12-14-05, 9:47 am

Syriana Directed by Stephen Gaghan

The political thriller Syriana is on my list of the top ten best movies of 2005. This brilliantly produced and powerfully written film gives us a rare and challenging peak at the politics of the Middle East and the oil interests that drive them. Some critics have described this movie as a complicated film, but don't be fooled into avoiding it.

The story is pretty easy to follow. Bob Barnes (George Clooney) is an over-the-hill CIA operative who desperately wants the security and serenity of a Washington desk job. But he has to do one more job to get it. He must to hire a hit man with apparent connections to Iran named Mussawi (Mark Strong) to assassinate the heir apparent of a tiny Persian Gulf emirate, Prince Nasir Al-Subaai (Alexander Siddig). Barnes is a rogue known to exploit his sources for personal profit. Despite this greedy streak, however, he has never betrayed the agenda of his bosses in the belly of the Washington intelligence beast. This time, however, his plans don’t work out so smoothly, and he needs to find out why in order to save his skin. Prince Nasir is an enlightened despot. Trained in Western universities, Nasir presents a progressive image of capitalism. He wants to use his country’s oil wealth to benefit its people. While he believes in strategic capitalism that maximizes profits, he also plans to create a parliament, provide full civil rights (including gender equality), and eliminate autocracy when he ascends to power. He understands that the US and other Western imperial countries have long dominated the Middle East by installing friendly governments (by military invasion, assassinations, economic pressure and occupation) to do their bidding. Nasir believes that a politically and economically united Middle East can end the Western stranglehold on the region, create a competitive and efficient capitalism, radically alter the political climate toward democracy, and head off the religious extremists that gain credibility from the present dynamic of Western domination. Additionally, he recognizes that oil is growing scarcer and its shrinking economic benefits must be used immediately to promote diverse economic development. Bryan Woodman (Matt Damon), a liberal-minded energy speculator and economic adviser to Nasir, echoes Nasir’s lofty goals. Woodman also has a progressive, hopeful vision of what capitalism can do. He encourages the prince to make a pipeline deal with Iran in order to ship his oil more efficiently and increase profits. Woodman urges negotiations with the Chinese and other countries, rather than just the United States, in order to decrease dependence on just one business partner. Woodman supports Nasir’s desire to promote economic development other than oil and believes that his political goals are sincere. He even describes Nasir as 'the next Mossadeq,' the progressive Iranian president deposed by the CIA in 1954 and replaced with the US-friendly despot Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, whose brutality encouraged the rise of the fundamentalist movement led by the Ayatollah Khomeini. More than good politics, however, Nasir’s agenda is good business.

But good for some isn’t good for others. There is darker, more sinister side to oil capitalism. Jimmy Pope (Chris Cooper) is a Texas oil tycoon who is also interested in maximizing his profits. To do so, however, he doesn’t seek to enhance competition, but to minimize it by merging with another major oil company in order to consolidate their Middle East holdings and squeeze out others. But in order to get approval for the merger from the federal government, the company must allow an independent audit of its business dealings in order to prove that the deal isn’t the result of corruption, collusion or other illegal business practices.

Bennett Holiday (Jeffrey Wright), a young ambitious lawyer, conducts the audit. It soon becomes clear that his real role isn’t to unearth corruption but to cover it up by handing the Justice Department a 'fall guy' or two for the sake of appearing to combat corporate corruption. After Bennett arranges with Pope to finger low-level corporate bureaucrat Danny Dalton (Tim Blake Nelson), Dalton delivers the best lines of the movie. Corruption, it turns out, is what makes businesses succeed. Corruption maximizes profits. It turns investments into wealth and power. It makes capitalism work. (Just ask Tom DeLay.)

Interwoven with this drama is the story of migrant Pakistani oil workers. Work visas for one group have just been withdrawn because the company they work for has been sold. The workers are forced to either find new jobs quickly or leave the country. One young man, Wasim Khan (Mazhar Munir) is desperate to stay, but doesn’t know Arabic and has few connections. After being beaten by police for talking in line at the immigration office and without any prospects, Wasim turns to an Islamic school where food and camaraderie replace the hardships of unemployment and uncertainty. After initial hesitancy, Wasim becomes captivated by the religious ideals of his teachers and learns that the source of Middle Eastern troubles lie not just with the Western intervention but also with those regimes that corrupt Islamic values by siding with the West. The next logical step for him is holy war.

Ultimately, it appears that Nasir’s dreams of democracy and efficient, competitive capitalism aren’t in the best interest of the United States. At least that’s the opinion of Jimmy Pope, his oil tycoon friends who dominate Washington's agenda, and the autocrats who run the oil states. Let’s face it, Nasir’s goals require continuous planned social investments, precluding huge profits for a few robber barons. To avoid the 'tragedy' of losing profits an dpwoer to Nasir, he must be removed by any means necessary. Will the corrupt monopoly capitalists win in the end? What can stop the designs of the powerful?

If corruption, monopolization, and violence are the bases of capitalist success, could Nasir’s vision ever be realized? Pope and the oil monopolies have no vision for the future. They fight over the dwindling profits; they take and never give back. Indeed, in Jimmy Pope’s version of capitalism, his profit motive is said to be identical with our national interests. In exchange, all we have to put up with war, suicide bombers, environmental degradation and corporate domination of our lives. Is this the kind of system we want to live under?

Syriana provides no explicit alternative to these two faces of capitalism. If the movie’s creators are correct and the benevolent capitalists can’t stand up to the evil capitalists, then we desperately need an alternative.

This film is full of powerful performances and wonderfully developed characters. It packs a mean political punch, but is also very entertaining and moving. It is based on the book See No Evil, by Robert Baer, a former CIA agent who specialized in Middle East affairs. You can expect to learn a lot about how oil dominates US foreign policy, but also about the struggles within Middle Eastern countries to chart a path away from the rock and the hard place of Western domination and fundamentalist theocracy.



--Reach Joel Wendland at jwendland@politicalaffairs.net.