Pascal’s wager: we can’t know whether God exists so we should weigh the benefits of belief. If we assume He does exist and act virtuously, then even if He doesn’t we have lost nothing. However if we assume He doesn’t and act badly then eternal punishment is the penalty. For Pascal a philosophical no-brainer.

This has always struck me as a thoroughly immoral conclusion. If in contrast, one assumes there is no God but behaves as virtuously as possible, the absence of expected next life rewards renders those acts truly virtuous, being good for their own sake not for the rewards they may earn.

What has this to do with Syriana? Well either directly or indirectly the film poses this moral dilemma in two forms. In one plot line two impressionable Muslim young men, their livelihood destroyed with indifference by a corrupt US Oil Corporation deal are manipulated by an Imam into becoming suicide bombers. The second form of the dilemma runs not just through the action of the movie but underlies the assumptions upon which it was made. The belief that power, political, economic and military is inevitably in the hands of corrupt men. Everyone is a victim: the suicide bombers of political and economic circumstances and cynical manipulation of their faith. The American people of the irreducibly corrupt capitalists and politicians using military and economic power in pursuance of their own profit concealed as national interest.

Everything about Syriana invites us to judge it as something more than simply a movie thriller in a political context. From its documentary hand held style to a fractured narrative that conveys more a sense of a dramatically unfolding news story than a plotted work of fiction. And just like a news story we are bewildered by the interlocking events until the various motivations and links are brought together and revealed at the end. Both the political events and perspective of the film’s substance and its cinematic form, renders the audience passive. We can’t change the world as depicted or understand the film as shown, until its meaning is revealed not explained, for dramatic and emotional effect at the end.

This theme of crude liberal paranoia harms most of all, rational balanced real liberal principles. Hardly I think George Clooney’s aim. It is ironic that having made a superb film that shows how in an actual case public paranoia can be induced to serve illiberal politics (Good Night And Good Luck), he should make a film which itself can be argued to have the same tendency. No one film has that power but cumulatively the ‘Hollywoodisation’ of politics can have a harmful effect. This year alone we have had The Constant Gardner where international pharmaceutical companies are irredeemably cynical and indifferent to using human guinea pigs in pursuit of profit; Lords of War (arms trade rules OK); and Munich, The New World and Jarhead, all systematically blurring the distinction between fact and fiction. Let alone paranoid sci-fi like War of The Worlds.

Syriana would be a much more entertaining film if it had dropped its pretensions, let the audience in on a more disciplined and coherent narrative and spent time on developing characters we might care about rather than stereotyped pieces on a phoney political chessboard. Some of the characterisation is crass bordering on the racist: for example the tall elegantly suited democratic Prince Nasir has a PhD from Oxford and studied in America whereas his sleazy, pool-playing brother isn’t fit to run a brothel. And guess which one enjoys American support? The almost literal road to Damascus conversion of Matt Damon from razor-sharp oil analyst power broker to chastened family man is about as profound as making corrugated cardboard from the flat kind. The story line concerning the death of his son, is just indecently rushed, totally redundant and pointless. As is Amanda Peet’s role as his wife.

I can just about discern a legitimate liberal motivation behind this film but it needs a bit of good will. As a straightforward thriller it is too confusingly convoluted to sustain more than occasional suspense and tension. As an attempt to grapple with serious moral and political problems it is simply not up to it. Its moral position is truth-be-told not very moral at all. We are invited to identify with Clooney’s CIA man Bob Barnes in this instance because they cut him free to take the rap, yet it is clear that when he was in favour in his day job – eliminating the odd human being in the service of his country was AOK.

I am at least as cynical as the next person about the aggressive ambition of some politicians, greed and self-importance of corporate leaders, and the flexible morality of many in the secret services. But it is naïve, foolish and self-defeating not to accept that not everyone is corrupt. That honourable people exist in these areas and may be responsive to moral argument. Also we must take seriously the fact that key dishonourable figures of power are intelligent (with one notable exception), rigorously well organised and tenaciously entrenched. They know how to control the flow of information and manipulate its impact – including movies. To the real vested interests in corporate America, government and private, the Dick Cheney’s of this world, Syriana is simple-minded and no kind of threat. Why, ask them nicely and I bet they’ll even invest in such ineffective challenges, because they don’t care where the profit comes from and paranoid liberals’ money is as good as anyone else’s and more fun to take. Especially as these cynical paranoid victims can be induced to use such movies as displacement activity for actually getting organised, getting elected and then really taking them on.


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Gaghan - I beg his pardon

Z

Zettel

Pretty much with you. I entered the cinema with a confused collection of ideas about american involvement in the middle east and corruption in high places and left the cinema with... a confused collection of ideas about american involvement in the middle east and corruption in high places...

It did hold my attention though.

By all accounts the film got made as the result of a deal between Warners and Damon/Clooney. The studio agreed to make Syriana if the actors agreed to sign up for Oceans 12. Warners got their profits out of Syriana alright!

Pete

I don't even like two-centre holidays, so being whisked about from Beirut to Houston, then nack to the Gulf and on to Marbella was all too much, and it took at least half an hour to get used to all the different people in each location - I never did work out some of the relationships and forgot which emir the CIA were supporting, and which they were against.

Two scenes I did like were the swimming pool incident, where there was an actual build-up of suspense by careful preparation for the tragic event, and it was easy to empathise with the characters - we'd had time to get to know them. The other engaging scene was the torture sequence, not just because I don't like that smarmy George Clooney. The acting of the torturer was good,especially when he looked at the fleshy fingernail he'd just pulled and said 'Eeuw, that's disgusting!' He was British playing an Arab- why do villains in American films these days all have to be non-US and were they trying to make a point about the cultural diversity of torturers, ie it's not always Americans? They carefully kept the camera away from George's face most of the time because he can do handsome but he can't do extremely pained. In my view this is a shortcoming in an actor, but the Oscar panel don't agree. Mybe it was a reward for being in so many US-endorsing crap films this year.

It was a shame the final chase lacked suspense because you knew the American could take out whoever they wanted - their favourite choice of killing method, well away from the action, and too bad about the 'collateral damage'.

Sheila

Pete

Thanks for the comment and the background. It does rather support the idea that American corporations will do anything for profit, even fund films that attack corporate abuse of power. There seems to have developed over the years in the US a situation where any event however awful, e.g. tooled-up schoolchildren massacring fellow students etc etc because it has an emotional impact on people, can be used as a kind of carrying mechanism for a profitable product. Some people are beginning ot think of ways to prevent this exploitation. In a small way: my 21 year-old son has been a passionate skateboarder for about 10 years. He and his skateboarding friends hate the way that SB has become an advertising image. They even disapproved of its inclusion in the Olympics. There is a good instinct here. I will guarantee there are lot of top corporate executives sitting round a table somehwere trying to find ways to divert a profit stream from the Fair Trade movement. Even morality sells!

Sheila I agree the scene with the pool was tense - trouble is I don't see that the hell it had to do with anything else. Syriana troubles me because I want to feel my respect for Clooney with GNAGL is not just gullibility. The work stands on its own but I cant help but care whether motivation is honest.

Regards

Z

I'm afraid I'm more cynical, and I decided the message of the pool incident was 'These stupid Arabs can't handle sophisticated electrics, so it's best not to let them have anything like that - it could get an American killed.' To underline the point there was that scene before with the wheel-chair guy (racist and disablist in one go -nice!)- the patriarch Amr (used to be Emir)- boasting about his split-screen surveillance like a boy with a train set, so it was a pay-off to that. It also echoed the incident of the weapon getting into the wrong hands , although I agree the logic was a bit fuzzy since , it was George who was selling the weapons- still they both made the mistake of trying to negotiate with the bxxxxxd's instead of just shooting them in the first place. At least, that is the way I understood the subtext. That speech Mattt Damon ,made describing American's view of the Arabs was also pertinent - something about them still running around chopping each other's heads off. The incident was also a McGuffin to have the Amr make amends to Matt Damon so he stayed on and was present in the carcade to ratchet up the tension, the filmmakers'logic being if it was only Arabs under threat it wouldn't matter so much. That's why they allowed Matt to switch to another car at the last minute.George was expendable by then.Maybe that's why he got the Oscar. Matt had to do twice as much acting. I thought he did very well, and I would have given it to him, if anybody.

It's pointless looking at Hollywood films for meanings outside their function as social myths for consumers, moneyspinners for the studio bosses. There is a 'release valve' theory about films which is relevant to GNAGL and any number of Hollywood films where one man stands up and speaks out against some perceived current evil in society. It allows the audience to think 'Oh good, I can endorse the sentimetns, that's that dealt with then, no need for me to worry about it'. Typically,though, people (men) don't stand up and speak out; they squad up behind whoever seems to be holding the conch at the time and start saluting. The weaselly bunch that won't stand up to Blair is a home-grown example. Hitler's 'only obeying orders' group is another!


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sentiment

Sorry Sheila but you appear to be expressing the same totally generalised cynicism I was trying to attack in the approach in Syriana.

Your last paragraph is arbitrary, indiscrimately cynical and I'm afraid arrogant, not to mention sexist, in ways that frankly depress me. Let alone the shock. No not all Hollywood films are social myths - though many are. And not all are shallow escapism either. No it is not pointless, nor indeed fruitless, looking for not merely morally and politically well-intentioned films, but in fact one can find films that succeed in both.

'Hollywood' is an industry structure - economic, artistic etc etc. Not an entity that formulates intentions good or bad. Honourable men and women have managed to affect and move popular opinion in beneficial ways from within Hollywood just as much of the mindless pap and profit hungry tripe has failed us all. Did Kate Hepburn never shift a few social attitudes: Sydney Poitier not with dignity enhance the self-respect and identity of African Americans? To just dismiss it all as pointless and without artistic merit or social significance induces just the indulgent kind of victimhood and consequent sense of passivity and hopelpessness that I was trying to question.

When women like Rosa Parks or Maya Angelou, or Buffy Sainte Marie stood up and spoke out -did the women's (and men's) support for them amount to 'squadding up' or do only men have such shallow, cowardly deficiencies? Zoologically I believe even weasels come in two sexes. I hate this kind of gender reductionism - but if I had to name which of the Iraq dissenters in the cabinet Robin Cook or Claire Short, was the most decisive, immediately and consistently honourable in their opposition - it wouldn't be Ms Short, even though I am grateful that she did eventually resign. The toady's and sycophants and 'yes-people'(sic) in the cabinet are by no means exclusively male.

Honour, integrity, morality and courage is not and must never be allowed to be thought of as a gender issue. Victimhood and passivity are the enemies and these are disastrous social and political attitudes to which both men and women are prey.

Neither Blair nor Bush could have got elected without commanding massive support among women as well as men voters. And succumbing to the madness that was Hitler and the Third Reich was not an exclusively male phenomenon either. Masculine perhaps - but that is a much deeper debate - for women have some share in the responsibility of the prevailing social and moral perception of what masculinity should be. If we aren't in this together - we really are nowhere.

With respect but a little sadness

Zettel



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Weather Report

Hurricane - imminent.

And there's me thinking it was all the fellas starting wars and killing and raping, not to to mention messing up the infrastructure. Claire Short had her wobbles but they hardly constitute an argument that women share equal blame for all this mayhem. It may not be PC to point out the vast majority of evil-doing is down to men - and don't get me started on 'ordinary' crime that makes life at the domestic and street level so hazardous for women and children- but I thought I was stating the bleedin' (!) obvious.

Honour, morality, courage, etc have all been deployed as excuses for the most execrable behaviour, as I am sure you know. Dulce et Decorum Est.. etc

On a more moderate note, I think there probably is some good in Hollywood products if one looks hard enough - I think the musicals have an attractive brashness. As slick entertainment they are fine, and filmmakers have a wealth of expertise and back catalogue to draw on.

Unfortunately my overwhelming impression of the 'morality' is of people slugging it out to prove who's right. It's an impression based on a lot of experience - my parents took me to the cinema twice a week in pre-TV days, so I must have seen all the popular releases in the late forties and fifties. Admittedly at that time the most popular genres were war, westerns and gangster pics, but I don't think Hollywood has got less violent - you just don't have to pack muscle to press a button or deliver a suitcase, as demnstrated in Syriana.

Maybe one day I'll realise that slugging it out constitutes some kind of admirable moral standpoint, but until then, sad or not, I remain, sincerely yours, obstinately cynical about Hollywood products.

Sheila

Sheila

Tempting though it is – and important – this is probably not the place for a long debate about sexism or the genetic evil of men. But is not every rapist, wife-beater, child-abuser, some mother’s son? Did the Mrs’ Bandaranaike, Meir, Thatcher, Ceauchesku have any trouble initiating or supporting repression, killing and war? Is Condoleeza a pacifist pussycat? Does anyone doubt Hillary would start a war if she thought it necessary? Is the burgeoning ‘laddette’ culture an illusion? Did the girl accompanying the animals (male of course) who recently attacked an innocent bystander, who laughed at him as she helped to kick him to death, suffer a sex-change at the moment of impact of foot to head?

I do not of course cite these cases to assert equality of blame. In the case of mothers, certainly not to blame whatever it is that we are systematically doing wrong with raising boys, entirely on them. But women are involved surely? The cynical generalisations I challenged in your comments about Syriana seem to be repeated here about gender. And the disastrous consequences are the same – all women are victims and all men make them so. This is not far from - all Muslims are fundamentalists and/or terrorists. The sex/gender issue is a human problem, which cannot be improved or solved unilaterally. And don’t shoot yourself logically through the foot. Evil is a moral concept to do with intentional, considered, chosen action. If you talk as if men’s ‘evil’ is genetically based then that is a causal biological issue and by definition as we cannot choose our genetic make-up nor therefore, as a logical consequence, can we the behaviour that deterministically generates.

So as not to widen this further let’s just talk about movies. Jane Campion’s movie In The Cut is in my view not only underrated as a movie but it certainly looks at the sex/gender issue with an honesty that most films lack. A man could not have made this movie – because he would have been pilloried for it. But the questions it poses, albeit in a thriller format are acute and challenging – as much to women as men. I saw little support for this movie from women in the press, perhaps because Meg Ryan committed the non-PC sin of getting her kit off. Big deal. Maybe the issues Jane raised were a little too incisive for women to feel comfortable with.

I cherish director’s like Nicole Kassel who managed to make a deeply moving and sensitive film in The Woodsman. This was about the gut-wrenching subject of paedophilia and managed, without for a moment condoning or trivialising, to be both honest and compassionate about and towards human distress which included the Kevin Bacon character himself. Or again Sophia Coppola who created in Lost in Translation a credible relationship of mutual sensitivity and respect not merely between a man and a woman but more acutely, one with a wide age difference. Just Hollywood pap? Not on your life.

I have tried to say something about the disturbing issues concerning maleness and masculinity in films like Jarhead and Lords of War. And in a very rich, sensitive way Brokeback Mountain raises deep issues of sexuality and gender. Are we going to reach a situation where women will regard only gay men as good men? Where the deep issues of heterosexuality are neutralised and therefore avoided?

I agree with much of what you say. For instance I believe the adversarial system that underlies our legal and Parliamentary system is beginning to fail us. But I say again, if violence, including rape is reduced simply to the genetic ‘evil’ of men, then we are all victims and irreducibly passive in the face of something we cannot change. Which brings me full circle to the fundamental argument I was trying to raise in the Syriana review. Just change "If we assume all politicians and businessmen are corrupt" to "If we assume all men are genetically evil" and you have much the same problem posed.

Sorry Sheila but if you consider condescendingly confining any value in all Hollywood films, to slick, escapist musicals to be ‘moderate’ I’d hate to see you immoderate. And you do a profound disservice to some great writers, directors, actors etc etc many of them women. Though they may have had to work within an industry and entertain people, hundreds of talented and determined people have successfully pursued over decades, a seriousness of purpose and challenge to social and political mores that is to be respected and cherished.

The logical outcome in politics of reducing complex issues to simplistic, unqualified generalisations is G W Bush.

A discussion for serious people. So with respect, Thanks.

Zettel

When women do start wars and are recruited in numbers to fight them, I will revise my views. I base my opinions on what I see as current rather than speculate about what might happen. Frankly, I don't think that scenario is likely.

The same goes for street crime and domestic violence. Again, you can point to the odd female example.I agree it is a worrying that some younger women are imitating male patterns of behaviour.

As for the question of patterns of child-rearing, wider social norms and expectations have a much bigger effect than mothers.It is sad to see a boy, aged two to three years old, begin to define himself as male and start to identify with role models, of which there is no shortage in the media.

As I said, I think some Hollywood films are not as offensive as others. We will have to agree to differ in our estimation of the quality in general just as we seem to disagree about the state of the world.

Incidentally, there is a solution which occurs to those of us who think men are the cause of the world's ills. (When I say 'the cause of', it's not the same as 'to blame for'.) There may very well be a 'safe' level of males in society, just as there are 'safe' levels of radiation. I think it's a good analogy because just enough radiation can be beneficial, but too much is toxic, and on the whole we have too much. We now have the possibility of gender determination, and could discover the 'safe' level, which is obviously well below the 50% mark, but it seems unlikely the idea will not be developed soon. One day, I hope, a government will realise the economic savings to be made by adopting a plan of this kind.

Anyway, enough of Utopian dreams, and to return to the film under discussion.

What is your explanation for the swimming pool incident in 'Syriana'? You say you 'can't think what the hell it had to do with anything else' but you must assume it was in there for a reason. The film has been described, by the 'Time Out' critic, for instance, as 'confusing' and I assumed this was because of the constant changes in location, but I can see that without explaining the significance of certain episodes, it must be morally confusing as well. I like to pay the director the respect of thinking he knows what he is doing, even if I don't like the message.My approach is to try to fit the parts into the whole, to see it as a pattern - much as I would do with fiction. My interpretation may be wrong, but I'm perfectly willing to listen to an alternative one. Similarly with the switch of cars at the end. Why was this done? I have explained why I think it was done, but there may be another explanation.

Some people think that it is pointless to try to get any meaning at all from Hollywood films - the idea is just enjoy the special effects and the stars. Maybe they are right.

Sheila

Sheila and Zettel - you guys are great! This is the kind of incisive, intelligent, witty debate that we just don't see in the newspapers. Plus the off-the-cuff observations - I love Sheila's comment about Clooney being able to do handsome but not deeply pained.

But Zettel, are you sure Brokeback Mountain is so great? A friend of mine felt that unlike the Proulx story (and after the first joyous half hour), the film sends out a deeply discouraging message, re. homosexuality.

By the way, I also think your review of 'Walk the Line' is brilliant.

Frances

Glad you are enjoying this, Frances. I forget there are other people reading it.

I have really enjoyed debating with such a formidable opponent as Zettel. You will have noticed his reviewing approach is much more moderate, upbeat and considered than mine. I am too tempted to entertain or provoke, and there is no easier way than by writing 'knocking copy'.

You will be pleased - or sorry - to hear I won't be crossing swords with Zettel on 'Walk the Line' because I haven't had chance to see it and I think it's gone off the screens now.

It's a shame because it's a genre I like. One of my favourite films is 'Cabaret'. Now there's a film based on a great script by Christopher Isherwood. That's how I like my political messages delivered on film - with wit and irony and music. That was in the days of quality Oscars, not like this years.

I agree about the homophobic tendency in 'Brokeback Mountain', and think it can be traced to Ang Lee's views on the importance of marriage and community. I make this assumption because he is Chinese - Tawanese - but I haven't read the original story, which may well just reflect social reality at the time.

Anyway, my next review will probably be of some an obscure French film as I'm going to be watching a prelease at a study seminar next week and will be required to write about it afterwards. I'm quite pleased it's a French film that's been chosen as I much prefer foreign movies.

The director is Francois Ozon and I've seen only one of his films before - '8 Women'. It had all these aging French actresses holed up in a country house, and it didn't make a great impression on me. He hasn't made many, and the one we'll see is the last of a trilogy, apparently, so I'm going to Prime Time Video to see if I can hire the others on DVD.

I see you write children's fiction. Do you see children's films?

Sheila

Hi Sheila, yes I've seen a couple of Harry Potters and Finding Nemo, but not much else recently. Looking forward to your French film review!

F

Hey Guys...er gals

I once defined a philosopher as someone who spends his life with his head up his arse wondering why it has gone dark. Given the length of some of my responses here I'm beginning to fit the description. Though your comment was very welcome and encouraging Frances.

So quickies. Brokeback Mountain The Annie Proulx story is 33 pages long and based upon the real murder of a cowboy in Wyoming for being gay. Of course the context of the movie is homophobic...and then some. That's the point. But the film demonstrably isn't. (Just as Fred Friendly tapping Ed Murrow's leg to cue him in is about as homo-erotic as microwaved sprouts).

Syriana - If I have to guess about the pool scene Sheila I'd say killing a kid was supposed to be a way of making Damon's Oil mover and shaker realise the important things in his life, satisfy the plot line to get his wife out of the way and supposedly underpin a laughably unconvincing reconciliation. More likely the whole scene was just there to set up the line "that's $100 million for one kid - how much for a second?"

By the way I find the 5th paragraph of your reply the most extraordinary and depressing few sentences I've read on Writewords.

Happy filmgoing gals. I'm off to see the Wizard...the wonderful Wizard of Oz. Make 'em laugh make 'em laugh......


Zettel

I've just logged to post my review of 'The Proposition', seen at my local cineworld yesterday afternoon.

As I liked it very much, you can read it without further fear of being plunged into depression - I hope.

Came home and watched Francois Ozon's 'Under the Sand' (2000) on rented VHS and thought that was superb, too, but as it centred on Charlotte Rampling coming to terms with her husband's death, it was hardly cheerful. Still, you might need an antidote to 'The Wizard'.

Sheila