Syriana
Last night I went to see this movie.
I would like to post some sort of terse, witty review of it but unfortunately I have no idea what was going on at any point.
posted by Lucy at 12:11 pm
Sunday, March 05, 2006
Last night I went to see this movie.
I would like to post some sort of terse, witty review of it but unfortunately I have no idea what was going on at any point.
5 Comments:
Lucky Number S7even. That's what we should have seen. We (you) should also have got to the cinema earlier so we weren't sitting with our noses pressed against the screen! I hate it when that happens. I think it happened to me during a Harry Potter film once, which surprises me, because Harry Potter g) and it should have been empty!
I couldn't even work out why it was called 'Syriana'!
Because Syria, as a country, has lots of oil fields. The film was about oil. Well, to be precise it was about the human consequences of the pursuit of wealth and power blah, blah, blah. Innocents suffer, people get used, thematic devices and so on.
I quite liked it no I've had chance to mull it over.
Oh so Syriana is like some sort of adjectival formation? Like 'Americana'.
I understood the message, I just did not understand the content. Who was trying to kill who, and why, and what was all that nonsense about the son, that was unnecessary, and was George Clooney a bad guy or if not was Bashir a bad guy and if not why did they get blown up etc etc.
If it was a book it would have been written by Geoffrey Archer and only read by middle-aged men.
NEXT MOVIE: CHICKEN LITTLE
Very much like ‘Americana’.
As for the content my understanding is this. The eldest prince was marked as a bad guy because what he was doing wasn’t benefiting the American oil industry in that he gave drilling rights to the highest bidder (the Chinese) and not them. Wanting to do his own thing and rebuild his country would have pushed up prices elsewhere so the younger prince was favoured. He gets to be king and the Americans get to do what they want. Clooney as the CIA agent was tasked to get rid of the eldest prince but was himself beaten up by that chap from Hammas (his supposed contact) who blabbed to the world what the Americans were up to. The Yanks then leave Clooney out in the cold. He tries to find out what went wrong and why he’s found himself left out in the cold. This leads him to the realisation that he’s been used and an attempt to save the elder prince from being killed (this fails.)
The son getting killed was simply a metaphor for what is really important in life. The futures analyst lets himself be bullied into going to the Middle-East thus putting his work first, his son dies as a result of this and his guilt leads him to try finding redemption in helping the eldest prince rebuild his country. When the prince is killed it is finally driven home to him that the pursuit of wealth etc isn’t as important as those you love. This isn’t as clumsily done as it sounds.
Basically. Bashir was a good guy but due to his desire to do what’s best for his country and not what’s best for the US economy was painted as a bad guy. Clooney was just a guy doing his job and therefore neither good nor bad but simply a naive pawn following orders.
They were blown up in the name of American oil interests though this fell through as the missile stolen from the Americans at the start of the film (which was intended to be used against the elder prince) is used to blow up the oil refinery they acquire by getting rid of the prince.
In short the pursuit of wealth and power results in everyone losing.
At least I think so.
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