Syriana is a collaboration amongst the trinity of heavy-weight, advocates of message movies: Soderbergh, Clooney, and Gaghan (who also wrote "Traffic"). I had barely heard any press on the film and found no strong impression about it except that Clooney was involved or was an actor in it (what a testimony for star castings!). Film marketing is responsible (along with the budget set aside for said marketing) for spreading knowledge of a film's "aura" to the public. As if from Plato's cave, we see impressions or shadows of the terrain of potential films that we might see without knowing anything about most of these films and those impressions are supposed to captivate and intrigue us enough to visit the theater. As I said, "Syriana" had barely cast even a shadow. Indeed, the group of moviegoers behind me were heard parroting my exact sentiments as they had no idea what "Syriana" was even about other than that Clooney and Matt Damon were in it. Wow, just throw out a big net of hooks and surely one of them will catch!
However, all of this had changed for me by chance and relative obscurity when I caught or I should say, my Tivo caught, a Charlie Rose interview w/ Stephen Gaghan (http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/628), who wrote and directed it, that was exceptional for its lucidity and disturbing articulation of the way world decisions are handled by the power elites that run big Oil, governments, law firms, national intelligence agencies, and their ilk. It was the consummate verbal foreplay for the film since it provided the context in which to frame the film's complicated, multi-threaded narrative. But it wasn't so much the actual plot which was concurrently running stories of the involved characters seen from their P.O.V.'s as it was the labrynthine interconnections of Big Oil and political opportunism as played out over the theatre of the international stage. I came armed and knowing into this film while the folks behind me were the polar opposites. Ebert had some interesting remarks about foreknowledge of the film...
Ebert's review suggest that it's best getting lost in this decentered, erudite, jigsaw puzzle of a story since it gives you empathy for some of the characters who themselves can't see the big picture. Even the oil men and the CIA operative, "Bob", who Clooney plays and is modelled after real life Robert Baer, a former covert operative, can't see the whole Byzantine workings. This is partially the point-- that so many players and power struggles are involved that only God could keep track but the realpolitik of the matter is that profit, power, and hording a desperately vanishing natural resource are the common denominators that fuel the entire machine of corruption and myopic undertakings. Ebert also refers to the idea (not his own) of the "hyperlink" movie in which characters and plot is advanced kinetically as we get introduced to other characters or situations. Actually that description doesn't sound that different from a traditional narrative and plot where more is revealed as the plot develops. But like surfing the internet, where one idea is pursued while you end up in completely different and at times surprising side alleys, "hyperlink" movies go from idea to idea to develop possibly larger themes. But in the end, these films usually have a cohesion that is at least an artistic tableaux since the effort of filmmaking is always a contrived proposition with much organizational effort in place.
The depressing reality that representative democracy may not truly be efficacious in a world of power brokers that decide on major policy shifts over lunch at a French hotel is enough to make you never attend another peace march on the capitol but the film is more than that...it's an eye-opener about what's at stake in the next decade as energy becomes an inseparable part of national interest and moves to the forefront of foreign policy decisions. "Peak Oil" adherents should find their eyebrows raised considerably as their analysis gets validated with this film.
Noteworthy is that Bob Baer wrote a book about his experiences in the CIA and reports on the many failings of the intelligence community in his book, "See No Evil" Gaghan speaks with considerable esteem and awe of Bob Baer. Reading Baer's book may also be one of the hyperlink take aways of the film.
