The End of Liberalism
Syriana (2005; d. Stephen Gaghan, s. George Clooney, Jeffrey Wright, Amanda Peet, Matt Damon). Syriana is a throwback, The Parallax View as filmed by Robert Altman. Or, more glibly, it’s Traffic with oil. This is the kind of pull quote criticism I hate, but there it is. Like Traffic, Syriana employs a cascade of nonoverlapping storylines assembled in what initially feels like a chaotic jumble, until gradually the pieces assemble and culminate in the depiction of an implacable juggernaut of corruption that is destroying us all. It is worthy of note that Gaghan’s two styles of writing apparently vary between this:
And this:
But I digress.
What separates Traffic and Syriana from their 70s predecessors is a certain depressive inexorablity. They are deadly earnest liberal diatribes about the evil of the government/ corporation axis. However, the paranoid thrillers of the 70s, no matter how depressing their endings, carried a certain nervous enthusiasm about them…you at least had the illusion that the main characters might be able to change things, if one or two things had worked out differently. In Syriana, there is no hope. The most earnest of characters either must corrupt themselves and join the system, or die. Or both…the most liberating act of rage against the machine is a suicide bombing.
I wonder if this futility is reflective of the current state of liberal thought. There’s a depressive handwringing quality to much of what the left wing stands for right now. Syriana is built around the notion of a coolly effective conspiracy driving America’s Middle East policy, similar to the accusations leveled at the Bush presidency. As a result, change feels futile. The system cannot be stopped, because it is too multifaceted and too ingrained in the hearts and minds of men (all men, by the way) in power, all working toward the same goal. Why bother. The most you can aspire to is to be like Matt Damon’s character, sad, bereaved, and angrily criticizing from the sidelines, ideally in the most condescending way.
Matt Damon and Alexander Siddig have a pair of amazing exchanges in the film, where Matt Damon (in a strong performance, btw) comments bitterly on how backwards the emirate is in Siddig’s country, and Siddig fires back with gentle sarcasm, illustrating that (a) he already knows everything Damon is saying and (b) Damon’s own poisonous idealism is blinding him to aspects of the bigger picture. And the fact is, these exchanges are not rooted in conspiracy. They are about human weaknesses, like arrogance and greed, and considering these weaknesses tend to inhibit effective conspiracy building (see…any heist movie, ever), in these scenes Syriana puts the lie to itself. The conspiracy is merely dramatically interesting. When the characters spout off on the problems in the Middle East, and it becomes not a conspiracy, but instead a failure of personal accountability.
Liberalism needs the conspiracy to get the base churned up and raise the money, but what is sadly true is that recent liberalism is no more the victim of a right wing conspiracy than the Middle East is. Instead, liberalism is a victim of its own unwillingness to be accountable for its failure to engage in any honest policy debate over the last four years. Paraphrasing Lewis Black, American politics has become a choice between bad ideas, and no ideas.
I love Traffic, and I liked Syriana. The difference, I believe, is that Soderbergh likes leaving some messiness around the edges, whereas Gaghan grows so enamored of the cleverness of his structure and the elegance of his conspiracy, that he ignores the basic humanity of the characters and the ways in which our Middle Eastern policy is a function of that basic humanity. Interestingly, by allowing the story of the Pakistani teenagers to operate outside of the workings of the government and white men, he creates the most resonant tale of how human choices are rooted not only in the will to power, but also in the will to survive. Gaghan directs like Matt Damon’s character pontificates. He’s right, but he is still starving for a slice of humble pie and an eye for the bigger picture.
And considering Gaghan's gotten both Katie Holmes and Anne Hathaway to sex it up in what amounted to direct to video sex thrillers, he may be missing his true talents.
Next Time: On Deadly Ground
And this:
But I digress.What separates Traffic and Syriana from their 70s predecessors is a certain depressive inexorablity. They are deadly earnest liberal diatribes about the evil of the government/ corporation axis. However, the paranoid thrillers of the 70s, no matter how depressing their endings, carried a certain nervous enthusiasm about them…you at least had the illusion that the main characters might be able to change things, if one or two things had worked out differently. In Syriana, there is no hope. The most earnest of characters either must corrupt themselves and join the system, or die. Or both…the most liberating act of rage against the machine is a suicide bombing.
I wonder if this futility is reflective of the current state of liberal thought. There’s a depressive handwringing quality to much of what the left wing stands for right now. Syriana is built around the notion of a coolly effective conspiracy driving America’s Middle East policy, similar to the accusations leveled at the Bush presidency. As a result, change feels futile. The system cannot be stopped, because it is too multifaceted and too ingrained in the hearts and minds of men (all men, by the way) in power, all working toward the same goal. Why bother. The most you can aspire to is to be like Matt Damon’s character, sad, bereaved, and angrily criticizing from the sidelines, ideally in the most condescending way.
Matt Damon and Alexander Siddig have a pair of amazing exchanges in the film, where Matt Damon (in a strong performance, btw) comments bitterly on how backwards the emirate is in Siddig’s country, and Siddig fires back with gentle sarcasm, illustrating that (a) he already knows everything Damon is saying and (b) Damon’s own poisonous idealism is blinding him to aspects of the bigger picture. And the fact is, these exchanges are not rooted in conspiracy. They are about human weaknesses, like arrogance and greed, and considering these weaknesses tend to inhibit effective conspiracy building (see…any heist movie, ever), in these scenes Syriana puts the lie to itself. The conspiracy is merely dramatically interesting. When the characters spout off on the problems in the Middle East, and it becomes not a conspiracy, but instead a failure of personal accountability.
Liberalism needs the conspiracy to get the base churned up and raise the money, but what is sadly true is that recent liberalism is no more the victim of a right wing conspiracy than the Middle East is. Instead, liberalism is a victim of its own unwillingness to be accountable for its failure to engage in any honest policy debate over the last four years. Paraphrasing Lewis Black, American politics has become a choice between bad ideas, and no ideas.
I love Traffic, and I liked Syriana. The difference, I believe, is that Soderbergh likes leaving some messiness around the edges, whereas Gaghan grows so enamored of the cleverness of his structure and the elegance of his conspiracy, that he ignores the basic humanity of the characters and the ways in which our Middle Eastern policy is a function of that basic humanity. Interestingly, by allowing the story of the Pakistani teenagers to operate outside of the workings of the government and white men, he creates the most resonant tale of how human choices are rooted not only in the will to power, but also in the will to survive. Gaghan directs like Matt Damon’s character pontificates. He’s right, but he is still starving for a slice of humble pie and an eye for the bigger picture.
And considering Gaghan's gotten both Katie Holmes and Anne Hathaway to sex it up in what amounted to direct to video sex thrillers, he may be missing his true talents.
Next Time: On Deadly Ground
posted by Jamie at 11:24 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home