Join the dots

Syriana is a fairly serious film looking at the effect of the oil industry on various characters. There is no scenario building; few exposition scenes; no helpful mood music. The minimal style forces the viewer to pick up the plot where they can, as if they are watching a soap unfolding from the middle.

We don’t know George Clooney is a dodgy CIA agent when we first see his first scene in Tehran. We see him walking away from a missile for cash trade, after which the purchaser’s car explodes. He doesn't look back - so we assume he is a dodgy agent. You get the idea.

This style of film works well for simple genres. Slasher movies are a good example. The question is always in which order the teens will die horribly. Students of the accepted slasher canon can quickly match the stereotypes, enjoy the twists and rate the movie. But that’s because the director knows the audience has seen ten similar movies within memory. These films push the boulder downhill – they do little or no creative work and just play with ideas that are already out there.

Syriana is not so simple. There is no back catalogue of Middle East / Oil industry / Political Intrigue movies I can think of. Yet the characters are familiar enough. We have the weak Emir, who looks astoundingly like a Saudi king. We have the earnest prince, and his half wit brother. We have a dogged lawyer, a naive Middle East analyst, an evil Washington fixer and a young-Muslim-destined-to-fall-prey-to-fundamentalists.

But hold on a moment. Where are these stereotypes from? How do I understand what is going on? Sadly it’s in the news. The news now works with so many half completed templates and join the dots references that we have all built a battery of stereotypes just to finish off the work that the journalists don’t deliver. Indeed it is not the films fault that we are more comfortable watching docu-soaps than being presented with a fully investigated story.

Let’s take a current example of a government minister who left her husband due to his financial concerns.

1. Labour minister => must be a liar.
2. Husband doing business in Italy => must be corrupt.
3. They lived together => they must both be involved.
4. Party threatened => require spin.
5. Print “Separation of convenience”
6. Next news item

Its a fair cop, take her away. Every inference is simply based on previous vaguely cobbled together cynical inferences. You may think the government would wish to intervene and help out a (possibly) innocent minister. Not really – this inference engine is mainly of their own making. Straight from their mouths, to your brain, without any cogs being engaged. That’s how they like it. The media have just become the pipe for feeding this process.

I really don't want my mind to work this way, yet when watching the film in the cinema the whole thing seems natural. Why do I know that these Muslims are in a Mudrassa? I’ve never even seen one. I have been programmed to accept that a vulnerable Muslim must necessarily become a suicide bomber when things go wrong. In a moment, a bearded man will ask him to join the real struggle – ah, there we go. Where will he get the munitions? Oh yeah, there is one left over from scene one. Ties up nicely. Whats for dinner?