BIG SCREEN: Syriana

Impatient people hate William Faulkner. They find his writing inaccessible, because impatient people want to understand exactly what’s happening while it’s happening and Faulkner is uncompromising in this way. The deceased postmaster’s prose has led many a student to put down The Sound and the Fury prematurely and, saddly, these readers never realize the genius of the deceased postmaster’s work is in the suspension of comprehension - this is to say, the first 30 pages may not make sense until you’ve read the final 30 pages.

Reactions to Stephen Gaghan’s new movie Syriana will be much like that of those who have only taken cursory stabs at Faulkner. With Syriana, Gaghan - screenwriter of Traffic - wants to tell you a story of intelligence, politics and the slick dealings of those who directly or indirectly profit off oil. Ultimately, Gaghan wants to tell you about all these things, but he doesn’t want you to understand them until it’s all over.

Syriana rose from the book See No Evil by veteran CIA agent Robert Baer who, in an interview on National Public Radio, revealed that Gaghan intentionally muddied the cinematic waters, obfuscated connections, and withheld information that would have otherwise made the film comprehensible. If you can accept that Syriana is an informative film without being a pandering tutorial, you will, ironically, better interpret it. But if you, Mr. Knowitall, take Gaghan’s disregard for linear storytelling and intelligibility as a personal insult, buy a ticket for Yours, Mine and Ours instead.

Like Traffic, Syriana’s narrative is driven by excess of character, an approach that reveals the interlocking tiers of human drama. The film begins when an arms deal goes awry in Tehran for CIA operative and utility killer Bob Barnes (George Clooney, Good Night, and Good Luck). When the missiles Barnes delivers falls into the wrong hands, the sand storm of confusion, switchbacks, and double-talk begins.

Cut to Washington, D.C. where lawyer Bennett Holiday (Jeffrey Wright, The Manchurian Candidate) is investigating the chicaneries between merging oil companies Connex and Killen. Swim across the Atlantic to Geneva where Bryan Woodman (Matt Damon, The Brothers Grimm) has the perfect life as an energy analyst and consultant for a CNN-esque newscast until his son is electrocuted at the home of a Middle Eastern emir. Zip over to the United States where Killen CEO Jimmy Pope (Chris Cooper, Jarhead) hunts zebras at his Texas ranch, Danny Dalton (Tim Blake Nelson, O Brother, Were Art Thou?) shoots his mouth off as the spokesman for the Committee to Liberate Iran, and independent intelligence gatherer Stan Goff (William Hurt, A History of Violence) mutters surreptitiously in the back of movie theaters. And leaping into thick of it all, cabals in the Persian Gulf kibitz, read from al’Quran, and recruit naifs for glorious martyrdom. The 15 additional characters - superfluously comprised by angry Pakistanis, patricidal opportunists, emir apparents, alcoholic fathers, men who like to remove fingernails, angry sons, and wives armed with ultimatums - are just the tip of the iceberg.

Gaghan’s globe-trotting and borderline-infinite character spectrum gives the impression there is no elementary provenance for any ill of the oil industry, and rightly so. Syriana makes it perfectly clear that there is never any one person or country acting alone; everything is interwoven into the fabric of corruption and greed. If Syriana is firm about anything, it is that the world is a very complicated, very tenuous Rube Goldberg machine disguised as a planet with neat combustibles inside.

Though probably the most socially aware non-documentary film of 2005, Syriana will have problems drawing in certain moviegoers, not because not because it is lacking or arrogant, but rather because the ellusive nature of the film gives the impression Gaghan has a valid point, he just didn’t get around to expressing it. Maybe Syriana is an indictment of shameful international trades that all but give license to insurrection. Maybe the film is a revelation of the ever-increasing corruption on capital hill as America has to compete with Japan and world-power-to-be China in securing natural resources. Or maybe Syriana is simply Traffic with a lot of sand.

If reading the New York Times gives you a headache, don’t see this film. If you’re expecting Damon and Clooney to look suave and wear Gucci suits, don’t see this film. If you clap your hands when spoon-fed tales of warmth and human kindness, don’t see this film. However, if you don’t mind being more than a passive spectator, flip your brain on and buy the damn ticket.

In the end, both The Sound and the Fury and Syriana make sense, they just take a little more work than you’re used to.

Eric Howerton does not own a car. When he’s not walking in the cold, he can be reached erichowerton@mac.com

A slightly altered version of the above appeared in Crosswinds Weekly, Dec. 16-23