Argo versus Abe

Argo is winning everything.  If you’ve got an award to award – Argo gets it.  All the other movies are coming up with crumbs from the glitter and glamour gang.  So what gives with this Argo phenomenon?

Well, in order to answer that question – two things are required.  Six to eight dollars for a ticket and the patience to sit through 15 minutes of product commercials that are more dimwitted on the big screen than on our home TV screens; followed by another 15 minutes of previews of coming attractions followed by 2 hours and one minute for the movie itself.

Argo starts out with a pretty good slam on Uncle Sam and his antics in helping the people of Iran get the leadership they didn’t want.   This distorted history lesson quickly leads to the capture of the American embassy in Tehran – the crowd and the enthusiasm and the antics and terror of the embassy occupants/captives is just plain darn good theatre.

Then we go back to Washington and enter the halls of the bureaucrats and, predictably, one bureaucrat has more common sense than all the hundreds of other bureaucrats combined.  One of the movies more accurate depictions.

Then we delve deeper into the plot – a contrived Hollywood/CIA scheme to save six embassy employees who snuck out to a neighboring embassy residence – hurray for Hollywood and here we reach our first conclusion about why we think Argo is winning all the awards.  Two wonderful Hollywood performers dissect the Hollywood scene – its top players and their shenanigans with some of the funniest and dismissive dialogue ever presented on a movie screen about Hollywood itself.  John Goodman and Alan Arkin skewer the Hollywood dopes with a few offhand remarks that can only be described as Shakespearean elegance – 21^st century style.  Watching these two guys have some fun is worth the price of admission – go see Argo if you haven’t!

Then the movie gets kind of predictable and boring and finishes up with a Hollywood ending that leaves this reviewer puzzled – deeply puzzled.  What could this confusion be you ask? (Alert – you may not wish to read further if you haven’t seen the movie.)

Well, remember that the whole mess was caused by Uncle Sam and his bureaucrats and they want us to buy into the last half of the movie cheering on the CIA/diplomats as they try to get out of the mess they themselves created.  That’s not a Hollywood ending – the good guys should not be the Americans who never had any good reason to be in Tehran in the first place.  The good guys are the homeys who want to kick the Americans out and get a piece of their disposed leader’s (aka the Shah) entrails in the process.  Who cares if the Americans flee?  Who cares if they get awards for bravery?  Who cares if they serve valiantly for 20 more years?  Yee gods, they never should have been there in the first place.

So, why all the awards?  We think Hollywood is cheering on the real good guys – no not the Iranians who would just like to live their lives their way and control their oil reserves – no, not the CIA which creates problems so that it can get more money to fix the problems they created and, in the process, create even more problems so that they can give out more awards and more stars for their fallen heroes, etc. and repeat the process over and over again but always with a big budget increase.

We think Argo gets the awards because this movie tells us about the real Hollywood and there is something about this brutal truth that the award voters really want us to know – Hollywood and government are the problem – not the solution.

Sorry Steven Spielberg – bad timing for you and Abe.  But you can still win the director award Sunday night– as you well know, Argo and its director were not even nominated.  That sounds more like Chicago politics than something Honest Abe would have done!