Sundy, Syriana and other Notes (2006.01.22)

Its Sunday and I’ve just woken up from a late afternoon nap. I’m still slightly exhausted by the five hour bicycle ride this morning up Skyline and out to the old naval medical center near the Oakland Zoo. In the processes of skirting around inside the base, which is surrounded by 7 foot tall fences with barbed wire trimmings (luckily someone was kind enough to cut a hole in the fence) I lost the bottom half of my deralier. On three cogs, Thacher and I investigated every barracks, road, and hill on the property. We even got in some free climbing up to a second story window that had been busted in. On the return ride along international blvd we stopped off at the TeT festival (Vietnamese). I think we were the only gringos in there and if that weren’t enough we were definitely the only ones walking bikes around with our helmets on…adding to the out of place foreigner persona for the festival. Anyway I’m awake stirring and find myself drawn to see a movie. It’s an impulse I don’t get much these days, because there is so much utter shit out there, so I act on it. I walk up to the Grand Lake Theatre just in time to catch the 9:45pm showing of Syriana. It was either Clooney or Albert Brooks “Finding Humor in the Muslim World” so considering Albert Brooks hasn’t made anything funny since…was he ever funny? I head into Syriana. Its Sunday, its almost 10pm, so the theatre is almost dead empty. There are two guys trying to out film snob each other in the middle of all of the theatre seats, so I reluctantly sit down a few rows beneath them. I stare at the ceiling in lack of something better to do. The ornate features of the Grand Lake are really fantastic; painted designs on the ceilings, large almost obnoxious looking chandeliers, deep red velvet looking curtains cloaking the walls and just about any vertical surface. During my little social escapism I hear one of the guys bickering, “Clooney says he’s only going to do things that have a political reference, not everything has to be so dam political.” I bite my tongue until it about bleeds. Film not political? Come on now its about the most fascist form of art on the planet. You sit down in a theatre all nice and quiet like while some filmmaker gets to tell you exactly what to see, when your going to see it and gets to use all kinds of audio tricks and editing techniques to manipulate your emotions and thoughts about those images. Not political? There is not a single film out there that is devoid of politics. If the politics aren’t overt like the so called documentary “Fahrenheit 9/11” than one should be even more suspicious, because its those things that slip beneath our radar that in their totality effect us. I’m not saying filmmakers are necessarily deceitful in any way with their films, but that their own politics becomes subconsciously wrapped up in their art form. The angle chosen, or the dialog, the cut used between frames etc are all chosen and because they are chosen they are political. A late twenties woman with heavy black glass, curly blond hair with brown roots bounds up the stairs to the projector room, elevating me from getting into a big philosophical tangent with the two behind me. Lights sink into the red velvet all around and the main screen opens. A trailer for a kid orientated movie is in the previews and I have a brief Fight Club flash back of Tyler Deryton splicing single frame pornography into the roll. Did I just see a nice big cock? No, no one in this side of the industry is that sophisticated…its probably just the lack of sleep and the mix of booze and caffeine coursing through my vascular system taping into previously viewed movies and confusing them with the present. Syriana gets rolling as most spy type movies. The agent is taking care of a deal in some shady circumstances, something is blowing up, there is a cleavage shot, and bam here we are back in DC. Luckily beyond this opening scene this isn’t the run of the mill spy movie. In Clooney fashion the plot is tight, the characters are solid and the cinematographic technique is well selected for the story at hand. The score is unbelievably light, I think I only noticed twice during the film. The editing is much like the cinematography and is not of a grand or classic style, but is effective, very effective in its minimalism. The general plot design is that a country in the Persian gulf that has immense oil is in the process of handing down the company within the ruling family. There is a feud of sorts between brothers as to who will inherit the family business. One is backed by the US, because he is easily puppeted by oil companies seeking to make a merger that would help them secure access to these huge oil fields. The other is a little more progressive in how he wants to use the oil money to design infrastructure and political reform for his country. Clooney is basically a CIA agent that is getting worked around by the institution to help the US interest. His character is very held back, almost flat, his dialogue is low, but his actions are immense. He is a character to be read by his actions and not his words, unlike most of the other characters in the story. A parallel thread is also a young migrant worker form Pakistan who is converted over into radical islam, because of economic hardship. It’s a story that doesn’t necessarily fall any direction by its end…or does it. Its equally weighed from many sides and is a fantastic film as far as plot construction goes.