Syriana

Watched Syriana this weekend w/ (no surprise) Rourke & Jen. I momentarily forgot my defenses for this movie, and had fairly high and defined expectations for it. Fortunately, I wasn't let down.

I was going to start by talking about how this movie, being directed by Stephan Gaghan, was exactly what one would expect, etc., lending a certain pretentious undertone to this blog entry (obviously everyone knows who Gaghan is and what to expect from him, right?). But as with most entries, I don't know this crap off the top of my head. I look it up on the web. That's really one of the main points of this whole blogging thing. By committing these thoughts to print, I need to actually go look up names, facts, data, etc. This helps save me from accidentally being a con man (a.k.a liar) when speaking of this stuff in casual conversation. (Okay, not really "accidentally" since this stuff is not really out of my control. After all, the words are coming out of my mouth. Let's just say when I verbalize stuff, assumption turns into fact with frightening ease. Rourke and Greg can sympathize, I'm sure.)

One short review in the New York Times for Syriana described it as very complex and requiring concentration to follow. I'm glad I was forewarned, because that was definitely true. In some masochistic way, we were fortunate that we were stuck sitting up in the absolute front wrong craning out necks upwards, because it was impossible not to pay attention with the screen in-your-face that way and with one's neck aching.

Stephen Gaghan directed and wrote this movie, and also wrote Traffic, which was very similar and set my expectations for this movie. I expected a thoughtful complex plot where characters in very separate positions influence each other and create a network of moral ambiguity. I got exactly what I expected (perhaps a little, but not much, more and definitely not less). Syriana is loosely based on the book See No Evil written by ex-CIA operative Robert Baer. George Clooney's character is based on Baer and his experiences. The story itself is really perhaps only inspired by the book (I haven't read it) since Gaghan has a point he's trying to get across.

There are many characters, each in their own scenario. They only intersect through the viewer and through the message of the movie. Some of them meet each other; some of them are aware of each others existence; some of them never meet and are never aware of the way their lives intersect.

What is this message? Well, something morally wrong, almost evil has definitely happened. Something is amiss in this world we live in. But, there is no evil conspiracy, no cabal of greedy and evil men plots the fate of the world and the demise of goodness. Rather, the actors are all basically good, basically trying to do what they think is right. However, in the pursuit of their individual interests and beliefs, they may be a little greedy (but I emphasize, little, no more than the extent any of us would accept as being "human nature") and are willing to be a little amoral (amoral in that they are willing to sacrifice small amounts of morality in pursuit of perceived higher goals. They're not trying to be immoral, just willing to set certain notions aside.) Some characters are greedier than others, but none are even close to evil. The problem is, the network effect of their individual actions serve to combine their individual lapses into something that is gigantically wrong.

Is it true? Well, I take it as a work of fiction (although See No Evil is supposedly true events). Just because it looks like and draws from current events doesn't mean it has any bearing on actual events or the state of the real world.

What's interesting to me, is that feels plausible. From an economic game theory point of view, or at least from the education I've had on the topic, conspiracies are fundamentally unstable. They collapse easily because the players all can gain individual advantage by defecting (e.g. breaking the conspiracy). Thus, while non-economic factors might hold things together for awhile (economic theory doesn't necessarily say how long a conspiracy might last), it only takes one defector at one point in time to collapse the whole thing. Thus, collapse is inevitable.

While the scenario posed in Syriana is the kind of outcome that one might attribute to some evil/greedy global conspiracy, there is no such mechanism here. Rather, it is emergent behavior based on individual parties who independently act in a manner consistent with generally (not perfectly) moral economic self-interest. There are bad events and bad outcomes without bad guys.

Anyway, I really liked this movie and highly recommend it.