Chekhov’s Mistess

Everything is connected: Syriana

Gordon Gecko, Investment Banker (Wall Street, 1987)

“The point is ladies and gentlemen that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of it’s forms – greed for life, for money, knowledge – has marked the upward surge of mankind and greed – you mark my words – will not only save Teldar Paper but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA. Thank you.”

Danny Dalton, oil executive, member of the “Committee to Liberate Iran” (Syriana, 2005)

“… Corruption charges. Corruption? Corruption ain’t nothing more than government intrusion into 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 is what keeps us safe and warm. Corruption is why you and I are prancing around here instead of fighting each other for scraps of meat out in the streets. Corruption … is how we win.”

My guess is that just about everyone who sees Syriana makes the connection between these two speeches. It’s unfortunate really, because “greed is good” instantly comes to mind when watching Dalton’s tirade and it’s distracting. He (Tim Blake Nelson as Danny Dalton) physically comes off more like Ross Perot, but he’s channeling Gordon Gecko with the unfortunate message here that nothing ever changes. With this speech, mid-way through, Syriana lays its thesis down for all to see, just in case we don’t get it.

Now, It sounds like I didn’t like the movie, but I did enjoy it. I was caught up in its world of cowboys and indians (oops, oil executives and Arabs), lawyers and CIA operatives, explosives and boardroom bombs. The film, like a Dos Passos novel, keeps us off balance with frenetic scene changes so fleeting that it takes us a while to get to know our characters and start to piece together the puzzle, and just as we do, the denouement unwinds into its inevitable conclusion, bringing them all together. There are five story-lines throughout the film: an Arab monarch and his two son’s desire for the throne; an aging CIA agent who has never had a desk job; a Pakistani migrant worker thrust out of work by forces beyond his comprehension; an American energy analyst who understands more about oil than anything else; and a merger of two major American oil companies centering around the actions of a lawyer representing one of the firms. Also like a Dos Passos novel, these stories have no heroes.

This is where we get into the real connection between Wall Street and Syriana. Both films are thematically about the failure and betrayal of patriarchy. The relationship between Bud and his father and Gordon Gecko as his surrogate father was a central tension in Wall Street with all female roles sidelined, but Syriana explores that theme thoroughly, again with all female roles sidelined.

Every significant relationship in the film takes on the mantle of a father-son relationship and with every one of those we see failure or betrayal to one degree or another. Bryan Woodman (Matt Damon) tragically loses his son and although it would seem he was a good dad, he parlays the death of his son into the opportunity of a lifetime, “It’s like someone dropped a giant atm on our front lawn,” he says.

George Clooney’s role as CIA agent Bob Barnes, whose real name no one knows, is the centerpiece of the film and the fulcrum for two patriarchal failures. He clearly doesn’t know his son and can’t even take his eyes off of some (off-screen) teenage girl while paying a brief visit. His son in turn, doesn’t know anything about his father’s life and is not very happy about it: “Tell me again what mom does that we have to live in Islamabad,” he asks in exasperation. “She’s a secretary,” Bob answers dryly.

We never see Bob’s wife, who shares his profession, and its clear that the CIA is his real family, until they disown him. Bob’s CIA handler, Fred Franks (Tom McCarthy), gives him the implicit word of abandonment – “goodbye Bob” – on the front lawn of his non-descript, government worker home with his family, who may not know his profession either, peeking through the crack of the door in the background. Bob can take a lot of punishment, some of which we witness, but he is asea without his CIA and takes desperate measures that, by result, we can imagine he would not have otherwise.

The most blatant patriarchal betrayal is the Emir’s selection of his second-in-line son over his well educated and idealistic elder Prince for the throne. The Emir is a puppet to the high-powered hardball lawyer Dean Whiting (a sterling Christopher Plummer) who represents the merging oil firm Connex-Killen and ultimately, it is clear, American interests.

Bennet Holiday (Jeffrey Wright, another excellent performance), the corporate lawyer described early on as the proverbial lion in sheep’s clothing, is tasked with outfoxing the government prosecutors who need some fall guys to feed on so they can look like they’re doing their due-diligence before pushing through the Connex-Killen merger. Holiday happily feeds two quite fat sacrificial lambs  – and they are sacrificial because they are no more or less corrupt than anyone else here – to the government man, hardly outfoxing him, but more like playing the game, and in so doing becomes in with the family of good old boy oil men. Meanwhile, Holiday reluctantly takes care of his alcoholic father who seems to have failed him (except perhaps for that part about sending him to Yale) and has turned the relationship around so that the son becomes the father.

Father son relationships permeate the film: Wasim Ahmed Khan, the migrant worker whose father also seems like something of a kid, becomes a suicide bomber, not because of faith, but because of his disaffection as a worker. Even Dalton’s downfall stems from illegal payments made to a boarding school (I can’t verify that last bit because it was a fleeting comment in the movie). But all of these, I believe, serve as mere analogy for the true betrayal of the patriarchal relationship that this film is about. That is the patriarchy of the firm or organization and that of, more importantly, the relationship between the U.S. government and its citizens.

That’s why every single relationship in the film had to be father-son. To capture the scope of the failure, the film had to show that the fundamental betrayal of our government reaches down, seeps into every aspect of life; “everything is connected” as the film’s tagline says.

For that, the film is well done. Its scope is greater than the recent The Constant Gardner and the (more powerful film) Traffic (which was written by Syriana’s writer and director), and despite being on-message, it’s less heavy handed than anything Oliver Stone ever made. While some of the dialogue is way too contrived – Matt Damon’s character particularly – the acting is terrific and the action is well-timed and doesn’t overwhelm the story. I particularly liked Christopher Plummer and Jeffrey Wright, and even though he reminded me of the economist Paul Krugman, Clooney’s getting into character is admirable.

I’m not sure that Syriana will have any of the cultural impact that Wall Street had, and served up in so entertaining a package its message may be lost or at the least brushed off as too big of a problem to seriously contemplate. If there’s any doubt of a message in the film, visit www.syrianamovie.com and click over to “Oil Change: A Campaign to Reduce Our Dependence on Oil, inspired by the film Syriana.”

Thank you, and Good Night (oops again, wrong Clooney film).   

(MRQE: List of reviews for Syriana)

[Update: Ed Champion has some additional thoughts.]

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About this Post

• Posted by: Bud Parr
• Date: December 19, 2005
• Filed Under:
  Movies

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