Review: Syriana

Syriana? Say what? Can anyone tell me what exactly Syriana is, means, or refers to? I'm aware of a country called Syria which does not feature prominently in the film. (Just wondering if this movie could have also been called Lebanoniana, Saudiana Arabiana, or Iraqellany).

I saw Syriana last night at a multiplex in San Francisco’s Japantown. Noting the lax security, I snuck in a small bottle of Jack Daniels. In the darkness of the theater, I spiked my soda with it. After the previews, when the soda was gone, I sunk happily into my seat and slowly sipped the rest of the whisky throughout the 122 minutes of this engrossing and splintered tale of greed, corruption, and betrayal in and surrounding the global oil industry.

Not an Action Movie

Yes, George Clooney plays a guy in the CIA on a mission -- but, no, this is not an action movie. It's far too smart, tough-minded and ambitious. The narrative is woven of loosely connected strands. It has many important characters but no main character. There are a handful self-effacing performances from big stars but no star roles.

With a structure that moves briskly from one storyline to the next, the risk is that one of the plot strands could become more compelling than the others, but the director, Stephen Gaghan, avoids this trap and navigates a complicated story with lean efficiency. The writing, while of a high quality, is broad but not deep. The story is a shallow pool that stretches a hundred miles wide.

Each story takes place along the fringes of a world I could recognize as my own. It’s not America we're watching when we watch Syriana; it’s a shadowy place off to the side where the deals happen that make America possible: in the homes of elite oil barons; the shady backrooms of Washington’s oil lobby; the foreign worker camps of Middle East refineries; the bureaucracy at CIA headquarters. Overall, the movie is successful at evoking a tired and terrible machine hell-bent on preserving its own wealth and power at the expense of anything else. The characters in the movie are the individuals that it crushes.

We'll Always Have Beirut in '84

The movie bravely avoids Hollywood cliché, like having a true hero or a morally clear ending. While I admired the restraint on display here, the movie doesn’t climax but rather reaches a simmer of frustration. When a main character is double-crossed, we expect revenge. Not here. Certain movie baddies always get their comeuppance; not in Syriana. Maybe I’ve been conditioned by too many Die Hard-type movies, but as a viewer I longed for a little taste of the dish best served cold. Characters in the movie refer many times to another character's heroism in Beirut in ’84, but any effective heroic actions are absent from the movie. During a particularly brutal torture scene, I would have given my right nut for a hero. (All kidding aside, Beirut in ’84 is mentioned so many times I really wished we could have seen what happened there).

My favorite thing about the movie was the cinematography. In close-quarters it is lovely without drawing attention to itself. But the movie abounds with breathtaking shots where the camera pulls back to reveal the scale of structures in relation to the characters we are watching: CIA agent Bob in a conversation with an informant becomes Bob standing by a massive sea wall while waves break with all the ocean’s fury against it; or the camera lingers on an endless city of spires above an oil refinery; or we float above the rooftop pool of a hotel in Lebanon.

Special acting props to Amanda Peet and Christopher Plummer who made the most of small, not particularly meaty rolls. But the biggest kudos go to George Clooney who inhabits pudgy, bearded Bob with understated strength and sadness. He also served as executive producer of this very un-Hollywood film.

I would have paid to see this movie.

NOTE: Due to scenes of intense and surprising violence and the near-constant presence of unsettling, widespread corruption reaching the highest levels of government and a lack of anything resembling optimism for the future of the world or even a basic shred of moral decency in a single character, whisky is recommended with this movie.

Coffee Drinkers and Quibble Raisers

Lise and I decided to make a blog where we review stuff because we realized that even though we belong in jobs where we are paid to make end-of-year 'Top 10' lists instead of the regular kind of jobs we actually have, it was never going to happen unless we jumped in head-first and started doing it.

Reviewing stuff isn't something I've ever done in a formal way before, but I like to complain, evaluate, quibble, and rank things, so I think I'm a natural. But just because I'm new, that doesn't mean I'm shying away from the big boys: for my first review I'm setting my sights on the McSweeney's phenomenon with a review of McSweeney's 18 and Wholphin #1, the "DVD Magazine of Unseen Things" which come bundled together for $22.00--Ouch!

I'm also planning a New Year's Eve Eve movie marathon tomorrow and will post notes if I see anything good.

A Hierarchy

Overrated	Properly Valued	Underrated
Prettiness	Efficiency	Beauty
The French Laundry	A deli sandwich	Prison Food
Breathing underwater	Seeing in the dark	Ambidexterity
Phone calls	Email	Old-fashioned letters
The U.S. Dollar	The doughnut	Eyesight
Yesterday	Tomorrow	Now
Monkeys, Pirates, ninjas	Bigfoot, Chuck Norris, Undersea explorers	Greek gods and goddesses, the chupacabra, laborers
Money	Sexual Prowess	Confidence on the Dance Floor