Syriana
Syriana is a 2005 American political thriller film written and directed by Stephen Gaghan, loosely based on Robert Baer's 2003 memoir See No Evil. The film stars an ensemble cast consisting of George Clooney, Matt Damon, Jeffrey Wright, Chris Cooper, William Hurt, Tim Blake Nelson, Amanda Peet, Christopher Plummer, Alexander Siddig, and Mazhar Munir.
This article is about the film. For the term's use in international relations, see Pax Syriana.Syriana
Stephen Gaghan
- Jennifer Fox
- Michael Nozik
- Georgia Kacandes
- November 20, 2005 (New York City premiere)[1]
- November 23, 2005 (United States)
128 minutes[2]
United States
English
Arabic
Urdu
Persian
Chinese
French
$50 million[3]
$94 million[3]
Syriana was shot in 200 locations on five continents, with large parts shot in the Middle East, Washington, D.C., and Africa.[4] In an interview with Charlie Rose, Gaghan described incidents (including planned regime changes in Venezuela) from personal meetings and interviews with the most powerful oil owners, owners of media houses, lobbyists, lawyers, and politicians which were included in the film.[5] As with Gaghan's screenplay for Traffic, Syriana uses multiple, parallel storylines, jumping between locations in Iran, Texas, Washington, D.C., Switzerland, Spain, and Lebanon.
The film received positive reviews from critics, and Clooney's performance was critically acclaimed, earning him an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award, as well as British Academy Film Award, Critics' Choice Movie Award, and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations. Gaghan was nominated for an Academy Award and a Writers Guild of America Award for his screenplay. As of April 20, 2006, the film had grossed a total of $50.82 million at the U.S. box office and $43.2 million overseas, for a total of $94 million.
Gaghan changed the names of entities currently operating in the Middle East, while retaining their place in the story. Committee for the Liberation of Iran was based on an organization called Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.[6]
Title[edit]
The film's title is suggested to derive from the hypothesized Pax Syriana, as an allusion to the necessary state of peace between Syria and the U.S. as it relates to the oil business. In a December 2005 interview, Baer told NPR that the title is a metaphor for foreign intervention in the Middle East, referring to post-World War I think tank strategic studies for the creation of an artificial state (such as Iraq, created from elements of the former Ottoman Empire) that ensured continued western access to crude oil.[16]
The movie's website states that "‘Syriana’ is a real term used by Washington think-tanks to describe a hypothetical reshaping of the Middle East."[17] Gaghan said he saw Syriana as "a great word that could stand for man's perpetual hope of remaking any geographic region to suit his own needs."[18]
The word Syriana derives from Syria + the Latin suffix -ana; it means, roughly, "in the manner of Syria." Historically, Syria refers not to the state that since 1944 has borne the name, but to a more extensive land stretching from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea to the middle Euphrates River and the western edge of the desert steppe, and from the Tauric system of mountains in the north to the edge of the Sinai desert in the south. This land was part of the Fertile Crescent, and has historically been a geopolitically crucial junction for trade routes from the east, from Asia Minor and the Aegean, and from Egypt, and has long been a focus of great power conflicts. The word Syria does not appear in the Hebrew original of the Scriptures, but appears in the Septuagint as the translation of Aram. Herodotus speaks of "Syrians" as identical with Assyrians, but the term's geographical significance was not well defined in pre-Greek and Greek times. As an ethnic term, "Syrian" came to refer in Antiquity to Semitic peoples living outside Mesopotamian and Arabian areas. Greco-Roman administrations were the first to apply the term to a definite district.[19]
Release[edit]
Syriana was released on November 23, 2005 in limited release in only five theaters grossing $374,502 on its opening weekend. It went into wide release on December 9, 2005 in 1,752 theaters grossing $11.7 million on that weekend. It went on to make $50.8 million in North America and $43.2 million in the rest of the world for a worldwide total of $94 million.[20] Censor authorities in some parts of the Middle East censored parts of the movie, because it depicted foreigners being ill-treated. Although abuse of foreign workers is rife, the censor authorities deemed such scenes as insulting.[21]
Reception[edit]
Critical reception[edit]
Syriana received generally positive reviews, mostly for Clooney's performance and Gaghan's screenplay. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, it has a rating of 73% based on 198 reviews, with an average score of 6.89/10. The website's consensus states, "Ambitious, complicated, intellectual, and demanding of its audience, Syriana is both a gripping geopolitical thriller and wake-up call to the complacent."[22] The film has a score of 76 out of 100 on Metacritic based on 40 critics indicating "generally favorable reviews".[23] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C" on an A+ to F scale.
As a motion picture, the main criticism, even among reviewers who praised the film, was the confusion created by following numerous stories. Most critics stated that it was almost impossible to follow the plot, though some, notably Roger Ebert, praised precisely that quality of the film and offered an interesting hidden story possibility (a covert deal between the U.S. and China involving oil being shipped through Kazakhstan and passed off as coming from a different source).[24] The audience confusion mimics the confusion of the characters, who are enmeshed in the events around them without a clear understanding of what precisely is going on. As with Gaghan's screenplay for Traffic, Syriana uses multiple, parallel storylines, jumping from locations in Texas, Washington D.C., Switzerland, Spain, and the Middle East, leading film critic Ebert to describe the film as hyperlink cinema.[24]
Time magazine's Richard Corliss wrote, "Gaghan relies on Clooney's agnostic heroism to lure viewers into his maze. When they get there, they will find not a conventionally satisfying movie but a kind of illustrated journalism: an engrossing, insider's tour of the world's hottest spots, grandest schemes and most dangerous men."[25] In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Kenneth Turan wrote, "This is conspiracy-theory filmmaking of the most bravura kind, but if only a fraction of its suppositions are true, we—and the world—are in a world of trouble."[26] USA Today gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four and wrote, "Gaghan assumes his audience is smart enough to follow his explosive tour of global petro-politics. The result is thought-provoking and unnerving, emotionally engaging and intellectually stimulating."[27] Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "B−" rating and Lisa Schwarzbaum wrote, "it's also the kind of movie that requires a viewer to work actively for comprehension, and to chalk up any lack of same to his or her own deficiency in the face of something so evidently smart."[28]
In his review for The New York Observer, Andrew Sarris wrote: "If anything, Syriana tends to oversimplify a mind-bogglingly multifaceted problem that cannot so easily be resolved by a diatribe against the supposedly all-powerful 'Americans.'"[29] Rolling Stone magazine's Peter Travers gave the film his highest rating and praised George Clooney's performance: "This is the best acting Clooney has ever done—he's hypnotic, haunting and quietly devastating."[30] Philip French, in his review for The Observer, praised the film as "thoughtful, exciting and urgent".[31] In his review for The Guardian, Peter Bradshaw wrote, "But what complicates the plot is writer-director Stephen Gaghan's reluctance to criticise America too much. Instead of complexity, there is a blank, uncompelling tangle, which conceals a kind of complacent political correctness."[32]
Ebert named it the second-best film of 2005, behind Crash. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone named it as the third best film of 2005.[33] Entertainment Weekly ranked Syriana as one of the 25 "Powerful Political Thrillers" in film history.[34]
