Syriana

—1. Overview
—2. Reviews and Blogs
—3. Cast and Crew
—4. Photo Pages
—5. Trailers, Clips, DVDs, Books, Soundtrack
—6. Posters (George Clooney)
—7. Production Notes (pdf)
—8. Spiritual Connections
—9. Presentation Downloads

At a press Q&A about Syriana, George Clooney said, “We’re [Hollywood] not good at supplying answers. We’re pretty good, at time, at raising debate and opening questions up.�

Syriana is definitely not about answers. It looks at the interaction of oil and espionage and business and oil and geopolitics and oil and terrorism and domestic politics and oil. The film is a fictionalized account based on Robert Baer’s memoir as a CIA operative in the Middle East, See No Evil. The film looks at a very complex problem. It doesn’t try to simplify it. It sets it out in all its complexity to tease our minds into serious consideration of the many factors that make up this ongoing problem in our world. In the end, things are not neatly brought together.

Most viewers will leave the theater a bit confused. The film is made up of several plotlines, some of which intertwine or bump up against each other. Two oil companies are seeking to merge, after the smaller one was awarded a contract to produce oil in Kazakhstan. There may be legal problems with the merger and Bennett Holiday is assigned the task of finding the problems and fixing them so that the merger can go through. Oil broker Bryan Woodman, working out of Geneva, becomes involved with Prince Nasir Al-Subaai who is in a struggle younger brother over who will succeed their aging father as Emir. Nasir wants to westernize and democratize his country, which would not be beneficial to Western oil interests. Meanwhile, CIA operative Bob Barnes is assigned to get rid of Nasir, but botches the job, leading his CIA handler to distance themselves from him.

Everything that goes on revolves around the West’s appetite for oil and the money that can be made off of it. In time, scapegoats are found and obstacles are eliminated (with extreme prejudice) so that the business of bringing us oil can go on unimpeded. But through it all, we are never quite clear who is working for whom or what goals each person is seeking. The confusion is intentional on the part of the filmmakers. They don’t so much give us a complete story as a collage that gives us a taste of the convolution of issues that contribute to the problems in the Middle East.

In a world where accusations are made that our nation has gone to war over oil (regardless of whether the accusations are true or not), it is clear that this issue needs to be discussed. Many people are willing to accept easy, simple answers. H. L. Mencken wrote, “For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.� That maxim certainly applies here. It is easy to blame the price of gas or the war in Iraq on big oil companies and their influence in government. There could well be a generous portion of truth in that idea. But there is much more going on that also needs to be understood. Syriana, through the way it shows us small pieces of the puzzle, encourages us to seek even more pieces to fill in the gaps and in so doing have a more accurate understanding of this complex question.

At one point, when Holiday has created one of the scapegoats to clear the way for the merger, the man who will be taking the fall, Danny Daulton has a great soliloquy about the importance of corruption:

Corruption is government intrusion in the market efficiencies in the form of regulation. That’s Milton Friedman. He got a goddamn Nobel Prize. We have laws against it precisely so we can get away with it. Corruption is our protection. Corruption keeps us safe and warm. Corruption is why you and I are prancing around in here instead of fighting over scraps of meat out in the street. Corruption … is why we win.

It is reminiscent of the “Greed is good� speech in Wall Street. It seeks to rationalize that which we know is wrong, yet which we assume goes on all the time. We turn a blind eye to the corruption of business or government until it is convenient to expose and condemn it.

The irony in that scene is that corruption plays a part in every storyline. It isn’t just the way business is done. It is involved in the governmental investigation and the scapegoating of some to clear the way for the merger. The CIA is corrupt in its dealings with Barnes. There is corruption in the internal politics of the Emirate. Perhaps Daulton is right that corruption is integral to the way the world operates. What are we to make of such an assertion?

That is only one of the questions that Syriana opens for us. There are many more besides. But don’t go looking for answers – or even for a complete picture. This is not “dumbed down� movie making. It expects viewers to be willing to think about what they are watching and continue thinking long after they leave the theater.

—Overview
—Reviews and Blogs