popular thinking

DO YOU HAVE A SYRIANA COMPLEX?

Film critics and others who got a sneak peek of Syriana last month were scratching their heads as they left the screening, trying to make sense of Stephen Gaghan’s complex narrative on Middle Eastern geopolitics.
That’s OK by J. Gregory Payne, director of the Center on Ethics in Political and Health Communication at Emerson College.
“I applaud that,” Payne said. “A lot of times, we look at things in sort of black-and-white terms.”
Payne has traveled to the Middle East six times in the past three years, helping foster diplomacy between the United States and Saudi Arabia. He said Syriana accurately addresses the global economic and political problems vexing both the region and American foreign policy there.
“I don’t think it is political propaganda,” he said. “It explores something without being too political, one side or the other.”
Gaghan, who won an Oscar for his complicated narrative about the war on drugs in Traffic, said Hollywood has a difficult time with movies that lack clear-cut good guys.
“The world right now is very nuanced,” Gaghan said in a phone interview last month. “It’s a complicated place. It’s very easy to point fingers. It’s very easy to label guys ‘evildoers,’ but that’s oversimplifying.”
So his screenplay and direction in Syriana reflected those nuances, showing the perspectives of the oil industry, the CIA, covert and public political committees, Middle Eastern leaders and immigrants, suicide bombers, industry analysts, even the Chinese government.
Gaghan filmed in 200 locations on four continents, including Morocco, Dubai and Switzerland.
He acknowledged he and Section 8 (the production company of Steven Soderbergh and George Clooney) originally hoped to release Syriana before last year’s presidential election. But Gaghan said he was grateful to have another year to finish the film.
Gaghan conducted face-to-face interviews with many of the people who’d become fictionalized in Syriana.
“The great thing about this global media environment is that a lot of people had seen Traffic, which opened a lot of doors for me. They felt it was an evenhanded approach to the system,” Gaghan said.
He acknowledged he still drives a GTO convertible.
“I have no pre-existing bias to the oil business. I realize that a lot of my lifestyle has been predicated on America’s hegemony.”
And he believes that “America gets exactly the Hollywood it deserves. There’s no mechanism that’s trying to be more attuned to the nation’s tastes. They may be bored of big, dumb movies these days - and if so, then Hollywood will shift. Everybody gets to vote with their $8 (or higher) admission fee and the results come in really quickly. It can be brutal.”
Payne said Syriana is not going to provide any “Chicken Little, Star Wars-type escapism” for moviegoers. But he wants his Emerson students to see the film, and thinks all Americans could benefit from watching it.
“We have to realize the world is a very complex cabernet,” he said. “I think Syriana suggests that’s the case.”

Related: Official Syriana site.
Related: Seeking a dumbed-down film? Avoid ‘Syriana’ (Boston Herald)