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Woops. Turns out my weekend wasn't spent catching up on here after all.
Syriana. I see what writer/director Stephen Gaghan was trying to do. It worked so well for him with his screenplay for Traffic, after all. But it didn't work for me here. All those multiple narrative strands revolving around oil and the Middle East - it was noble, a valiant effort, but ultimately it was just too much going on, making it damned hard to actually know what the hell was going on.
George Clooney plays a CIA agent assigned to assassinate various people in Iran, but keeps doing things to upset his employer. Matt Damon is a Swiss based energy analyst whose son dies at a party thrown by an Emir, and out of sympathy his company wins a big oil contract. Damon becomes his economic advisor as he tries to modernise and bring his country away from its dependence of oil in the long term for growth. Chris Cooper is the head of a major American energy company merging with a smaller power, who are currently losing their grip on the oil fields of the same Emirate after said Emir grants a contract to a Chinese company. The merger is shady, but they have a big law firm (headed by Christopher Plummer) give the impression of due diligence by going through all of their documents and files. Unfortunately for them, the lawyer in charge, Jeffrey Wright, is too damn good and starts to find stuff out.
I guess that's about it. It's a great cast (also with Amanda Peet and William Hurt), and they all do fine. Strangely, I particularly liked Damon - his conflicted father throwing himself into work in the aftermath of tragedy was very well crafted. I don't fully understand the acclaim given to Clooney - he was fine, but there was nothing really exciting in his performance. It was just there. Wright I'm slowly falling in love with, each performance I'm seeing adding to my respect for him. Why he's not a bigger star is anybody's guess.
Score by Alexandre Desplat. I'm getting to a point where I think I'll just assume every score is by Desplat. Seriously, does the man never sleep? And they're always good! Damn him and his talent and work ethic. Robert Elswit makes the film kind of look like Traffic. It was nice lensing, but it didn't bring much of a new look to the region. Also reminded me a bit of films like Three Kings and Jarhead.
All up, a bit meh. One of those films that would probably make a lot more sense if I watched it again, but for this I just don't have the inspiration. Unlike, say, Mulholland Drive, which I didn't really understand but I knew I loved it and had to watch it repeatedly, Syriana probably won't become a brilliant film if I watch it again - it'll just give me clarity of storyline. And that's now what narratives are all about. 2.5 stars.
There you go. Happy = fat.
Ahem.
Back in 1989, a film was playing in West Berlin (the Allied controlled section) when the wall came down. People from East Berlin went into the cinema expecting to see some serious Western porn, but left sorely disappointed. What was that film? Why, Sex, Lies and Videotape of course!
Steven Soderbergh's debut feature won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1989, and announced the appearance on the world stage of someone who would go on to become one of the most recognised directors in the world - though it took until the one-two of Erin Brokovich and Traffic in 2000 and the huge commercial success of Ocean's Eleven the following year to really cement that status.
Sex, Lies and Videotape features four main characters. Ann (Andie MacDowell) is married to John (Peter Gallagher), who is having an affair with Ann's sister Cynthia (Laura San Giacomo in her credited feature debut.) An old school friend of John's comes to town, and the appearance of Graham (James Spader, who won Best Actor at Cannes and then, curiously, only picked up an Independent Spirit nomination elsewhere) throws that curious three-way relationship into turmoil. Ann initially dislikes Graham, but after they go apartment hunting his wily ways win her over and they start a sort of friendship, briefly, which ends once she discovers a pile of video tapes in his home. He quite honestly tells her that they are tapes of women talking about sex, their history, desires, fantasies, anything really, and this freaks her out a little. Cynthia, quite the little hornbag, meanwhile, is fascinated by this new friend of her sister and tracks him down, flirting outrageously (as is her wont) and then making her own tape for him. It is this tape and Graham's honesty that bring the truth of Cynthia and John's relationship out into the open - she confesses it on the tape, knowing that Graham won't let anyone else see it. But when Ann begins to suspect the affair, she mentions it to Graham, and he confirms it.
I won't go any further into the plot for fear of giving away what little remains a secret. All of the performances are reasonably strong, but San Giacomo was by far the standout. Her sultry, slutty sister was perfect. The other three were all fine, nothing overly exemplary, but she was fantastic. I've always loved watching her pop up in films like Pretty Woman, but it's a pity she never got to really show her chops like this again.
The film is an interesting one. I don't really think it's a brilliant film, more of an excellent exercise. That's what it felt like to me. I wasn't particularly riveted by what was going on in the film as much as I was riveted by how it was going on. The form of the film was more interesting than the content, I think, which was really quite stock-standard. Thematically, nothing was pushed, but structurally it was fascinating. I think that's what I'm trying to say. I'm remembering the film more fondly for how it played out than the specifics of what played out.
Gah, I'm not even making sense to myself. It's an interesting film, worth the watch, but I went in expecting fireworks (though not porn!) and got something entirely different. 3.5 stars.
