Rant and Rave:
Movies
by Dileep Rao

Rave—Syriana—In Stephen Gaghan’s newest film Syriana, the screenwriter of Traffic breaks free of filtration through a director and puts the camera under his own command.  This has two palpable effects: the structure of the resultant film is even more complex and layered, and the intellectual RAM necessary to manage the larger palette of ideas is much greater.

Neither of these facts say anything about the film’s quality, but if you like your films spoon-fed to you—preferring the applesauce of our modern cinema to the "apples off the tree in the orchard" experience of truly intellectual filmmaking— then this isn’t for you.  Its politics might be (this is the film, as of this writing that everyone wants to say they loved at cocktail parties though few, if any, want to recount its plot), but the film demands attention and real focus.  The payoff, though, is terrific.

The film revolves around oil and its many facets, from exploration, drilling, business and consumption to the fluid out-of-sight economy of convenience in which the many players in this business revolve.  One storyline involves a clandestine, ultimately expendable, CIA officer whose areas of expertise are valued only as far as he is not a political liability.

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