threads. He strutted his stuff like this before in Stephen Soderbergh’s “Traffic” and won the Oscar for adapted screenplay. “Syriana” is the best kind of movie because it has an obvious point-of-view but doesn’t stoop to ridiculing the opposition. With the exception of the emir’s younger son, all the men doing bad things in “Syriana” are doing what they think is best for their respective nations. Tim Blake Nelson’s speech about the free market, corruption, and why America’s foreign policy is what keeps Americans safe and civilized will no doubt be played on Oscar night to accompany Gaghan’s nomination for adapted screenplay.
And it should be played, because it captures the brilliance of Gaghan’s screenplay. It’s a great scene because it’s obviously a “Speech!” but it doesn’t sound like one. The whole screenplay is written to get tons of information across while still sounding natural, and it succeeds, thanks largely to the actors, who are all so low-key. Gaghan helped win a Supporting Actor Oscar for Benicio Del Toro with “Traffic,” and he has a good chance of doing the same with George Clooney (who’s had a great year, with this movie and “Good Night, and Good Luck,” his sophomore turn in the director’s chair).
Uh, let’s pretend there’s a sentence here that wraps everything up nicely.
Finished Tuesday, January 3rd, 2006
Copyright © 2006 Friday & Saturday Night
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