Reviews, Reflections, Recollections

Just a blog filled with my usual irreverent observations about life and all that.

Name:
Location: Singapore, Singapore

enjoys reading and is perpetually trying to find space for all of the books he owns in his room. He also enjoys films, and in particular, going to the cinema. Although a self-confessed trivia buff, reports that he is an insufferable know-it-all are completely unfounded. He enjoys a nice glass of tipple now and then, be it a pint of beer, a glass of wine or a single malt whisky.

Thursday, March 16, 2006

Syriana and Others

I went to see Syriana today with Damien, having heard mixed things about it - that it was an interesting examination of oil and the Middle East, and that it was very covulated and complex plot wise. I wanted to reserve judgement seeing that films about the Middle East often lapse into cliche, but was keen to catch it given my interest in the region having done a paper in Middle East politics.

The movies had several interweaving plot strands - that of two oil companies who are undergoing investigation after a shady merger, a veteran CIA operative who finds himself abandoned by the agency after an operation goes wrong, the power struggle between two heir apparents as an old Emir is ailing and the most touching of all, that of a Pakistani migrant worker who is out of work in the Gulf and how he is slowly brought into the confidence of radical Islamists.

All in all, without giving too much of the plot away, it was a very refreshing and rather brutally honest look at the Middle East region, particularly given the themes of American independence in oil and American security concerns. It outlines, albeit in rather black and white terms, that American operates on a level of stark hypocrisy, preaching the goals of democratization, women's rights, civil liberties on the one hand, whilst manouvering against any elements that threaten US Oil and Security interests on the other. This is made most explicitly clear in the movie by the cynicism of showing oil barons who are simultaneously members of the Free Iran Organization. Given US involvement in the region in the 20th century, the film hardly does an injustice.

The most interesting plot line in my mind however, was that of the Pakistani migrant worker. It highlights one of the fundamental problems that face many Middle Eastern regimes, namely a combination of ailing economies (Saudi Arabia's per capita GNP has fallen from 12,000 to 6,000 US dollars per head), specifically rising unemployment, and an enormously large portion of the population aged between 16 and 25. There is certainly a fear that youth, disillusioned with the lack of opportunities, will be far likelier to fall into any means of finding a form of stable identity, making them all the more susceptible to the message of radical islamists. Migrant itinerant labour that are not granted any of the social benefits or even the remote likelihood of citizenship pose an equal or great threat as represented by the character in the movie who is a Pakistani migrant oil worker.

One interesting aspect of the movie was the parallel that was drawn between George Clooney's CIA character and the Pakistani suicide bomber. One of the senior shady figures dealing dirty in the oil business tells Clooney that he has been nothing but a puppet, used by others for goals which he was not even aware of. It is thus interesting that he meets a similar end to the suicide bomber - the parallel - that the both of them were used, albeit by different sides - is striking.

Syriana is a complex portrait of the modern Middle East situation that sometimes verges close to caricature. The elements - from corrupt big oil companies, to CIA geopolitical maneouvering, to the whole stereotype of rich Arabs living it up and squandering petro-dollars are all there. It is perhaps forgivable to a degree that everything is generalized, if only because the ultimate goal is to paint a wider picture of US involvement in the region as a whole. In that, I personally feel the film is much needed and a welcome addition indeed.

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