Although it presents a most
convincing picture of current conditions in the Middle East,
the political thriller Syriana may disappoint opponents of the Bush administration by its deliberate omission
of any reference to particular people or political parties.
At the same time, the movie shows the
familiar faces of those in power, the corporate and governmental manipulators
who collude in the complicated business of pumping, transporting, refining, and
selling oil, the lifeblood of the contemporary world, the source of a good deal
of contemporary pain.
The director, Stephen Gaghan, who wrote the screenplay for Traffic, employs some of that movie’s methods to examine an
industry that despite its ostensible legality seems as lawless and violent as
the drug trade. The film’s plot proceeds through a long series of brief scenes
and sequences, jumping rapidly from various places in the Middle
East to lush homes in Europe to corporate
board rooms and numerous government offices in America.
That rapid movement also involves a large cast of characters, from poor Arabs
to fabulously wealthy oil executives to federal bureaucrats to CIA agents.
The unusual combination of scores of
short scenes, the quick cutting within those scenes, the rapid jumps connecting
them, and the frequent changes of location infuse the
film with considerable energy, as well as a paradoxically epic amplitude. Among
its many people united by their involvement with oil, the picture concentrates
mostly on Bob Barnes (George Clooney), a CIA agent, Bennett Holliday (Jeffrey
Wright), a smooth corporate lawyer, and Bryan Woodman (Matt Damon), a financial
consultant based in Switzerland. More disturbing, it also shows the lives of
the people at the highest and lowest levels of the business, the greedy
corporate scoundrels who reap the profits and the power, and the impoverished
Arab workers whose suffering at the hands of the bosses forges their only
weapon, the suicide bomb.
The movie begins and ends with
devastating explosions, the violent punctuation of daily life in many areas of
the Middle East, enclosing the corporate and
governmental wheeling and dealing that provides much
of the actual subject. Two great oil companies merge; the Department of Justice
investigates their malfeasance in the transaction; the emir of an Arab country
plays the Chinese and the Americans off against each other for his own profit;
the CIA assassinates his son, a progressive prince who wants to improve his
country with the oil money; and two young Arabs, fired because of the merger,
dedicate themselves to the sacred task of blowing themselves up along with
their oppressors — it’s our world and welcome to it.
In some senses the picture’s movement
through time and space obscures and confuses both its people and its meaning.
The director apparently enjoys an oblique method of characterization,
neglecting connections, interrupting the flow of narrative to introduce people
in the middle of their lives, so to speak, and ignoring anything like orthodox
exposition. His short, punchy, constantly changing scenes often show people
alluding opaquely in their own peculiar idiom to matters that never become
fully clear; the technique appears intentional, as if the confusion itself
constituted some of the subject and theme.
Another, less acceptable result of Syriana‘s special
methods involves the people themselves. Although in one oddly dull and downbeat
scene Clooney talks to his college-age son about his inability to afford
Princeton, a couple of others suggest the stonefaced
Jeffrey Wright’s estrangement from his alcoholic father, and a few more show a
tragedy and its aftermath in Matt Damon’s family, none of the characters really
emerges clearly or develops beyond an initial appearance. They remain pretty
much the same from beginning to end, and their appearance among a crowded cast
makes it difficult to tell the players without a scorecard.
Despite the steadfast avoidance of
connecting its characters with real life, most of the people in the movie will
remind any viewer of some identifiable faces constantly in the news, from Ken
Lay to Condoleezza Rice to the late Dick Cheney and even George W. Bush. An
excruciating torture scene reminds us of just how far the nation has traveled
in its betrayal of its history, and a character’s paean to corruption suggests
the new values of a terrible time, the state of the nation, the way we live
now.
Syriana (R), written and directed by Stephen Gaghan, is
playing at
This article appears in Dec 14-20, 2005.
