After re-watching both Gone, Baby,
Gone and The Town in the same timeframe as seeing Argo,
I can safely say that Ben Affleck is one of the best directors
working today.
Argo is alternately fun and tense
without feeling out of balance or out of place. The story begins
with the taking of the US Embassy in Iran in 1979. The sense of
claustrophobia and fear is palpable as the angry voices in the
distant get louder and louder, breaking into the seeming security of
the buildings. While most of the Americans are taken hostage, 6 of
them manage to make it out the back door and they hide with the
Canadian Ambassador (played by a solid, but underused Victor Garber).
The story then shifts to CIA
headquarters where Tony Mendez (Affleck) comes up with a crazy idea:
create a fake movie, go into Iran and have all of the Americans leave
pretending to be a Canadian film crew. In order to make the cover
story believable, he flies out to Hollywood to work with his contact,
make-up genius John Chambers (John Goodman) and producer Lester
Siegel (Alan Arkin) as they navigate the illusory world of
movie-making to give substance to their subterfuge. The last act
then takes us back to Iran to put the plan into motion.
The most notable thing about Affleck as
a director is that he lets his movies get better as they unfold. It
is a quality that you don't notice is lacking in many movies until
you see it in one like Argo. There tends to be a lot of focus
on the opening, which is good because most movie audiences decided if
they like a movie or not in the first 10 minutes. But often movies
either peak too soon or they plateau Affleck grips you in the
beginning and he lures you deeper and deeper until the tension is
almost unbearable.
And for this movie, Affleck really puts
you into the period. He even starts it with the old 70's Warner Bros
logo. I can't tell you what a simple and wonderful set up that was
at transporting me to a different time. He lets the film grain and
technique harken back to that era as well. And while I'm not a fan
of most movies made during that time period, I was taken by its
authentic feel and tone.
This is, however, not Affleck's best
movie. And I think the main reason is that he did not have a hand in
writing the script. Lest it be forgotten, he won an Academy Award
for writing, and with good reason. He has the ability to make even
the most extraneous characters interesting and empathetic. The
script for Argo always seems to keep you at arm's length. We
feel badly for the Americans in hiding, but in the same way we feel
badly about people we see in sad news stories. We don't really get
to know them as people.
For example, one of the Americans, Joe
Stafford (Scoot McNairy), has this very sad, moving monologue about
how his wife (played by the also underused Kerry Bishe) begged to
leave Iran with him, but he refused. And now he is afraid that they
both will die. It is a very nice monologue. But something was off.
Then I realized he's talking ABOUT his wife, not WITH his wife.
She's right in the next room and this bit of story information could
have been given to us through a dialogue between the two. Doing so,
we would have seen more of both their characters revealed and become
more invested in their relationship.
In this movie, you never get close
enough to anyone, and that is its biggest flaw. If they had added
this x-factor, Argo would be moved from good to great. The same can
be said of the performances. They are good, but they never reach the
greatness of their potential. And again, I think this falls less on
Affleck's shoulders as it does the script.
Some may criticize another aspect of
the story where the evils of the American backed Shah are constantly
revisited and set against the backlash created in the Ayatollah's
regime. Though it may seem like this a back-handed “blame America”
point, I would disagree. In all of Affleck's movies, he tries to
pull you into the perspective of all the characters, whether they are
drug-addicts, cop-killers, or Islamofacists. He makes you see things
through their eyes without condoning or condemning.
Two side notes: First, there is a
moment in the movie where Mendez uses an abortion analogy to describe
extraction. He says, “Extraction is like an abortion. You don't
want to need one, but if you do, you don't do it yourself.” Not
only was this line unnecessary, it took me completely out of the
movie. I spent the next few minutes thinking about that line and not
about the action on the screen. It was a totally needless jab
against over half of the US population that is pro-life.
Second, this movie did something I have
never seen before. It sampled other movie scores and credited them
in the soundtrack. Sometime a movie will lift the Superman or
Star Wars themes, but here it applied another movie's music,
like from 2001's Spy Game, and used it as its own score. I
know that I've done this with student movies, but I've never seen it
done like this.
But I have to say that one of my
favorite thematic elements is the universality of movies. Film
unleashes a whole new echelon of creativity and communication. As an
art form, movies can reach across geographic and cultural boundaries.
In one scene in the movie, one of the characters explains the plot
of the fake film to some Iranian soldiers. The plot is standard
sci-fi fare, but the themes he related of family, honor, and freedom
resonated because they are universal themes. And in the context of
science fiction and fantasy, we put aside our everyday prejudices and
have an experience of those catholic ideas.
I used “catholic,” not “Catholic”
to describe how movies can touch all of us. But Affleck is, despite
the above line on abortion, one of the most Catholic film-makers
around. His movies are full of Catholic imagery and themes. He is
wonderfully subtle about it, like where one of the American's puts a
holy card in his “Argo” script and nothing more is made of it.
He fills his world with churches and holy sites in such a
matter-of-fact way that the strength of it is in acknowledging the
solid existence of religion in everyday life. As a Catholic, I am
grateful that he brings that sensibility to his film.
Argo is a very good movie. In
fact, it's one of the best movies I've seen this year. It's biggest
detriment is that it is not great. And that's not so bad at all.
4 out of 5 stars
4 out of 5 stars
No comments:
Post a Comment