Argo

Argo – Ben Affleck’s thriller about an improbable attempt to extricate six Americans from Khomeini’s Iran is well-designed and, certainly, suspenseful. Even though the outcome is never in doubt, the final half-hour of the picture is almost unpleasantly exciting. The film taps anxieties that afflict most people in busy airports, particularly those abroad – the fundamental terror is of missing a plane and navigating hostile TSA officials. Anyone who has been shaken-down at airport security will be enthralled by this picture and, probably, frightened. Of course, the stakes are much greater in Argo (public beheading), but just about everyone will be able to sympathize with the plight of stranded foreigners racing to catch a plane. The picture is based on a true story, declassified in 1997, about a CIA agent who went to Teheran in 1980 to escort six terrified American embassy workers from the home of the Canadian ambassador where they were “holed up.” The opening sequences establish the situation with precision and the scenes of the mobs attacking the embassy are documentary-like and effectively scary. I can’t fault this picture as an exceptionally gripping entertainment and, probably, everyone should see this picture –it’s a lot of fun. But I have several moral reservations. First, the film seems designed to gin-up hatred against the Iranians and, of course, the villains are stereotypical bearded Islamic fundamentalists with guns – or worse, chador-wearing gun molls. At this moment in history, I’m not sure that it is beneficial to stir up such strong feelings against Iran and its hapless inhabitants. The film seems aware of this problem and goes to ludicrous efforts to establish moral equivalency between certain aspects of American history and the bad guys in Teheran. This is also a bad strategy – a film like this needs savage villains and, certainly, American pictures in World War II were unconcerned with the motivations of the enemy. On the other hand, we have developed morally since the nineteen-forties and there are aspects of this film that are distasteful. For instance, the embassy is filled with Iranians desperately applying for American visas – these people are all doomed when the mob breaks into the compound. But the film doesn’t follow their fates, and the picture seems to simply forget about them; presumably more focus on these people would distract from the Hollywood theatrics that comprise most of the picture. Second, the film is in the difficult rhetorical position of promoting a notion of the CIA as heroic and ingenious. We know the CIA and its mischief largely caused the problem in Iran by deposing the lawfully elected leader of that nation and inserting the wretched Shah. We also know that the CIA couldn’t find Bin Laden for ten years and, generally speaking, couldn’t find its ass with a map. The CIA didn’t predict the Iranian revolution or the fall of the Berlin Wall or 9/11 – it’s pretty clear that the agency is filled with hopeless idiots and so it’s disconcerting to see CIA agents as heroes. Another problem is that the best elements of the story – the fake Hollywood production and the movie industry denizens associated with it – take place in LA. The stuff in Teheran is certainly exciting, but the scenes with John Goodman and Alan Arkin in Hollywood are not only exciting but very funny. The film is heavily weighted to derring-do in Teheran and, although, this succeeds as a strategy for inducing suspense, the best, and most interesting parts, of the film are in LA and seem too short. (This criticism demonstrates the general strength of the picture; it is rare to criticize a movie for being too short). Lastly, the picture is obviously a vanity-film for Ben Affleck and this is somewhat discouraging. Affleck casts homely-looking “real” people, unknown actors, to play the six embattled embassy staff workers; the other principal actors in the film are all people like John Goodman and Alan Arkin and Philip Baker Hall, clearly not “matinee-idols”. Ben Affleck is a movie star and looks like a movie star and the film lingers on his handsome features and perfectly white even teeth for about 30% of the shots. Almost all of the movie is shot in close-up, another tendency in films that I deplore – it makes a wide-screen movie look like something made for HBO. Affleck is a good director and he cuts the film with efficiency and clarity – but the endless close-ups, most of them showing Affleck, are wearing and, ultimately, a wee bit monotonous. The curious thing is that Affleck unwittingly reveals his vanity in the ending credit epilogue (which you must stay to see – it features a commentary by Jimmy Carter): Affleck proudly shows us the real people involved in the story next to images of them as portrayed in the movie. For the most part, the resemblances are uncanny (and pointless since it doesn’t matter that the actor or actress looks very much like some unknown person). But, finally, we see a picture of the true Antonio Mendez, the character Affleck is playing. The guy is very obviously Hispanic with a big Zapata-style moustache, exceedingly ethnic in appearance – he looks nothing like Affleck. So we are left with the suspicion that the film was conceived as a starring vehicle for Affleck, hence the hundreds of big close-ups. This is a very entertaining film, notwithstanding my cavils, and I recommend it.