ARGO

Ben Affleck restored Hollywood’s faith the moment he took the director’s chair. For Argo, his third film, he took a gamble, went bigger and completely different. In the end, his take on the Iran hostage crisis turned out to be a new direction for political film and an endlessly entertaining thriller. It is also the first self-examination of the power of movies in geopolitics, something Hollywood knew very early on, but never took to the mirror.

            The story of how the six American hostages were rescued from the Canadian embassy in Iran after the revolution of 1979 by Tony Mendez, a technical operations officer for the CIA, under the guise of being a film crew scouting locations was open for filming since 1997 when President Clinton declassified the story in honor of the CIA’s 50^th anniversary. But not even Master of Disguise: My Secret Life in the CIA, Mendez’s 1999 book detailing the account, drew much interest. 

            It wasn’t until 2007 that an article on Wired magazine entitled The Great Escape: How the CIA Used a Fake Sci-Fi Flick to Rescue Americans from Tehran caught Hollywood’s eye. It was bought up by George Clooney and Grant Heslov through their Smoke House banner on behalf of Warner Bros. and Affleck jumped on board early in 2011.  By September of that year, he began shooting in Los Angeles, with further shooting to be done in Istanbul.

            Maybe Argo was a film Affleck thought he needed to make or, maybe, he saw relevancy in the 1979 revolution to the present state of Iran but, whatever his inspiration, Affleck poured his soul into his first foray into international relations. He took his studies in Middle Eastern affairs and put Warner’s $44 million budget to good use, though the Academy ultimately snubbed him of a Best Director nomination, sending shock and outrage among other Oscar favorites like Quentin Tarantino.

            It was a curious path for Affleck, to be sure. Although a favorite guest of TV pundits, Affleck is, by Hollywood standards, relatively silent about politics. But international relations is but one of the many faces of Argo. If anything, the movie is in tune with Affleck’s apolitical public persona, sidestepping commentary and in-depth background to the Iranian Revolution beyond a brief mention of the role of the United States and Great Britain, with the help of the Shah, in the 1953 coup that led to the overthrowing of Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. The Shah’s own mixed legacy is also avoided. An opening narration mentions (not credits, and the distinction is important), Pahlavi’s push toward Westernization with photographs of women finding open doors in medical fields as evidence. It then states as fact that this newfound liberation enraged the clerical population, which revolted and abolished the Iranian monarchy and established Ruhollah Khomeini as Supreme Leader, while the Shah, dying of cancer, found asylum in the United States. A sign of Affleck’s fairness, however, is his mention of other causes leading to the Iranian Revolution, including the Shah’s life of decadence while millions of his subjects died of malnourishment. With unusual subtlety, the opening narration juxtapositions both contradictory claims, the Shah’s corruption and his (albeit complicated) support for women’s liberation, without transition or comment. In the end, the question is whether the Shah’s push toward Westernization was the result of a genuine desire to move the country forward or the move of puppet under the guidance of empirical powers. Argo simply presents both truths as probable causes for a national uprising.

            Even the costume designer Jacqueline West discovered when researching garments, “The women of Iran had been wearing Western clothes, because the shah had been encouraging it, but they all had to go back under the black chador, which became known as the ‘flag of the revolution’. But they were running out of fabric in Tehran, so women were dyeing tablecloths, bedspreads, and over-dyeing print fabrics with black.”

            Argo is above pointing fingers, its opening narration and photos serving the purpose of a newsreel. The main body of the film reads quite differently, though, being obviously pro-American without being anti-Iranian in the typical propagandistic sense. Certainly, with the storm then brewing over the dismissal of torture in Zero Dark Thirty, Argo takes a nobler path. At best, the film’s portrayal of Iranians grants them an otherness that to naïve, if well-meaning, Americans presents a shock. They are often filmed in angry mobs, such as the opening scene when they storm the US Embassy in Tehran (a scene modeled on real pictures), or when they swarm the car carrying the American hostages, or when one of the Americans posing as a member of the film crew unintentionally provokes the ire of a shopkeeper at the bazaar.

            Affleck used close-ups for the Iranians seen individually or in small groups, lingering on their sullen looks, hinting at the danger of angering them. The revolutionary guard at the airport, for instance, looks more threatening than he would without forced close-ups, but what his scene does handle well is the language barrier, which creates deeper panic to the hostages attempted to flee and the audience. Affleck is smart to minimize the use of subtitles, even when a hostage fluent in Farsi takes over the conversation, and makes great use of the verbal confusion.

 If this smacks of xenophobia it’s important to remember that the perception of Iranians for most, if not all, of the six American hostages held in Tehran was based on what the media reported and the initial seizure of the embassy from which they escaped.

Tehran itself is depicted as a city of dread and terror, with lifeless bodies dangling from construction cranes in public view. Tony Mendez’s arrival in the city makes for one of the movie’s most unforgettable moments. The brief stretch shows some of Affleck’s best editing yet as he cross-cuts between the horrors of the streets and the controlled fear evident on Mendez’s face.

The film’s attitude toward the revolution was best described by American diplomat John Limbert, “Argo highlights the negative attitudes that the two countries have held toward each other for decades. Its brief introduction attempts to provide historical context behind the embassy takeover, but the film does not convey the prevailing Iranian sense of grievance — real or imagined — that led to the 1979 attack, and to the emotional response in the streets of Tehran . . . More than three decades later, the same atmosphere of suspicion, mistrust, and festering wounds dominates Iranian-American relations.”

True enough, the reaction to the film in Iran was mixed at best with the kindest words being mere tolerance for the film. The most eloquent critic was Masoumeh Ebteker who became the mouth-piece for the revolutionary guards. All things considered, her response to the film was composed and collected, writing only that Argo didn’t, “provide sufficient resources to the real reasons behind the event. Now, retrospectively, when we look at the takeover, many former students think that a 444-day hostage-taking was too long. And perhaps if circumstances would have been different at the time, maybe events would have unfolded differently.”
Mark Lijek, one of the six rescued hostages, who had studied Farsi for six months before arriving in Iran in 1979 would later offer some insight into the motivation behiond the revolt and storming of the embassy. He realizes the revolt was complicated, saying that when he was first offered the position in 1978, thing in iran were already "pretty bad." But the core reason behind the attack of the embassy was America's protection of the Shan.
"Mainly the protest was because America had chosen to admit the Shah for medical treatment," Lijek said. "The consular building, where Cora [his wife and fellow hostage] and I worked, was at least five minutes from the main chancery building and had its own door onto the street. The people who broke in forgot about us or initially didn't much care."
For his own part, Lijek thought the early scenes of the attack on the embassy were vivid and emotive, striking close to home, "It was almost the first time I'd thought deeply about what it must have been like for the 50 or so Americans in the main building."

The most surprising comments came from Saeed Kamali Dehghan in The Guardian, claiming that as an Iranian, Argo helped him see another side of the story.

“What troubles me most is how the film reminds me of Iran's history, of how a group of my countrymen betrayed Iran, took a group of people hostage and brought pain and trauma to another country for 444 days, “ he said. “For years at school I was taught that the hostage-taking of American diplomats was an act of resistance, heroism on behalf of revolutionaries showing their anger at US interference in Iran's internal affairs.

Argo suddenly wipes out all that revolutionary rhetoric and reminds me of the other side of the story. It shows the yellow ribbons in the streets of Washington DC, the anguish and pain caused by the incident, and it makes me regret what happened more than 30 years ago.

Affleck's film may depict an Iran I hardly recognize but it is a bitter reminder of how young revolutionaries and their leaders failed their country, putting Iran in a crisis that has had consequences for its people to this day.In reaction to the film, some of the hostage-takers have defended what happened after 1979. But Argo should make them reflect and at least face up to the reality.”

And yet, Affleck does present another side of Iran, but there’s a catch. The respectability of Iranians is measured by their loyalty to the American cause. Sahar (Sheila Vand), Ken Taylor’s housemaid, gradually becomes aware of the true identity to the Ambassador’s houseguests. She proves herself worthy of rising above vilification when she risks her life by concealing their identity to a revolutionary guard.

This interaction does open up a valid point of discussion, however. Why did so many women defend Ayatollah Khomeini after he revoked the freedom granted to them by the Shah? Such questions are beyond the scope of this movie, but they do provide an interesting subtext to Sahar’s decision.

As Jian Ghomeshi said writing for Globe and Mail, “Would it be instructive to learn more about why young Iranian people were resentful of the United States housing the dictatorial Shah they’d worked to overthrow? Might it be helpful to explain that not all Iranians were Islamic formalists who supported Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini? Or that the revolution was a popular one that originally included liberal democrats, feminists, nationalists, socialists and workers – a revolution that was co-opted by the mullahs and extremists to lead to the Islamic Republic that we know today? Even if the film’s scope is reductive in its treatment of the revolution, the individual Iranian characters themselves might have been written with a lighter hand, leaving room for nuance. But Argo is a popcorn thriller that doesn’t sweat these details. If there’s any attention to nuance, it’s not about Iranians.”

By contrast, the scenes set on American soil have tranquility and a sense of national unity for a country pulling itself together for the safe return of the hostages. Within our borders, serenity is disturbed only by family dramas, like Tony Mendez’s separation from his wife and his distance from his son. The government offices run with chaos, panic, and flying tempers that were undoubtedly present when news of the hostages hit home. But the officials are, in the end, hushed by the patriotic finale of the kind that would have made John Ford smile.

All in all, however, Argo is a commendably balanced film, free of overt nationalism or dehumanization of the enemy. More could have been made, perhaps, of its take on geopolitics, but that is just one the film’s facets. It’s at least as much a comment on the power of the movies in the real world. It celebrates that power and credits it for helping to resolve the hostage crisis peacefully. But it also embraces the movies as a unifying force, temporarily turning the Iranian revolutionary guards into harmless grinning saps, swept away by the magic of cinema and the fake movie’s ludicrous script. Even though the narrow escape at the airport was the movie’s invention for the sake of suspense, it was under the guise of a film crew that Mendez was able to sneak the hostages out. In both Affleck’s rendition of the mission and in its real-life counterpart a case could be made that it was cinema’s universal appeal that saved the day. Argo is, then, more of a cheer for Hollywood than America.

It’s an affectionate embrace of Hollywood, even with the movie’s unflattering depiction of the town after its glamour had long vanished. Hollywood’s second golden age had ended suddenly when ripping-off Star Wars became the new trend. Argo offers few hints of Hollywood’s glittery past, representing its current state by the crumbling letters of the iconic Hollywood sign that once loomed over a dream factory. It’s an anachronism (the sign was restored in 1978) that serves a function. The state of Hollywood that led to the sign’s decay hadn’t changed. The city below was still a land of studios stocked to their necks with ridiculous costumes and piles of unproduced trashy scripts. When it came to science fiction cinema, the Spielbergs and the Lucases were few and far between. “Argo” itself, an erotic tale of space travel, was just one of many in an unfortunate trend.

And yet, there was a use even for this kind of celluloid trash. In fact, the very nature of the fake film may have helped the plan. American produced sci-fi, silly as much of it was, translated far more easily in foreign markets and nothing would have worked better for distracting airport guards than storyboards with improbable spaceships.

Elsewhere, the garish colors of 70s Hollywood and the brutality overseas seem like irreconcilable bedfellows. In the film’s best moment, Affleck cross-cuts the violence in Iran and threats by militant leaders with a press luncheon for the fake movie, attended by dozens of oddballs and thespians in bizarre outfits. This is also the most vivid reflection of the movie’s duality from political thriller to spy spoof. The change is marked as soon as the location changes to Hollywood. Affleck made a wise decision by making John Goodman (playing make-up artist John Chambers) the first actor we see in the new locale. Goodman’s presence is so often a marker of warm self-parodying humor it feels like a cut into a different film entirely after the harrowing tale we’ve just witnessed. Indeed, the Hollywood scenes move in a different sphere than the rest of the film, but Affleck’s cross-cut scene brings them together for one electrifying moment, a roller-coaster of emotions where the horrors of Tehran seem to accent Arkin’s dry wit half-way around the world. But the world of phony movies and silly masks will have to come to the world of very real danger and, by the end of Argo, will have turned, as Siegel and Chambers observe, a potential tragedy into a farce.

Affleck and Jacqueline West were careful, however, not to extend Hollywood’s tackiness with that of the period, which they chose to tone down.

“Costume designer Jacqueline West shared with me the goal of not having the 70s thing upstage the movie,” Affleck said. “I didn’t want to have just fur coats and bell bottoms, Shaft, to communicate the period. It’s a period that could very easily be exploited for comedy, so you have to be really ginger about what you do. There’s a laugh waiting behind every haircut.”

But the most endearing quality of Affleck’s Hollywood is its ability to kid itself. John Chambers (Goodman) knows how over the top many of the movies his talent went to were. During a walk through the set of a particularly dumb-looking make-up extravaganza Chambers takes an amicable nudge at one of the actors behind his own mask, “If he could act he wouldn’t be playing a minotaur.”

Lester Siegel, the cantankerous pulp producer played with very funny verve by Alan Arkin, is well aware that his glory days have passed, sarcastically mentioning that he’s up for a Lifetime Achievement Award. But both Chambers and Siegel stayed on in the city that nurtured their art because they love their work even if, in Siegel’s case, it cost him a relationship with his daughters. They see the dreck their talents are put toward, but love the craft and the town thrives on it. They accept the “Argo” mission largely because their skills are finally being put to a worthy cause.

Argo is Affleck’s most unique film to date and, in some ways, his greatest. Its liberty with the facts of the case is noted, and the offense taken by both Great Britain and New Zealand at the false suggestion that both embassies turned the hostages away is not unjustified. Great Britain had, indeed, sheltered them until the embassy was deemed unsafe and the hostages moved.

Arthur Wyatt, the British charge d’affiars in Tehran was quick to express his dismay, “The Americans who had escaped from their embassy fetched up at our summer compound in northern Tehran, and I think they stayed there for one night before moving on to the Canadians. If it had been discovered we were helping them I can assure you we'd all have been for the high jump. We were living on our nerves and under constant threat. The revolutionary regime ignored all the rules of diplomatic protection and the Vienna Convention. When they over-ran our embassy too, I said to one of them: 'You can't do this; we're diplomats.' He just waved his machine pistol around and replied: 'This is what matters.'" ”

 Similarly, Richard Sewell, second secretary at the New Zealand embassy risked his own life driving the hostages to the airport, a fact the film, it should be mentioned, neither confirms nor denies; the ride to the airport is jumped over.

Affleck himself was critical of the movie’s deceptions and expressed regret over the treatment of Great Britain and New Zealand, saying, “I struggled with this long and hard because it casts Britain and New Zealand in a way that is not totally fair. But I was setting up a situation where you needed to get a sense that these six people had nowhere else to go. It does not mean to diminish anyone."

Strangely, though, inaccuracies are forgivable, if not part of the point, in a movie about Hollywood’s fabrication of facts. Argo celebrates the reality created by cinema rather than the true reality which inspires it. Argo is not the first movie to claim its basis on a true story. It is the first to acknowledge the necessity of altering facts not within the film itself, but by its very nature, a story about the movies ability to transform reality.

Of all people, Jimmy Carter described the best way to approach the film’s take on reality, “Well, let me say first of all, it’s a great drama. And I hope it gets the Academy Award for best film because I think it deserves it. The other thing that I would say was that 90 percent of the contributions to the ideas and the consummation of the plan was Canadian. And the movie gives almost full credit to the American CIA. And with that exception, the movie is very good.”

If it does nothing else, its shift from reality makes for great entertainment. The smooth departure from the airport is hardly the stuff of good cinema. Their race against the clock as their identities are discovered, however, makes for a rousing climax.

“There is a catharsis when the plane takes off. To create that in cinematic form requires a lot of amp-up and drama to replicate what the house guests might have felt at that moment,” said screenwriter Chris Terrio.

 Lester Siegel was an invented character, but without him we would have been denied one of Alan Arkin’s most delightful performances. Mendez was neither separated from his wife nor reported to be having marital problems of any sort at the time of the mission, but the backstory gives Affleck’s Mendez an emotive hook.

To get Argo done Affleck had to sell the story and the facts of it, as they stood, weren’t going to convince the heads at Warner Bros.

“It’s hard to make a movie and you wanna jam everything that’s possible in there,” he said. “Particularly given, one of the really nice things about this movie was the spirit of camaraderie and brotherhood and companionhood that developed between the United States and Canada.”

He had to change the reality of the situation. Tony Mendez would know what he went through, that was the only way he was able to get the hostages out of Iran.