'Argo'

The Joy Of The Known

The deal on 'Argo'  was that it won 'Best Picture' at the Oscars without even getting nominated for 'Best Director'. I don' often agree with the Motion Picture Academy, but in this instance I could see the good sense in the outcome.

Like it or lump it, the singular beneficial feature of this film is that it is an ode, a love song in praise of Hollywood. How can the Academy not lavish praise on a film that praises Hollywood so? It's hardly artful in its direction, so it is no surprise it didn't get nominated in the directing category. The Academy it seems retains a little bit of pride about what it does.

What's Good About It

Alan Arkin, John Goodman, Dire Straits, Van Halen, Led Zeppelin. Pulling one over the Nasty Iranians.I believe the Iranians are particularly insulted by this picture. Clearly they don't understand that they're not meant to like it seeing that they are the butt of the joke. In some ways, anything that gets up the nose of that horrible Theocracy is good fodder.

What's Bad About It

The suspense is hardly exciting once the premise gets under way. We know they get out, so it hardly seems the process is all that suspenseful. It seems to be missing a couple of really difficult obstacles to make it a truly riveting film.

What's Interesting About It

Watching this film was like getting plugged in the Gen-X memory machine. I remember the days when the Iranians stormed the US Embassy and held those hostages fr 444 days. I'm sure it s a proud moment for the likes of Mahmoud Ahmedinejad - who it turns out wasn't there after all - but it's one of those moments for which Iran has not paid its price. So it seems fitting that they cop a bit of retcon-humiliation from Hollywood. There's nothing like the ridicule from Hollywood as Saddam Hussein found out.

Still, the Iranian complaints seem entirely motivated by hurt pride that they should be portrayed as being so backward and craven and abusive masters of torture. Their claims that the film distorts history is probably true but I'm yet to see any film that doesn't distort history so that's not saying anything special in the context of this film. You accept that it probably didn't go down the way Ben Affleck directed it (and thank goodness for that).

Fortunately, they're not the only ones put off by the movie. The Canadians are also upset that they don't get a good enough credit for their role. What's really interesting about the outrage about the rewritten history is that New Zealand gets a mention in the list of people upset by the picture. Anything that upsets so many people must have something artistic going for it.

All The Best Lines Go To LA (and so do the chicks)


The most insightful lines in the film pertain to Hollywood and not the real world at all. The best character for the best lines was the fictional producer Lester Siegel played by Alan Arkin, followed by John Goodman's John Chambers. The line about the bullshit coalmine and fitting right in with the superficial and fickle LA set pretty much define the tone of the film: Hollywood is *it*.

In some ways this is a film that probably belongs in the genre of films about film making, without there actually being a film. The way they get the diplomats out of America almost is an adjunct to the story of faking a film production convincingly.

This is what the Iranians don't get. Young, beautiful women don't exactly travel to Tehran to become good Muslims anywhere near the same rate as they go to Los Angeles hoping to become a superstar. Los Angeles might be a toilet of a city but its allure is still streets ahead of Tehran, the capital of a country that is in massive deficit of Gross National Cool. All the great films they make are not going to change this international perception.

Is it really Zionism? Or is it that Iran has made itself firmly into an unattractive nation? 'Argo' hardly seems to be the problem.