Movie Review: SYRIANA (2005)
Syriana (2005) – ****
It took me a while, almost halfway through Syriana, to finally get beyond comparing the film to 2001’s Traffic. Syriana, written and directed by Traffic scribe Stephen Gaghan, isn’t nearly as epic a film, but Gaghan’s portrait of oil politics caught me off-guard. Not nearly as aloof as I was expecting, it took me a long time to realize that I cared what happened to these characters.
The film mainly follows the story of five characters whose lives intersect directly and indirectly because of America’s need for oil. There’s Prince Nasir Al-Subaai (Alexander Siddig), the oldest son of the Iranian Emir who envisions a democratic Iran using its oil wealth to modernize the country. Nasir is courting the Chinese in a deal that could bring the country the prosperity he sees possible.
At weekend business party hosted by the Al-Subaai family where energy companies from around the globe are looking to get a piece of the Iranian oil action, Bryan Woodman (Matt Damon), a representative from a European energy firm, sees his son die in a tragic accident. Because of the death, Woodman looses his cool and speaks his mind to the Price about maximizing oil profit. The frankness goes a long way and The Prince hires Woodman as his new energy consultant.
Not so fast, though. An American company Connex looking to take over a major portion of the Middle East oil hires Bennett Holiday (Jeffery Wright) to ensure the merger with an oil company with Mid-East ties goes through. While Holiday works to serve a few CEOs to the Justice Department as a show of good faith from Connex, the company uses its political ties to have down on his luck CIA agent Bob Barnes (George Clooney) kill the Iranian prince, ensuring that Nasir’s brother is crowned emir and there is no Chinese expansion into the region.
There’s one more character, Wasim Ahmed Kahn (Mazhur Munir) whose one connection is quickly terminated when he is fired from his job on a Connex field in Iran. While the other characters head toward each other, Khan’s story takes a different route. He becomes a suicide bomber.
While not directly involved in the main storyline, Khan’s journey toward a last resort is a direct result of the rest of the film’s narrative. Syriana is a brilliant film, not just a cold, clinical political thriller, because of Kahn.
His character’s story isn’t as contrived as some of the more dramatic moments in the lives of other characters (Holiday’s alcoholic father or Woodman’s dead son), making his story the one that wells up the emotional attachment to all the character. He breaks us in and the rest of the film works through him.
I could see a lesser filmmaker cutting the Kahn part, for the fact that it’s not directly connected. Steve Gaghan, I thought, was a lesser filmmaker. After 2002’s Abandon, Gaghan has overcome his fumbled directorial debut to do what he does best, tell a complex and uncomfortable story about something that affects the lives of every American.
Gaghan’s Syriana is a challenging and significant work of art. While it does follow in the footsteps of Traffic, Gaghan has come into his own as a storyteller. Directing his words allows the filmmaker to produce some of unexpected performances from generally uninspiring actors like Amanda Peet (Woodman’s wife) and George Clooney. In fact, Clooney here gives his best work to date as the grizzly CIA operative. His Clooneyisms have vanished almost wholly from the actor’s performance, making me believe he is Bob Barnes and not Clooney.
What strikes me most about Syriana is how, no matter which direction I look at this film from, it always seems to be smarter than the politics it is describing. Though a work of fiction based on fact, Syriana, like the Fernando Meirelles’ film The Constant Gardener, clings so tightly to reality that I may well rush to believe this is the God’s honest truth.
Syriana is fiction, but like any great work of fiction reflects the reality of the situation. Oil. Terrorism. Corporate corruption. By reflecting that reality Syriana aspires to be an important film. Gaghan, you can breathe a sigh of relief, because your film is important. It’s important not because of it’s political astuteness, but because it’s rare to see a film work on so many levels of emotion and intelligence and not really tell you what it’s doing or where it’s going. Sure, it’s just a movie and won’t likely change the world, but Gaghan’s Syriana is still one hell of a movie.
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