A Flawed Movie

[tabuno]

I agree that this movie is an important movie dealing with one of the most explosive and serious topics today. However, the movie itself failed to rise to the quality that Soderbergh obtained in his movie Traffic (2000). The pacing was slow, the links almost mystifyingly and painfully loose. I felt the movie was manipulative in places. Unlike Spy Game (2001), there was none of the tight tension intelligent thrills as if George Clooney's years of intelligence experience (in the script, not performance) had evaporated even before the movie began. Unlike Traffic or The Ipcress File (1965), the harsh, gritty element was missing making the movie disjointed between mainstream moviemaking and independent starkness. The set up was disjointed, cluttered unlike the slow but smooth, indirect approached taken in the underappreciated The Tailor of Panama (2000).

The Amir's oldest son's security was unreasonably flimsy in places reducing the integrity of the movie. The separation between husband and wife didn't seem real either. Somehow even the terrorist development angle didn't seem to contain the rugged, stark foreign atmospherics that Jarhead (2005) enveloped its audience with the cinematic brilliance of its photography and dirty quality.

The movie was a big disappointment for me considering the importance of the message, it almost seemed to be an act of sabotage. Even George Clooney's The Peacemaker (1997) seemed more credible and compelling than Syriana in its script pacing, development, and execution.

[Chris Knipp]

STEPHEN GAGHAN: SYRIANA

The same dish with more ingredients

Review by Chris Knipp

Syriana is a stew. Stephen Gaghan, who wrote and directed it, is the cook. He has gone back to an excellent recipe that worked well for him five years ago, which came directly from the superb 1989 British TV miniseries, Traffik, written by Simon Moore and directed by Alistair Reed. That series was a goldmine for him -- and not surprisingly: it was profound stuff, and compulsive watching.

Gaghan followed this recipe for the first time writing a direct adaptation of the UK miniseries for the Hollywood screen. The result, Traffic (2000), directed by Steven Soderbergh, moved back and forth between Mexico and the United States, rather than Europe and Asia as in the original. The drug became cocaine instead of heroin. And the number of main languages was reduced from three to two. To further simplify, Gaghan took out a major Traffik subplot about the plight of a poor poppy grower who can't support his family growing other crops. There aren't any poor drug producers at the bottom of Soderbergh's Traffic, only warring drug lords and corrupt officials and corruptible cops. Soderbergh also added a batch of well-known actors, including Michael Douglas and his new wife Catherine Zeta-Jones. The result could hardly compete with Moore's Traffik for richness and momentum and verisimilitude, but the Traffik recipe was well condensed, a good movie resulted, and Oscars were awarded, including Best Screenplay to Gaghan.

A year later Gaghan tried to direct his own film (with his screenplay), Abandon, with Katie Holmes, Benjamin Bratt, and Charlie Hunnam, about a college senior whose life gets too complicated when her old boyfriend reappears. The movie disappeared without a sound.


This time, five years since Traffic, Gaghan has gone back and drawn on the formula that got him an Oscar. Both writing and directing again, he has recast Robert Baer's memoir of life as a CIA foot soldier, See No Evil, applying the Traffik formula to make another screenplay with a multi-layered plot out of it. The focus has changed to US control of oil and the Mideast and world power struggles, instead of the global drug nexus.

To work on this ambitious level Gaghan got lots of help from the Soderbergh-Clooney brat pack. Their production company Section Eight is involved, and Ocean's pal Matt Damon has a central role with his new wife Amanda Peet. American characters include stars like William Hurt, barely visible; Chris Cooper, in another of his increasingly familiar organization bad guy roles; Christopher Plummer as a haughty CEO, and Jeffrey Wright as a very buttoned down corporate lawyer with a failed papa. Above all there's Clooney himself as the central figure, a beleaguered CIA operative who tries to act on his own for once, but fails. Clooney's commitment to the role included 30 extra pounds and a beard; this time he is neither debonair nor handsome. No place was found for Brad Pitt or Don Cheadle in this story. Instead there is excellent casting for the Arab and Pakistani roles, though the only one likely to be recognized is Alexander Siddig of Kingdom of Heaven as the ambitious Gulf prince, Nasir Al-Subaai. Inspired by the authenticity of Moore's Traffik, which he recreated for Soderbergh's film, Gaghan has produced a whole panoply of real-seeming settings and sets of people.

But most scenes go by too fast or appear too briefly to be fully appreciated. Syriana is not only an old recipe with new ingredients added, like a pot-au-feu, but has a chaotic feel; it's rich and tasty but indigestible.That the multilayered approach doesn't work as well for the audience in Syriana as it did in Traffik or Traffic is indicated by the fact that almost everybody throws up their hands at following the plot, at some point admitting they've forgotten what language was being spoken, who a character was, or exactly what he had to do with the main sequence of which he presumably was a part. It's not clear Gaghan can edit or direct as well as Soderbergh did with his Traffic screenplay. Gaghan switches back and forth between subplots faster than he (or Soderbergh's editor) did in Traffic, sometimes giving us only a few seconds to see something starting to happen. He tries too hard to say too much in too little time. The ladle stirs the pot so fast the stew's splashing out.

This is not to say the movie has no rewards. It is to be commended for its high seriousness, even though like Clooney's very fine Good Night, and Good Luck it's a little self-important (Traffik avoided that). What it has to say is complex and sophisticated. The topics raised are more numerous than those mentionied here but include the skimming off the top by oil monarchs, the role of China as the emerging major economy, the US administration's blocking of intelligence that undercuts its right wing agendas, long distance push-button assassinations, bribery and corruption as major features of world business, American style; and the recruitment and training of a jihadist -- which this time provides an underdog equivalent to the poor poppy grower type Gaghan left out of Traffic. The kinds of Arabic used may or may not be authentic for the situations -- despite much study of the language, I can't really say -- but at least it's present wherever it should be, as is the language of the future terrorists in the madrasa. It's made clear that oil company CEO's are cynical but don't know very well what they're doing. Hardly anybody does, in this picture, and that's the way things probably are in the world according to Robert Baer. Whether that makes a really good movie is another question. I was amused by the New Yorker critic who wrote Syriana was "a major film without being a great film." Yeah. And it's going to make some people really mad, if they bother to go see it. I can't wait for the CIA, the oil experts, and the Arabists to have a go at it.

Comparison (http://movie-reviews.colossus.net/movies/t/traffic.html) of Traffik and Traffic by James Berardinelli.

New Yorker review (http://www.newyorker.com/critics/cinema/articles/051205crci_cinema) of Syriana.

Interviews with Baer by
Buzzflash (http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/03/09/12_baer.html) and the Foreign Policy Association (http://www.fpa.org/topics_info2414/topics_info_show.htm?doc_id=100339) .

[Chris Knipp]

I don't have tabuno's problems with Syriana about pacing, atmosphere, and verisimilitude. I think the technical part that bothered me is the photography, at moments anyway. Otherwise its more the overambitiusness of the screenplay and the confusing editing that bother me and we agree the material is explosive and the movie is important.

[tabuno]

Chris Knipp: "I don't have tabuno's problems with Syriana about pacing, atmosphere, and verisimilitude. I think the technical part that bothered me is the photography, at moments anyway. Otherwise its more the overambitiusness of the screenplay and the confusing editing that bother me and we agree the material is explosive and the movie is important."

Tab Uno:

Pacing. I would think that editing has a lot do to with pacing, by cutting and putting too much into a movie makes for a inconsistent pace, tempo for the movie, stop, start, cut away, jerky timing to the movie that makes for a bumpy temporal experience.

Atmosphere. The American Film Institute defines atmosphere as, "The overall mood of a film evoked by such elements as lighting, sets, costumes, music, and camera work. When I watched both "Traffic" and "Jarhead" there were powerful images of raw, gritty, harsh, dirty realism in the foreign countries whereas in "Syriana" this major component seemed more often than not sanitized - polished. Even the poor workers' quarters didn't have the same texture as Jarhead's dirty look of the Marine base in the desert or Traffic's Mexican detention quarters even though the design elements were vividly crowded. The eerie lighting in both "Traffic" and "Jarhead" were haunting and added immensely to the mood, while "Syriana" failed to raise the emotional undertone in the same way.

Verisimilitude. Because of the compressed nature of compacting so much into this movie, the realism of the characters became reduced to almost two-dimensional characters as the depth of their experiences were not fleshed out. George Clooney's character seemed to be bereft of his intelligence experience having to make extraordinary efforts it seemed for a veteran CIA operative, well respected, to figure out what was going on and in fact not having in the movie to back up his threat later in the movie (call my bluff). Clooney's old style intuitive, feel, humanistic approach to intelligence seemed to never even existed based on what Clooney presented on the screen, he had to look up to see his colleagues with these shocked faces? For somebody who's supposed to be able to look out for himself, he really was caught flat-footed, and, even if so, just the image of incredulity and disbelief would have been appreciated. Even the terrorist, didn't seem to be given sufficient screen time, even though I intellectually knew what he was supposed to be going through, his conversion didn't seem to progress in a way that I could see any transformation, conflict. To tell the truth I saw more verisimilitude in brother to brother relationships in the first five minutes of "Chronicles of Naria" than I saw in terms of relationships in this movie.

[Chris Knipp]

I definitely see what you mean about the lack of grittiness in the poor workers' quarters. About Bob, the Clooney character, I think the idea was that he was rather burnt out at that stage, but also, he just made a wrong call, or of course he wouldn't have played into the hends of the kidnapper/torturer as he did. For the rest, I continue to feel it doesn't bother me as much, though some of the scenes are too short and the screeplay tries to include too much and it becomes incoherent at times, for most viewers.

[tabuno]

Chris Knipp posted:

About Bob, the Clooney character, I think the idea was that he was rather burnt out at that stage, but also, he just made a wrong call, or of course he wouldn't have played into the hends of the kidnapper/torturer as he did.

I can't believe that George Clooney would have had his character come across with as much disbelievability if it hadn't been for the overloaded script and the underdevelopment of the characters. I'm going to assume that George did as well as he could with the material he was given. It would have been great if a bit more work had gone into providing scenes for Clooney's character that suggested his state of mind and his ability as a CIA agent better.

What I expected was someone like Robert Redford in Spy Game (2001). Instead what would have been a better character are those played by Kevin Costner in such movies as the The Bodyguard (1992) or even his role in No Way Out (1987). I think that Kevin Costner is one of the best male actors who can and almost always portrays imperfect male characters in movies, a role that would have suited Syriana well.

[Chris Knipp]

I see. Well, Clooney does do his best. Why mention Redford and Costner? Their presence would be even more distracting, and switching actors wouldn't right the problems you find in the script.

[tabuno]

Chris Knipp posted:

I see. Well, Clooney does do his best. Why mention Redford and Costner? Their presence would be even more distracting, and switching actors wouldn't right the problems you find in the script.

How Redford and Costner portrayed their characters in their respective movies was how I could have seen Clooney's performance being more powerful or believable in Syriana. Redford came across in his movie as a master tactician who have a great grasp of intelligence operations and demonstrating in the movie his skill as a operative out in the field, unlike Clooney's character who came across almost feeble and weak, clumsy and uninspiring. Costner comes across in his movie as a conflicted man with doubts and reservations, a person who has made mistakes, a believable human being, unlike Clooney who we don't get to see enough of his inner turmoil or doubts, it just seems like confusion, but never any glimmer of who he had been or why he's really so malleable and open for being fooled the way he does or why it takes him so long to figure something out. Either or these other portrayals, I believe would have made Syriana a significantly more enjoyable and qualitative better film.

[Chris Knipp]

You begin to convince me. I completely see what you're saying and I think I agree with it. But it's got to be there in the writing also, I think, to have the character as yoiu describe him. And that's where Gaghan comes in. I still think his problem was overambition. And those Brits who make Traffik had a light touch we rarely achieve.

[wpqx]

Well I saw the film and I too found it flawed. It seemed like either an overly crowded two hour film, or a three hour film severely cut. There were too many characters, and I think a film could have been made of just Bob that would have been damn good. Gaghan seems to think that bigger is better, and therefore he throws too much in here. The film also takes an extremely pessemistic tone and that as usual is disguised as art. There was no saving grace or redeeming message. Instead we were left with a great bunch of misery and corruption. Perhaps that's "reality" but the film robs us of any hope, and therefore its hard to walk away feeling anything but disappointment.

[Chris Knipp]

Definitely flawed. But I felt feelings more positive than disappointment, in fact I wasn't disappoointed at all, because the exact weaknesses of the film were those that everybody who'd seen it had already mentioned, including what reviews I'd gotten wind of, so I didn't go in to watch it with overly high hopes about clarity of presentation and sharpness of editing. It is good for being complex, ambitious, and serious. Both its weaknesses and its strengths can be traced back to its origins, primarily to Traffik/Traffic and the method used there, which Gaghan follows imperfectly here, and to the two Baer books, and other information Gaghan in person, collected following in Baer's footsteps and incorporated in the film, incuding the time he was 'kidnapped' by Hezbullah. He had too much to deal with, but one can feel his excitement about the material and his eagerness to communicate what he has learned, and thre's much to admire in the quality of the cast and the authetnticity of the settings and languages. I can't call all that a disapointment, but the result is definitely imperfect as a movie, this is what Denby meant by saying it's "major movie but not a great one", i think, and your opening remark that it's "either an overly crowded two hour film, or a three hour film severely cut." is quite justified. People said of Soderbergh's Traffic that it needed to be longer, and this is why the 5 1/2-hour 1989 miniseries remains structurally the most successful. Even it is highly edited and schematic, but it is long enough to present all the material. Traffic and Syriana aren't. I still think Syriana is one of the absolute not-to-be-missed American movies of the year, but not artistically the best--Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck is artistically much more successful.

[oscar jubis]

I was deeply engaged and fascinated by Syriana from beginning to end. My admiration is extended primarily to the film's producers, for green-lighting such a serious-minded, compelling film about the oil business. I am assuming, until I hear otherwise, that they exerted no pressure on writer/director Stephen Gaghan to make a 2-hour film. I would agree with many who believe Syriana is too short in relation to its material. Certainly there isn't any less of it in Syriana than in the 147 min. Traffic, which Mr. Gaghan wrote. Syriana feels like the abridged version of a (near) masterpiece_I am very curious about the film's pre-production history. It appears to me that a longer running time would be required to further develop a few principal characters. (Also, given the lack of a track record, Mr. Gaghan's skill as a director of actors is to be questioned). But the connecting tissue missing from the narrative body conveys what I believe to be a basic fact: the whole dirty system of relationships behind getting oil here from there is so complex and tangled that no single person or entity fully understands it. Syriana's tagline, "everything is connected" should be followed by "and no one knows exactly how". This is bound to make some viewers uncomfortable. At least I hope it does because it's a normal response when one is confronted with certain unpleasant realities about the world we have created.

[cinemabon]

I came across this thread quite by accident... I urge every participant in this forum to check it out.

Please link to the following:

http://question911.com/links.php

I believe that after you watch for only a few minutes, you find the relevence to this film. I discovered this link on IMDB when researching this film. Please let me know what you think. This was an eye opener! Or, maybe I'm just naive.

[Chris Knipp]

That's a big download. What is it?

There is a lot of material that you could relate to Syriana....a good place to start would be with Baer's two books, as in fact Stephen Gaghan did himself, or other books about Bush, oil, and the CIA.

[Chris Knipp]

In reply to Oscar's post on Syriana: I agree with a lot of what you say. I think it is an important movie, even though it doesn't entirely work. It's sophistication and complexity are to be admired and are being rewarded in people's Best Lists (indlucing mine, I'm almost sure). However while you can say that the relationships are very complicated, that doesn't mean that the motivations and the underlying power structure aren't rather simple and clear. Using Traffik/Traffic as the obvious analogy.... very, very complicated system, but with big clear forces like poverty, greed, and addiction governing them in unmistakable ways.

[cinemabon]

The film and other films at that like site above bring into the question the theory there was secret government involvement with 9/11 and the Iraq invasion. I didn't realize everyone doesn't have broadband (Did I just use a double negative? ...and I call myself a writer!). At any rate, you'll need a broadband connection to view it, but its definitely worth it.

[Chris Knipp]

Normally I have broadband. Today I am in New York and I don't have much access to it.

I am an active student of the Middle East so I may know something about this material. There are lots of theories about 9/11 which I view with scepticism. I have really looked into a lot of this stuff. I still think, for Syriana background, read Richard Baer's two books about the CIA and oil.

[mouton]

SYRIANA
Written & Directed by Stephen Gaghan


As human beings, we are able to detach ourselves from injustices and hardships taking place throughout the rest of the world. Disassociation is not merely a capability, it is often a necessity for survival of the mind. Film going is often thought to be a primary means of exercising this need. Escaping into the dark of the cinema to avoid the world’s problems is both common and effective, even when dealing with more personal problems instead of the global variation. The whole theory is threatened by films like, “Syriana”, a film that makes sure you’ve been punched in the stomach and spit on while lying on the floor recovering before exiting the cineplex. The realism of the oil industry, from the US government corruption trickling all the way down to illegal workers on the verge of becoming suicide bombers in Iran is difficult to completely grasp, even more troublesome to digest, yet still a topic that needs more awareness brought to it. What becomes easy to forget when you’re trying strongly to focus on how vast this particular reality reaches is that this is actually not reality; it is still a movie after all. It is a reality shaped by the vision of director Stephen Gaghan.

Gaghan is the Academy Award winning screenwriter of “Traffic” and the construction of this new story comes together much the same way. There are three separate storylines that intersect each other throughout while becoming clearer as the end draws closer. As a director, this is only Gaghan’s second project and a definite step up from his previous effort, the Katie Holmes thriller, “Abandon”. He keeps the viewer engaged and affected throughout, showing as much strength and control as “Traffic” director, Steven Soderbergh. The difference between the two is Soderbergh’s ability to better balance the time spent on your toes and the time spent clutching your chest in pain. The scope of Gaghan’s script is too vast to be fully absorbed, leaving the viewer moved but not clearly understanding why. I respect Gaghan’s ability to pick up a scene at any given time without overexplaining every tangent or spending too much time contextualizing the viewer but this can leave the viewer feeling removed … not the desired effect when your hopes as a director lie in educating the viewer on this poignant topic. Thank goodness for home theatre and multiple screenings.

What is missing is a more human element while at the same time, most of the human elements involved seem unnecessary. Again, going back to “Traffic” (as you will find yourself unable to resist comparing the two as well), the majority of the drug-related threats were personalized, tying the string between the drug lords mass-producing their product to the street kids and upper class privileged buying the junk. Here, the players’ humanity is incorporated to give them some characterization, depth. With so much happening in their professional lives, their personal lives seem superfluous and consequently lend nothing to their motivation, eventually being ignored and mostly unfinished. The most personalized focus comes from George Clooney’s portrayal of Bob Barnes, an agent with the CIA who seems just as lost and caught up in this cyclone of corruption, greed and power as we are. Clooney’s performance begins so quietly, so passively, and builds like a rumbling beneath your feet before a natural disaster strikes. Getting on in years and always well intentioned, Barnes no longer knows who controls his life, only that it is not himself. He has much to say but cowers when given the chance to say it. To a large extent, he has given up trying to make change. Clooney plays Barnes as exhausted, apathetic and frustrated without having the drive to change that. He has been telling the same lies and making the same deals for so long, he no longer questions to what goal they contribute. He has not been corrupted but he turns away his eyes to every command he executes under the moral armor that his decisions are not his own. Only they are.

Gaghan’s camera is constantly positioned either very close or very far from the action, sometimes within the same scene. The effect is a varied degree of understanding, that we are closer to the problem than we think one minute and then detached and removed, lost the next, with numerous obstacles obstructing our view. We try to piece together the connection between the American government, the Saudi monarchy, the corporate control, the legal whitewashing and the resulting racism that instills fear and lack of understanding of everything Arab and hatred of America by the Arab people. I walked in with a vague understanding of the interconnectedness of all these issues and left “Syriana” with the concrete knowledge that it is oh so much more complicated than I originally thought.

[Chris Knipp]

I agree with most of what you say; I just have some comments and quibbles, and I think you misstate the nature of the Bob character somewhat at one point.
Syri-huh?A comment in itself and funny. The name though unexplained in the movie is apparently an actual CIA term for a certain paradigmatic type of country in the M.E.
The scope of Gaghan’s script is too vast to be fully absorbed, leaving the viewer moved but not clearly understanding why. The scope isn't too vast to be absorbed, but due to insufficient control of the material in the movie, it appears to be. Again we have to make the Traffik/Traffic comparison: there’s an equally vast scope, but tighter organization, so the story can be followed.
I respect Gaghan’s ability to pick up a scene at any given time without pandering to explanations… I guess you mean pander to the (least alert members of the) audience by resorting to tedious explanations. Pandering to explanations doesn't make sense, as stated.

I agree neither the Bob character nor any of the others are what would be needed to “personalize” elements of the story and provide more “human elements," but you kind of go overboard when you say “most of the human elements involved seem unnecessary,” though.
Clooney’s performance begins so quietly, so passively, and builds like a rumbling beneath your feet before a natural disaster strikes.I like that idea.
To a large extent, he has given up trying to make change. Clooney plays Barnes as exhausted, apathetic and frustrated without having the drive to change that. He has been telling the same lies and making the same deals for so long, he no longer questions to what goal they contribute.Yes, Barnes is burnt out, but he isn’t apathetic; he gets into trouble for speaking up and he naively jumps at the chance to participate in an operation that will change the course of things, without knowing how Washington works. That’s his problem, as was probably true of his actual prototype, Baer, or is what Baer has observed in similar situations. You’re missing a part of Barnes’ character in your description here. Baer himself explains the Barnes character in interviews.


[Camera.] The effect is a varied degree of understanding, that we are closer to the problem than we think one minute and then detached and removed, lost the next, with numerous obstacles obstructing our view. Again nice comment. I think the camera technique is probably too distracting, though I wish I’d seen the movie from farther back in the theater: I think I was too close and that caused undue distortion in my case.
(I) left “Syriana” with the concrete knowledge that it is oh so much more complicated than I originally thought.True but you leave Traffik/Traffic (especially Traffik) not only knowing that but also understanding the basic dynamics of the situation pretty well, which after seeing Syriana you probably don't. Complicated doesn't have to mean confusing, it just means you have to pay close attention and use your gray cells a bit more than usual. Which as you say at the beginning this movie does, and that's good; but it could have been a more rewarding process given better writing and direction.

I advise anybody to peruse some of the various interviews with Baer. I believe that Baer was the main source for the movie. He is very critical of the CIA and also of the government's failure to use the CIA effectively. Baer: "At the end of the day you’re a hostage of the White House." The US government's enslavement to oil interests is another separate pet topic of his and the book on that is one of the two books by Baer Gaghan used.

As I said to begin with, Gaghan used the template of the Traffik series both for his Traffic adaptation for Soderbergh and for this movie, which he directed. Though he must have had lots of collaborative assistance from Clooney, Soderbergh, and others, maybe he was too involved pesonally at the research level this time. He went in the field, he talked to and read Baer, he absorbed the material for years -- he got in so deep he lost the artistic perspective he had in adapting Traffik into Traffic.

It's still a really interesting, thought-provoking movie, but the more you think about it, the more you see that "a flawed movie" was a great title for this thread.

[mouton]

Hey Chris ...

Thanks for the vocabulary advice, made some changes. Thanks also for the background info, compliments and discourse. I agree that calling the thread a "flawed movie" is apt. I enjoyed SYRIANA but ultimately thought the ties between these far reaching stories were too weak.

[Chris Knipp]

Glad if I was of any help. And I think we see eye to eye on Syriana. Actually most of us here seem to. Yeah, this is a hard movie for me to rate. I'm almost tempted to make it one of the year's best ten US movies, because I like this kind of stuff so much, but I don't think it's successful enough. I'm waiting for some final 2005 late release revelations to give me ten good ones, including some serous stuff. The always provocative Armond White of The New York Press recently wrote of Munich--
Munich is a reminder of the morality that mere politics would have us forget... Whaaa??? I wish movies would give us more "mere" politics and set the "morality" to one side for a bit while we figure out what is actually going on. Syriana takes that path.