As you might remember, I'm not particularly fond of Syriana or the film's director, mainly because they're both irrevocably terrible pieces of shit. However, I'm not without the ability to accept when I am wrong. It seems that the popular opinion is to note Syriana as "complex, engrossing, involving and depressing. Difficult to absorb, it is also difficult to accept, and it is one of the best films of 2005."-- Roger Moore, ORLANDO SENTINEL ."
That makes me feel bad. Maybe I just wasn't trying hard enough to enjoy it. Maybe I just didn't get it. Maybe this film's powerful message outweighs its minor narrative flaws.
Taking a closer look at the negative reviews, you'll find a near complete absence of middle ground on the movie. You either love it or hate it, apparently, which is fine by me, because I'm guessing the masses of middle america who say "it was alright" are the same dumbfucks who actually didn't understand the movie and its overtly moronic, Greek tragedian approach to storytelling. How could a movie so positively reviewed also illicit this reaction from a viewer:
"I'm still waiting to see the film that was advertised in its great trailer. As actually released, the movie is completely dead. ... One of the worst films of the year."-- Steve Rhodes, INTERNET REVIEWS
Or perhaps, this one:
"Convoluted, disjointed and extremely dull...amounts to a bunch of ciphers having esoteric conversations about who knows what."-- Chuck O'Leary, FANTASTICA DAILY
Or maybe:
"It's serious and scathing, and it seems to think that because it displays those characteristics that it should get some sort of pass when it comes to cogent story telling."-- Donald Munro, FRESNO BEE
True, these reviews are few and far between, but it begs the reader to take a moment and ask him or herself exactly why a movie that's major problem is its entire story, could ever be heralded as the Woodward and Bernstein of cinema.
Why is it that people are able to overlook the film's major storytelling flaws, the fact that the film has no likable or empathetic characters, the fact that the dialogue reads like a transcript of C-Span 2, and the fact that disturbing images are used as plot devices to force the viewer to become strongly emotionally involved in the film due to an absence of any real humanity?
Why?
Because this movie might be the only stubby, gangrenous foot the democratic party has to stand on anymore.
That's right, brosephs and brosephinas, this movie is heavily anti-oil, anti-big business, lest we not forget anti-current government. This movie screams liberal propaganda with the same sort of heavy-handed, Michael Moore-esque, Truth.com megaphone of subtlety that its message is fucking impossible to ignore.
Here's the thing though: I don't disagree with the messages of this film. Yes, the oil industry and its governmental partnerings have resulted in a highly corrupt plutocracy of power within our democracy. Yes, I completely understand that the events depicted in this film are fictionalizations of real scenarios---that these things can and do happen on an everyday basis---that the American public is not privvy to these unlawful, unethical, and hateful actions because of the nation's lack of investment in any form of investigative journalism, and that the absence and bastardization of information has resulted in the bolstering and reaffirmation of the oil industry's business practices. Because the American people don't know or don't care or refuse to believe it because it's just too awful, it keeps going. And there's not a fucking person among any of us who can do anything about it.
Regardless of whether you agree, the film immediately gains respect from some because of its willingness to take a stand on a polarizing issue that no one else is willing to talk about. The news media would rather gloss over the facts (in order to placate the government just an eensy bit more) than to investigate these things, so pretentious dickweeds like Michael Moore and Stephen Gaghan put it upon themselves to do instead. Now don't get me wrong, I don't hate Michael Moore and Gaghan for their willingness to tear apart an established industry or governmental structure. I hate them because of their willingness to manipulate the emotions of their audiences in the same lowest-common-denominator way that the Bush administration and all the fine people at FOX News do. Gaghan's points aren't wrong; they're just stupidly made. People claim this movie is great because of how smart it is, but in actuality, the film's gilded intelligence is the result of its myriad insights into the wheelings and dealings of oil execs, CIA agents, and all those Americans who are destroyed along the way. I applaud the movie for attempting to speak the liberal mind in narrative form, explaining these injustices in the relationship between oil barons and lawmen to the popcorn-munchers worldwide.
But the movie sucks.
It's a bad movie.
It has a bad story, you're never sure what's going on or what anyone is talking about, and characters are introduced then disregarded with the careless, smug ease that tells the viewer that the writer-director is so self-masturbatory about his own opinions and all the "hard work and research" (Gaghan loves to point out how much work he did for this movie in interviews. It was also the first thing he mentioned at the beginning of the live Q & A. He is fucking begging us to worship him.) that he did to construct his masterpiece, that he never bothered to care whether his story made sense. I guess the major argument would be that the story doesn't need to make perfect sense, because it's points are so important. Well you know what, film industry? IF YOU ARE MAKING A NARRATIVE MOVIE, IT NEEDS TO HAVE A NARRATIVE. I appreciate your willingness to put forth a film that takes major, topical events and constructs a hard-hitting critique of them with many convincing points, but the problem is, I already agree with these points. If ever there was a movie that preached harder to the choir than this one, it would reserve itself a special-needs genre at the back of Blockbuster where the other movies can walk by and put alms in its paper hat. If the purpose of this movie is to change national opinions on a subject in a way similar to Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, then I suspect it will be met with similar praise from the media and apathy from the masses. Fahrenheit 9/11 might have been a purposeful attempt to bring to surface major grievances against the Bush White House, but it failed miserably as being anything close to interesting or mind-blowing. The facts presented were either arguments I'd already heard, facts taken out of context, or half-assed sentimentalizing on Moore's part so he could make himself look heroic in the same self-indulgent, jerk-off way that his hated enemy, Dubya himself, does on a regular basis. If Moore wasn't trying to push himself as well as his ideas into the limelight, why would he PUT HIMSELF ON THE FUCKING POSTER?!
Fuck, even March of the Penguins was less single-minded than this shit.
Gaghan and Moore are the kinds of people who love to pretend how clever they are. They take the opinions that many people have, claim them as their own, make them readily available in crappily-constructed films, hoping that most people will ignore their own creative retardation for the fact that they're saying something out-of-the-ordinary.
And you know what?
It's working.
It doesn't matter how bad a Michael Moore documentary is or how terrible Syriana's excuse for a story is. People will still suck the directors off because they were "brave" enough to put themselves on the line and take an unpopular opinion. You know what? Gaghan and Moore aren't brave heroes. They're assholes. They're the same people who you'll run into every day--the kind you never want to spend any time with. They're the guys who'll correct you when you say "good" instead of "well." They're the guys who'll ask a personal question to a professor in the middle of a 200 person lecture class. They're the guys who'll correct a joke you make by referring you to an article they read in U.S. News and World Report. They're the guys who're so uber-opinionated, that they get off on making people uncomfortable in order to win an argument.
So go see Syriana. Have your feelings manipulated by vivid, gruesome imagery. Ignore the muddled details of the plot and character relationships, the fact that you have almost no idea where anything is taking place after halfway through the movie, the fact that travel across the globe is portrayed as instantaneous, that two unrelated plotlines can converge on the smallest tangent possible in order to make them seem vaguely related, the fact that time and spacial relations are confusing concepts to Gaghan as a filmmaker, the fact that if you unraveled and pieced together his story in any linear way, you'd realize you were bored.
Syriana's the best movie of the year. For people too stupid to read a newspaper.
8 comments:
you're missing one important point-- moore and gaghan get paid to make compelling films, as long as that sells. gaghan is allowed to manipulate the audience for the same reason moore can, and that is to illicit a strong reaction. it helps movies gain not only credibility, but also some revenue, to take these strong stands. you're right and paralleling their twisting of facts with Fox media and the Bush administration, but the latter isn't paid to do that kinda bullshit.
you're right in paralleling those entities... my points are a lot stronger when they are literate.
I'm not debating that the movies won't make money. I'm protesting manipulative, half-assed filmmaking that puts people in the seats without any true gratification. Granted, the radical opinions in the movie will put people in the seats regardless of the content, but fuck, I bet Cheaper By the Dozen 2 will make a shitload of money also because it's a non-violent alternative to Chronicles of Narnia, whose previews seem to forsake its retardly Christian roots. I don't regret paying to see Fahrenheit 9/11, because as much as I thought the movie was mediocre, it was interesting to hear someone else's opinions on the subject matter. I do regret seeing Syriana, and I saw that for free. No part of Fahrenheit 9/11 wasn't a documentary, but by the same token, no part of Syriana should be misconstrued as a story, because it was terribly muddled during editing to the point where events seemed to have no correlation to one another.
I'll concede a loss at this argument if ANYONE can tell me exactly what George Clooney's character was trying to accomplish with the car at the end of the movie.
Also, I sort of rambled, but mainly my argument is please don't see this movie. It's not "Go See It and Tell Me Your Opinion."
Please, don't give these people your money.
sounds like someone has a grade school crush on gaghan. being mean won't help you score the man meat.
i can't argue with you about syriana because i haven't see that, and i know that's what you want to talk about. i'm merely saying that while telling a coherent story or making a unbiased documentary is nice and all, but they make films to make money, and it seems like gaghan's work is poised to do the same as moore's.
So here're your arguments as I see them.
1. Films are made to make money.
2. You think I lust for politically unbiased films.
3. You think I lust for Stephen Gaghan.
4. I haven't seen the movie in question, but I have an opinion anyway.
Let me point out why you're being an idiot one at a time.
1. Yes, I never argued otherwise. You're dumb.
2. No, I never said that. You're wrong.
3. NO ARGUMENTS HERE!!!!!!!
4. What the fuck are you talking about?
Nice to see the blog up and running. I believe you, but if it gets nominated for Best Picture, I'll have to see it anyway...
Yeah, because Million Dollar Baby was awesome.
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