by DAN BRENNAN
Directed by Ben Affleck, screenplay by Chris Terrio
Argo, a new political thriller starring and directed by Ben Affleck, has earned critical praise and a number two spot on the box office charts for the second straight week. The film is based on declassified information about a little-known episode during the Iran hostage crisis of 1979-1980.
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A couple of contrived close calls aside, the film manages to hold the viewer’s interest not so much through the non-stop action so often resorted to in films of this genre. Instead, Affleck attempts to convey tension through blending archival and newsreel footage from the time. The filmmakers are relatively restrained in their use of suspense sequences, inserted in a storyline with occasionally comic dialogue.
Holding one’s interest, however, is one thing, but to leave an impression, to say something meaningful about the conditions of life—and history—is quite another. The power of the media and information, in contrast to the power of the gun, emerges as a theme: hence, a mock execution staged in front of a camera, musings about whether the revolutionary fervor in Iran is all for media consumption, the fake movie project itself … In the end, there’s not much that’s fresh on offer in Argo. The subplot of the absentee father, struggling to maintain a relationship with his son, comes off as especially trite and predictable.
Far more problematic are the implications of the film’s portrayal of the hostage crisis and the rescue operation. The events of 1979-1980 did not emerge fresh from the ether. The US government and the CIA in particular played a direct role in the 1953 coup that reinstalled the Shah of Iran in power. A quarter century of absolute rule and brutal suppression of all resistance in Iran depended first and foremost on support from Washington. Wide layers of the country’s population were outraged by America’s role by 1979.
While this history of neocolonial intervention is acknowledged in a minute or two of narration at the film’s outset, what dominates throughout the remaining two hours is something quite different. We’re meant to embrace the CIA hero, chuckle at Hollywood’s collaboration with the intelligence apparatus and view the Iranian masses as the enemy.
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