Film #70 - Argo

Ben Affleck noted in one of his publicity interviews for Argo that teenagers seeing the film not only probably have no historical context for the events depicted within, but probably don’t even realise the whole “Matt and Ben” thing that typified his rise to fame in the late 90s.

Aside from making me feel incredibly old, it also underlines how far Affleck has come since Forces of Nature seemed like a pretty solid career choice (to be fair, I did not hate that film). It’s redundant these days to talk about Affleck’s skill as a director after the double artistic successes of Gone Baby Gone and The Town, but let’s do it anyway. Argo is just that good a film that Affleck probably deserves a bit of critical fellatio for having made it.

Argo’s a bit of a break for Affleck, given that his two previous features took on the do-what-you-know mantra and delved into Bostonian subcultures and it feels as if Affleck is enjoying the longer leash given that Argo sprawls across the globe with major sequences in at least three different countries.

Let's hear it for Hollywood... Tony Mendez meets
with Tinsel Town veterans to fill out the back story of Argo

As you probably know by know, Argo is a loose re-telling of the fabled “Canadian Caper” on 1979 in which six American consular staff members where smuggled out of the Canadian Embassy in Tehran during the height of the Iranian Hostage Crisis with the bold cover identities of being crew members for a science fiction film – entitled Argo.

Affleck centres the story around chief extractor Tony Mendez (played by Affleck himself) who has the somewhat gargantuan task of convincing not only Washington brass to let him move ahead with a plan that even he regards as ludicrous but also the stranded diplomats themselves, who are none to keen to put their lives on the line for a plan they don’t see as possibly working.

Fortunately the actors playing the diplomats are
more confident performers than their characters

The set up is rife with tension and the ongoing conflicts and cooperation between Mendez, the sequestered Americans, the American government, the Hollywood experts lending authenticity to the plan and the Canadian Ambassador (Victor Garber) allow for rich dramatic mining that is satisfyingly complex enough that it never needs to veer into melodrama. Even from as early as co-writing Good Will Hunting, Affleck has understood that its better to focus on the narrative and drama of interaction than to rely on gimmicky spectacle to get by. Yes, we're pretending Armageddon didn't happen. And Daredevil.

Of course, given the high stakes situation Argo isn’t just a talkfest and the all of that narrative development is complemented by tense sequences as the characters and their tenuous existence are put under threat of discovery by increasingly suspicious Iranian forces.

It’s worth noting that Affleck is a filmmaker at this point rather than a historian and though the mise en scene lovingly recreates the late 70s, Affleck does take considerable liberties with the facts. The role of the Canadian government in securing the diplomats’ freedom is almost completely overlooked in Argo and the original cut even implied that Canada ultimately took credit for the USA’s work. This has been minorly remedied with the current theatrical cut after it caused some consternation at the Toronto International Film Festival, but it is worth going in knowing you won’t be getting the full story.

Likewise, several of the tense sequences later in the film, in particular the airport sequence, are gross overstatements of how events actually unfolded.

I will give Affleck full credit here though. When confronted with these departures from fact he was very upfront about the role of a filmmaker in needing to make decisions about how events are depicted in a w ay that will be satisfying to audiences.

Anything to declare?

And it works. By the time the rescue is finally effected (sorry if that’s a spoiler), the tension is sky high and the relief at its eventual dissipation is elating.

If there’s one thing that disappointed me about Argo (and I am really nitpicking here) is that we don’t get much of a sense of the inner workings or motivations or the Iranians during this time. Argo is unashamedly a pro-American film, which may explain why the Canadians are so obscured, but its confusing for someone who was four months old at the time of the events as to why the Iranians are merely portrayed as villains when there’s enough info in the film to suggested there’s a broader context we’re just not allowed to spend any time with.

For all of that, I think Argo will be the one to watch come Oscar season (I’m tipping The Master for performances and Argo for writing/direction) and, presuming it wins, will absolutely deserve it.