A Flawed Movie

[Chris Knipp]

I agree with most of what you say; I just have some comments and quibbles, and I think you misstate the nature of the Bob character somewhat at one point.

Syri-huh?

A comment in itself and funny. The name though unexplained in the movie is apparently an actual CIA term for a certain paradigmatic type of country in the M.E.

The scope of Gaghan’s script is too vast to be fully absorbed, leaving the viewer moved but not clearly understanding why.

The scope isn't too vast to be absorbed, but due to insufficient control of the material in the movie, it appears to be. Again we have to make the Traffik/Traffic comparison: there’s an equally vast scope, but tighter organization, so the story can be followed.

I respect Gaghan’s ability to pick up a scene at any given time without pandering to explanations…

I guess you mean pander to the (least alert members of the) audience by resorting to tedious explanations. Pandering to explanations doesn't make sense, as stated.

I agree neither the Bob character nor any of the others are what would be needed to “personalize” elements of the story and provide more “human elements," but you kind of go overboard when you say “most of the human elements involved seem unnecessary,” though.

Clooney’s performance begins so quietly, so passively, and builds like a rumbling beneath your feet before a natural disaster strikes.

I like that idea.

To a large extent, he has given up trying to make change. Clooney plays Barnes as exhausted, apathetic and frustrated without having the drive to change that. He has been telling the same lies and making the same deals for so long, he no longer questions to what goal they contribute.

Yes, Barnes is burnt out, but he isn’t apathetic; he gets into trouble for speaking up and he naively jumps at the chance to participate in an operation that will change the course of things, without knowing how Washington works. That’s his problem, as was probably true of his actual prototype, Baer, or is what Baer has observed in similar situations. You’re missing a part of Barnes’ character in your description here. Baer himself explains the Barnes character in interviews.

[Camera.] The effect is a varied degree of understanding, that we are closer to the problem than we think one minute and then detached and removed, lost the next, with numerous obstacles obstructing our view.

Again nice comment. I think the camera technique is probably too distracting, though I wish I’d seen the movie from farther back in the theater: I think I was too close and that caused undue distortion in my case.

(I) left “Syriana” with the concrete knowledge that it is oh so much more complicated than I originally thought.

True but you leave Traffik/Traffic (especially Traffik) not only knowing that but also understanding the basic dynamics of the situation pretty well, which after seeing Syriana you probably don't. Complicated doesn't have to mean confusing, it just means you have to pay close attention and use your gray cells a bit more than usual. Which as you say at the beginning this movie does, and that's good; but it could have been a more rewarding process given better writing and direction.

I advise anybody to peruse some of the various interviews with Baer. I believe that Baer was the main source for the movie. He is very critical of the CIA and also of the government's failure to use the CIA effectively. Baer: "At the end of the day you’re a hostage of the White House." The US government's enslavement to oil interests is another separate pet topic of his and the book on that is one of the two books by Baer Gaghan used.

As I said to begin with, Gaghan used the template of the Traffik series both for his Traffic adaptation for Soderbergh and for this movie, which he directed. Though he must have had lots of collaborative assistance from Clooney, Soderbergh, and others, maybe he was too involved pesonally at the research level this time. He went in the field, he talked to and read Baer, he absorbed the material for years -- he got in so deep he lost the artistic perspective he had in adapting Traffik into Traffic.

It's still a really interesting, thought-provoking movie, but the more you think about it, the more you see that "a flawed movie" was a great title for this thread.