Where were you when the American hostages were taken in Iran? Well, we don't remember either and perhaps many of you hadn't been born yet. It was kind of a big deal. What we do remember very well is Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind and how the end of the seventies gave birth to a science fiction revolution which had been prematurely aborted somewhere around 1973 and that's still going strong today. We do seem to recall the yellow ribbons and Ted Koppel on Nightline.
We (well most of us) had never heard of Ayatollahs before 1979
Argo marks Ben Affleck's first major foray into directing and also gave him an opportunity to showcase and older, perhaps wiser version of his typical leading man role. It's hard not to recall Armageddon and Pearl Harbor and cringe at how stiff and silly he looked back then as leading man. And who can forget Ben-Lo (the brief pairing of Ben with Jennifer Lopez)? But remarkably this movie did help us forget the past - except for the past being featured in the plot. And what of that; did Ben get the story right? We think he did get it and even did so in a balanced fashion - providing lot's of interesting insights as well as both sides of of the story to some extent. Although as the movie progressed and the tension built up, the Revolutionary Guard become ever more two-dimensional bad guy villains.
This movie was interesting not merely because of the history it told - e.g. the 6 hostages who had escaped and who were spirited out of the country in a daring, yet secret CIA rescue - it was interesting in that it was Science Fiction that helped save those six diplomats. Imagine that.
Inside Argo (making the movie about pretending to make a movie)
So, the movie within a movie is a little like Inception of course but this is based on reality. Why did the Iranians let these guy go? Well, most of the movie gets wrapped around the clock-ticking tension as to whether or not they get on the plane before the revolutionaries get wise as to what's going on - but the pivotal scene of the movie is when the refugees break out their storyboards in Customs and begin explaining to the guards what the movie they're making is all about. And then, we begin to see the universal appeal of Science Fiction as a story-telling mechanism that transcends cultures. The guards while listening to the plot and looking at the drawings can't help but to identify with parts of the story and want to become a part of something a little bit larger than life and in doing so let the refugees escape (of course the guards did end up making history that but not the way they figured).
Ben made some very wise casting choices with Bryan (Breaking Bad) Cranston, John Goodman and Alan Arkin. These three actors may very be the best three character actors alive in Hollywood today - they each have the unique ability to take just about any material given to them and make it memorable. Last night night in the presidential debate we kept hearing about "Tumult in the Middle East" - we'll that's nothing new. However, telling the individual stories that occur within that tumult doesn't always happen and we're glad Ben took the time to tell this one.
