Saturday, March 04, 2006

SYRIANA - pretentious, yawn-inducing and inaccurate

SYRIANA is an over-hyped alleged thriller that attempts to explore the politics of the oil business. Featuring a star-studded cast, and the kind of lush photography that you get in advertising, here is a movie that repackages politics for the HBO generation, and fails miserably. While the movie looks great and the acting performances are all fine, the real faults lie in the conception of the movie and the script by Stephen Gaghan. Gaghan is the man behind the infinitely better flick, TRAFFIC. Like TRAFFIC, SYRIANA has a script that inter-cuts three plot strands that are loosely related. This has led some critics to claim that the movie is complex and hard to understand. Actually I had no problem following the story here. Incomprehension was not my problem.

The first major problem is that the movie tells us nothing that we did not already know about US politics, the Middle East or big business. There are no flash-bulb moments, and in many ways, the issues here are "dumbed-down". I found it a really fantastically facile, trite script by someone who clearly has very little cultural or political feel for the material he is addressing. If you want an expose of US politics, check out John Sayles' SILVER CITY. If you want insight on the Middle East go read some history. If you want to see how "everything is connected" - the platitudionous tagline to the film - go see CRASH.

The second major problem is that the movie is just plain yawn-inducing. I LOVE cinema; I love Middle Eastern politics; I love Clooney, Damon and Cooper; but even I could barely keep my eyes open. I do not ask that movies educate me - although when they claim they are going to it is nice if they live up to that promise - but I do ask that they entertain me. I want my intellectual or emotional interest to be piqued. I want laughter, tears, or provocation. SYRIANA did not deliver.

So, now the broad-brush gripes are over, here are some minor geeky gripes. 1. Why do the Pakistani muslim terrorists speak in Hindi? Granted there are Muslims in India but they speak Urdu. And while many Pakistanis do not speak Urdu as a first language, they will most likely speak Pushto or Punjabi instead. It is frickin' ironic that a movie that attempts to get under the skin of Middle Eastern politics, and establish a credible stance on these issues, can mess up on something so basic. I was, frankly, insulted. 1b. What language is George Clooney speaking when in Beirut? He is complemented on his good Arabic, and claims to be speaking Farsi, but the accent is impenetrable and unless this is some dialect, sounds nothing like Farsi. 2. It is absolutely incredible that anyone would address the an Emir in the manner in which Matt Damon addresses the Prince just after the "Marbella incident".

SYRIANA is on limited release in the US, Germany, France, Austria and UK.


  1. Yep I know this film is pretty flawed - and I was confused by the Muslims from Pakistan speaking in Hindi - from my experience more likely to be Gujarati or Afghan. On the other hand I think its good that an American film is attempting to criticise US Middle Eastern policies & try to produce an almost sympathetic explanation of why someone might become a suicide bomber. I couldn't watch 'The Road to Guantanamo' - too hard for me! I'm too much of a wimp.

  2. I'm don't speak any languages of the subcontinent, but I do know that the main difference between Urdu and Hindi is their script and the source of their loan words - Urdu borrowing from Persian and Hindi borrowing from Sanskrit. To my understanding, colloquial Hindi and Urdu are pretty much the same, similar to the difference between Swedish and Norwegian. That is to say that, for all intents and purposes, we're talking about the same language.

    But like I say, I don't speak either language, so maybe the characters were using some words that were obviously Hindi rather than Urdu.

  3. Alls I know is that I speak Hindi pretty fluently and this was Hindi. I speak Urdu badly but understand it well. I sent my parents along to see this flick and they speak both fluently. They confirmed that it's definitely Hindi. It's a minor point, but symptomatic of the fact that despite claiming to be prfound, this is a pretty superficial flick.