syriana

dad and me saw syriana yesterday at inorbit. it was our boys’ night out, since my mother is n delhi for a concert. i knew that my father would like the film- and he did as he said repeatedly over the expensive food and drinks at ‘ruby tuesday’. i liked the fact that the movie did not try and make the complicated network of forces affected and affecting the international oil industry simple. it kept the various threads that link pakistani workers, washington lawyers, cia operatives, texan oil companies, middle eastern monarchs, chinese business and american energy analysts - alive and real. thankfully, there was no hollywood simplification or moralizing to reduce the movie into a series of clichés- though the clichés were there to be mined. the lawyer who betrays his mentor, the cia operative who braves torture with a straight face, the pakistani worker who is indoctrinated into terrorism. still, none of them felt terribly patronizing. it must be the extremely complex plot and the understated acting.

it must be because i saw it with my father, but to me there seemed to be a sub-plot about the “human” side of the story. all the strands had important parts that hinged on father-son relationships- like the succession duel between the two princes of the middle eastern state, the pakistani worker and his frustration with his father, matt damon losing his son and gaining a contract in return, or the washington lawyers’ drunk father who waits for him at his doorstep after he gets back from the ultimate betrayal.