Review: Argo

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the movie, Argo, is how tight and taut the film really is. I remember people feeling that Ben Afleck had been fleeced when he wasn’t nominated for best director this year, and, after having watched the movie, I’d have to agree. The movie is literally stomach churning. From the moment that the walls of the embassy are scaled at the U.S. embassy in Iran it’s hard not to put yourself in the shoes of the six employees who escaped before the mob arrived. From that first scene your stomach is tying itself in all sorts of knots, trying to imagine what that was like.

The majority of the movie continues in this vein. The first portion of the film does have the fake Hollywood movie portion, which was part of the CIA mission. Affleck does a masterful job of skewering Hollywood, showing its essential silliness with zingy one liners delivered by comedic greats like Alan Arkin like, “So let me get this straight. You want to come in here and walk around like a big shot without doing anything. (Pause) You’ll fit right in.” These scenes are juxtaposed with scenes from Iran of the violence that followed the ouster of the Shah, which creates an interesting dynamic of internal guilt about the laughter, the essential unseriousness of the plot when measured against the bodies hanging suspended from cranes.

I suppose I avoided talking about the first and extremely interesting history lesson that the movie begins with, an all too familiar one in the U.S. The movie talks about the U.S. role in the death of the previous leader of Iran, and its help in the installation of the murderous and rich Shah. The movie paints a bleak picture of U.S. foreign policy without moralizing over its necessity, or idiocy. The facts are merely presented as available to the viewer. And, because of this affectlessness, the viewer is able to freely root for the six ambassadors to escape from Iran without feeling that they are somehow sanctioning the evil done in the country by the U.S. It seems to me that this was either a stroke of genius or a bit cowardly. I know not which.

What it winds up being as a film is pretty excellent. Affleck has a nice eye for detail, and the audience is in a near constant state of emotional distress over whether a stamp will be applied to a plane ticket, whether a phone call will be answered or whether a house keeper will betray the six U.S. citizens hiding in the Canadian embassy. What’s impressive about the film is how much drama is generated without anything particularly scary or violent happening to the people involved.

The movie has a host of interesting elements, poor children trying to reconstruct pictures of every employee from shredded paper, to see if anyone is missing. The house keeper possibly betraying them, the necessity that each of the six people learn their cover story in order to escape the country.  And Affleck manages to make all these moving parts work so well together that you’re tempted to think the man would probably make a damn fine clock if he set his mind to it.

Personally, after watching the movie, the craft and care of all these seemingly small moments in life ramped up in intensity by the direction, coupled with the sharp dialogue and occasional wit makes Argo one of the best directed movies that I’ve seen in a while. It seems rather a shame that he didn’t at least get nominated.

Of course, though I’m not equally surprised by its win, Argo is not the movie that I would have voted for as Best Picture. The movie is so taut, so bound up in actual events, (special shout out for keeping the movie at a tight two hours as well) that it never left the characters any room to breathe. The closest that we get to a touching human moment is when agent, Mendez, played by Affleck, returns home to find his wife and son. However, it’s pretty clear by that point in the movie that the familial relationship is not the show. It’s more of a small cherry on top of an already delicious sundae.

I’ll admit that my bias against Argo may just be one of personal proclivity. I have a degree in writing and think that the novel is a superior form at accessing other human beings consciousness, which is what really great art, is able to do. The problem with Argo, (I’m not really arguing that it’s much of a problem for the movie, which is a very good and taut thriller, but rather a problem if it’s the best our country has to offer in this particular art form. I hope the distinction is somewhat clear. It’s fine as it is, I suppose, probably worthy of a nominee for its technical skill, just not a win) is that we are never allowed access to the six people’s consciousness. We have a brief scene where Mendez is questioned by one of the escapees, but it is quieted rather quickly.

I’m partial to the zany decomposition of friendships that happens in a movie like Suicide Kings than I am in everyone moving around to the beat of some internal drum of history. I don’t mind history lessons. In fact, if you know enough of them you can sound intelligent at parties. However, the best art is (at least in my mind) is about that access to other people’s minds. It’s one of the few ways , at least for me, which you can use from here on out for anything I say, that I am able to feel a little bit less lonely in the world, a bit less crazy. It is this kind of access that often reassures me that I am not alone in being conflicted, strange, at odds with myself, capable of doing good or evil, sometimes seemingly on a whim. I don’t know that Argo had enough space for any of that to happen. The parameters of the story were already preordained. It’s pretty much a very effective action-suspense movie, a genre that doesn’t rely too heavily on character studies. Perhaps asking a movie to be War and Peace is a bit too much.

The real issue, if I haven’t stated it well enough above, is that the characters feel exactly as I’d feel in that situation. They do nothing that surprised me. They are too busy being carried along by events to become flesh and blood as I’m sure the real captives were. Because we lack the access to their direct thoughts, they become pawns moved on a chess board rather than people. Not that the board isn’t beautiful, the scene at the bazaar where they are almost taken by a mob is full of stomach churning dread coupled with tons of human identification, as in, that would scare the shi- out of me as well. It reminds me, to extend the metaphor, of the chess set that my uncle always had set up at his house, each piece hand-crafted and individually painted. And yet, the real beauty of the regal queen didn’t come out when she was standing on the board, glaring at the back of a pawn. No, the beauty came in the movement.  

I don’t know what reviewing is for. However, this is a movie worth seeing. It’s a very good piece of film making combined with a historical lesson that may or may not lead to you arguing with your significant other until 1 A.M. about U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War. I think Mr. Affleck deserved to be nominated for Best Director, or maybe even win the award.  At the end of the day he’s made a very good film, gotten it tied together with a nice script and even has the flourish of it being based on a true story.  It’s a very good movie.