Somebody had to say it.
Last week Argo won awards for best picture and best director from BAFTA, the British equivalent of the Oscars, bringing its haul so far this awards season to quite an impressive level. Affleck also recently snagged the coveted DGA director's award, a usual predictor for who will win the Oscar. Except in this case Affleck was not even nominated for the Oscar. Were they wrong? Was Affleck unfairly snubbed? Not in the least. Be warned that what follows contains spoilers, or as I prefer to call them, time-saving tips. But with the Oscars only a week away, if you haven't seen Argo yet, you probably aren't going to. And if you have, here is why it should not be your favorite film of the year:
Anyone who has seen Ben Affleck's inexplicably lauded third attempt behind the director's chair is quite familiar with the title of this article. For those who haven't it is a line uttered by Alan Arkin, who plays the producer of a nonexistent film the CIA is using as a cover to extricate six diplomats stranded in Tehran, Iran, after the United States Embassy was seized by students and militants in support of the Iranian revolution in 1979. Argo is the name of that non-existent film, and during a fundraising party Arkin is repeatedly pressured to reveal the meaning behind the title, and in a final exhaustive display he barks "Arrr go f#ck yourself" at the pesky reporter. It's not terribly funny, but it produces the expected chuckle from audiences. Unfortunately the line is repeated throughout the film, at least five more times, in a sad attempt to squeeze every last guffaw possible from an audience already bombarded with forced, manufactured drama; but more on that later. There is a rule in comedy that says a line should never hang on longer than necessary, that it should never be overused. Well Argo is not even a comedy. And I bring this up as one of many examples throughout the film that betray its screenplay as stale, unimaginative writing. Smart audiences will see right through the construct of this film, and heed the warnings that follow, to just stay home and read the Wikipedia article on the real life "Canadian Caper" that this film is based on; it's much more exciting.
Argo is a classic example of missed opportunities, combined with a tendency to take its audience for granted. I believe Ben Affleck is genuine in his desire to make good films. His humility at the Golden Globes this year, when he forgot to mention producers George Clooney and Grant Heslov, and dispatched his wife Jennifer Garner to mention them, was captured in a welcome and refreshing candid cutaway to his face, where he could be seen whispering their names under his breath, his eyes big and fixed on Garner. For my money his first two films, Gone Baby Gone and The Town were not very good but they did hint at a flair for direction, with the latter being a slight improvement over the former. No doubt when he set his sights on Argo, he saw it as his chance for Oscar glory, or at least the peniultimate step. A recently declassified tale that touches on current hot-button issues such as Middle Eastern tension, United States foreign policy, terrorism, and U.S.-Iran relations, all wrapped up in a cleverly meta film-within-a-film conceit does seem a perfect recipe for award recognition, a self-reflexive social studies lesson from Hollywood's new golden boy. It must have sounded perfect to him. The only problem, however, was that the real life rescue took place largely without a hitch. That means that dramatic moments would have to be created -- you know -- what Hollywood is supposed to do, but also be seamless and believable within the context of the situation. Yes, the success of this film would rightly be determined by the screenplay; it needed to be airtight and spark with ingenuity. Which is all the more saddening when you discover it is anything but, and a near-complete misfire.
There are two ways this film could have been approached. The first could have been from the intimate perspective of the six diplomats. See, after they had escaped the embassy they sought sanctuary in the home of the Canadian ambassador, and held-up there for months while unbeknownst to them thousands of miles away exfiltration expert Tony Mendez (Affleck) was concocting this far-fetched scheme to rescue them. The ambassador had an Iranian housekeeper, whose allegiance the film actually hinted at building into an issue. Six people are stuck in a house inside a hostile foreign country, as the hostility gradually infiltrates, creeping and insidious, and each diplomat begins to lose faith and trust in each other, wondering who will betray their identity, or who will be the first to crack under pressure. Alfred Hitchcock would have directed the heck out of this conceit, him being a master of formalism, a master of tension in the most intimate places. My mind reels at the possibilities. Not that I expected Affleck to deliver anything close to the master's vision, but it does seem like an approach that should have been welcome to the table.
The other way would be to go completely over-the-top, with an explosive, action-packed popcorn flick, which presents its own challenges, and which would need to have a full commitment from all involved to push every last dramatic envelope. Not surprisingly, Affleck opts for a strange, status quo mish-mash of both approaches, and winds up with a big film not about very big things, but with grand strokes of ambition and desperation that only paves the way for senselessness.
The first hour suffers from an endless set-up. A great device used by storytellers, especially screenwriters, is "in medias res," which is Latin for "in the middle of things," and which goes a long way towards involving the audience. Every scene, and every plot point, has a beginning, a middle, and an end, even if all three are not expressly detailed. The purpose of this is that if an audience is introduced in the midst of an already unfolding chain of events they will be more entertained, or engrossed, because at the same time they are trying to figure out what is coming, they are also trying to figure out what has come before, like a puzzle, where the story itself is in certain respects an equal to the intellect trying to decipher it. Restlessness ensues when an audience feels it is smarter than the film, and constantly beginning scenes at, or even before their beginning, fans these flames. In Tehran Affleck shows the entire storm on the embassy. In the United States, Affleck shows Mendez attending some state department meetings, with close-ups of his face as the plan gestates, and then a few failed attempts at convincing his colleagues that the plan will work. That is followed by a trip to Hollywood, where an entire fake film production is undertaken in a condensed fifteen minute segment that feels removed from the rest of the film. Certainly audiences have no idea what goes into staging the production of a major motion picture, and as a side note, Argo commits the usual trespass of condescension in films like this, showing whatever it wants to, appealing to its own authority in the matter. Normally this kind of thing occurs in a film that actually shows a film crew filming something, where the camera suddenly cuts away, becoming three or four different cameras, miraculously capturing the sound of six different people speaking. That's not how it works. And even if the scenes Argo chooses to show comprise the extent of what was necessary, it's all just a means to an end. Obviously the film gets greenlit, and by this point I just wished they'd get to it already. But Alan Arkin needs to justify his Best Supporting Actor nomination by chewing up some scenery, and "Arrr go f#ck yourself" needs to be introduced. And the film needs to be opened up as much as possible to give the allure of covering a lot of ground, which Affleck covers without throwing up a single obstacle.
Once Mendez arrives in Tehran things start to heat up, but here is where screenwriter Chris Terrio goes to the other extreme, creating scenes of laughable drama, which Affleck directs with a completely straight face. First Mendez must overcome doubts from the people he is trying to rescue. It matters not to Affleck and Terrio that they just spun these wheels inside a government building about twenty minutes earlier; it's clear they believe that changing up the rhetoric is all that is necessary, from "this is the only option," to "trust me, I'm a human being with a family." Hmmm, is there a chance the diplomats decide not to go through with the rescue? Nope. So, let's get on with it. After convincing them he is the man for the job, much is built up around a "location scout" that will take place with Iranian government officials, which is just an excuse to get the "film crew" out in the open so that pictures can be taken of them, because, as Affleck continues to remind the audience throughout the film, the hostiles in the embassy are frantically taping together shredded images of diplomats for absolutely no discernable reason. The location scout of course doesn't go off without a hitch, because of a photograph that one of them takes of a merchant in the town bazaar, causing a huge scene where the photographer is accused of taking it without permission. Cut to the Canadian ambassador asking Mendez how they did? Mendez just shakes his head. And so should we.
About forty minutes from the end of this film, the actual rescue attempt gets underway. The evening before, the U.S. government pulls the plug on the whole thing out of fear that if found out it would ruin their image. Of course nobody thought of this image problem during the months of planning. Mendez is crushed. He returns to his hotel and smokes and drinks himself into a stupor until he realizes that this is something he must go through with, because gosh darnit, we're heading into the film's third act. He calls his buddy in the government and tells him he is doing it anyway, forgetting of course that he does not even have the return plane tickets in his possession, prompting a far-fetched scene at the airport ticket counter where the registration agent tells Mendez that his tickets are not in the system, crosscut with Bryan Cranston back home screaming at people to "get Jimmy Carter on the phone," and then back to the airport where Mendez tells the agent to "check it again," because five seconds more is all that is needed when the United States government calls you up the night before and refuses to do something. This did not happen in real life. And neither did the film's final set piece, its most grevious abuse of dramatic license, where Iranian police figure the whole thing out (those pesky taped together photos again) and chase the plane down the runway, guns drawn while screaming over the air resistance, because you know, why bother telephoning the air traffic tower? Argo f#ck yourself" indeed.
Perhaps you are reading this and feeling that I am being nitpicky, that all Hollywood films take dramatic license, and invent situations that never occured when dramatizing true events. That is certainly true. But regardless of whether the things that happen in Argo are true to real life or not, they still deserve a degree of credibility within the context of the story being told. Affleck and Terrio had their work cut out for them, as Argo surely required some embellishment; but most of the time films adapted or inspired from true events actually have an event to begin with. Below are two of the final paragraphs from the Wikipedia article about the "Canadian Caper" on which this film is based:
A mistake was made in dating the visas. Whoever prepared them was unaware that the Iranian year begins in late March. One of the Canadian embassy officers spotted the mistake while checking the documents. Fortunate to the inclusion of extra passports, Mendez was able to insert new visa stamps with dates based on the Iranian calendar.
As the weeks passed, the Americans read and played games, mainly cards and Scrabble, while Taylor made efforts to fly out non-essential personnel. Taylor sent others on fake errands to establish erratic patterns and to case airport procedures. Tension rose as suspicious telephone calls and other activity indicated that their concealment may have been discovered.
The first paragraph is the only instance of drama the real life caper afforded, and it is better than anything concocted by Affleck and Terrio. But it requires some degree of intelligence to flesh out, on the part of the writer and director, and audience. The second paragraph also hints at some dramatic avenues the filmmakers could have explored, with the diplomats leaving the house without the protection of Mendez, but it mostly speaks to what actually went on among the diplomats while waiting to be rescued. They read books and played games.
The kernel of truth in this whole affair can be easily reduced to the time-tested stranger in a strange land set-up. From there, a gripping, emotionally riveting film could have been constructed. Argo did not need such huge, overreaching flourishes, and Affleck did not need to chase the story down the rabbit hole. The film did not need to be larger than life. Affleck could have played the Canadian ambassador, or the director of the embasy, and the film never had to leave Tehran. Mendez could have arrived with his grand plan, but because there would have been so much time spent developing the characters and situations of the diplomats, the doubts at the efficiency of the rescue plan would have resonated more. Affleck could have mined some real truths, building tension without betraying the story. Instead everyone involved colluded to take a real life footnote in history and make it as fake as possible. This fact is not in-and-of-itself enough to impeach Argo; its true offense is how obvious it is about it. Their compromise, for the sake of pandering to the box office, and to The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, is not one that anyone should be willing to accept. Their intuition was right to not include Affleck among the honored Best Director nominees. But this omission seems to be currently swept up in a backlash, where awards are piling up left and right in its favor. It's a fact which leads me to believe either nobody is getting it, or that we are just living in a world with much lower cinematic expectations than I thought.
In that case, Argo f#ck ourselves.
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