"Here's your fucking stability, my main man."

Just saw Syriana.

Two Words: God. Damn.

I am having a hard time imagining the pitch meeting at Warner Brothers. Writer/Director Stephen Gahgan goes in and says to some dope with a pony tail and a Hugo Boss suit: "Okay, I want to make a dense, complicated geo-political film about United States policy in the Middle East, the international oil industry, with a lot of dialogue, a downbeat ending, and an underlying theme that the U.S. is an amoral oil addict willing to subvert democracy, and murder innocent people for the benefit of transnational corporations and in order to maintain the precarious balance of the American economy. Can I have fifty million dollars now?" And the motherfucker says, "Sure!"

That particular pony-tailed dope will likely be fired soon, because there is no doubt in my mind that Syriana is going to bite it hard at the box office. In the season of low budget period pieces and maxi-budget kids movies, I don't think there's room for a brainy, left-wing political critique. I guess Warner Brothers will have to console themselves with the fact that they might not make a profit, but they did buy themselves one amazing film.

Yes, Syriana is left-wing, but it's left wing in a bracing and honest and generally unfamiliar way. Syriana is refreshing in its non-partisan leftism. It is the first Hollywood studio film I have ever seen (or even heard of), that offers a systemic critique of the American political and economic system.

I'll let everyone in on a little secret. O'Reilly and Hannity and all those faux-populist fuckholes are right about one thing: Hollywood is, indeed, filled with liberals. Most actors are liberal, most producers are liberal, most directors are liberal, most writers are liberal. I'd be willing to wager that most grips and craft service people are liberal. It's all true. Now, the faux-populist fuckholes would have you believe that this means that there is some Hollywood conspiracy to undermine American values through brainwashing films and television. That's where they go off the deep end. They forget that the entertainment industry is just that, an industry, governed by the same mindless thirst for profit as the rest of the capitalist edifice. Most Hollywood types, no matter how blatant their libealism, are most interested in turning a profit, and will therefore subornate every principle they ever thought they had to give the public what they hope they want. That attitude kills most of the potentially subversive energy of "liberal" filmmaking. The rest of it is murdered by the fact that most filmmakers are liberals, not leftists. I know that the supposedly polarized political landscape has obliterated all nuances when it comes to political affiliation, but there really is a lot of real estate seperating liberals from leftists. Leftists tend to think that the political, cultural, and economic structures of their society are fatally flawed engines of injustice, created by and for the benefit of that societies wealthiest citizens at the expense of the rest of the citizenry, not to mention poor people the world over. Liberals, on the other hand, think that the social structure is basically just, that it merely needs people of the right ideology running things to keep it that way. In the liberal worldview, America is a great country with great institutions, temporarily hijacked by greedy, corrupt thugs, and the restoration of liberal (read Democratic) governance will set all (or most, anyway) to rights.

These two realities of Hollywood (the addiction to profit and the mainstream liberalism), mean that it is almost impossible for a studio film to generate a systemic critique of American politics or economics. First of all, Hollywood wants to make crowd pleasing films: people like happy endings, and are more likely to see movies that end happily. As such, movies that seek to address politics are shaped by the need to wrap things up neatly in the third act so people will leave with a smile on their faces. Also, Hollywood believes in the system, so movies that critize the current political climate end up blaming one party (usually the Republicans) for screwing things up for the rest of us. The twin impulses dovetail nicely: set up a scathing critique of the current state of America, blame it on a nefarious plot by a bunch of political ne'r-do-wells, and have the forces of truth and justice vanquish the bad guys just before the credits role.

Look at the two most brazenly American political films of the past few years: Fahrenheit 911 and the Johnathan Demme remake of The Manchurian Candidate. In both cases, the directors set up a scenario of horrible injustice and corruption; the real-life Iraq war and the fictional "Manchurian Group" conspiracy respectively, pin the blame on a small group of corrupt blackguards; the Bush administration and the Manchurian group respectively, and wrap things up by banishing the threat from our shores. Fahrenheit ends with a call to mobilize for the defeat of Bush's re-election (how'd that work out again?) and in Manchurian the conspiracy is thwarted by the actions of the U.S. military and everyone involved gets arrested. Both movies, while attempting to unsettle their audience regarding the present state of the nation, end up serving up a feel-good idea of how American could be with the right leadership. It's the Abu Ghraib defense writ large: a few "bad apples" spoiling the political barrel. Hell, even the ur-text of American political movies, JFK, indulges in this Mr. Smith Goes to Washington bullshit: Kennedy is portrayed as a shining knight of pure good intent, and suggests that the exposure of the government figures who killed him will restore the nation to its former glory. The closest thing to a recent subversive political film is the Three Kings, which supplied the bit of dialogue that is the title of this post, and even it dulls down the razor's edge of its critique with a load of whiz-bang action and a classic Hollywood happy ending.

As a result of this ideological and economic nexus (isn't it funny how often ideological commitment follows a person's economic interests?), a truly penetrating Hollywood political film is almost impossible. And yet, somehow, somebody left the gate open and Syriana came galloping out in a lather of outrage and insight.

Syriana doesn't play the liberal game. The movie features not a single elected official, and even the occupation of Iraq goes largely uncommented upon. The events of the film, corrupt international business dealings among oil companies, subversion of reform movements, U.S.-backed assassinations, and the facile covering up of all of the above, happen regardless of who occupies the White House or Capitol Hill. The U.S. bribes and threatens and bombs the oil rich parts of this world not because of any political ideology, but because of economic necessity. The economic stability of the United States is entirely predicated upon an uninterrupted supply of cheap oil. As such, there is nothing that the United States will not do to ensure access to said resource. That's why it doesn't matter who is in charge, and why Syriana doesn't end with a catharic perp-walk of corporate and government criminals meeting their reckoning at the bar of justice. A few low-echealon crooks are offered up as sacrafices so that the public and government can continue operating on the illusion that an abiding rule of law exists, but the real malefactors go unpunished. Hell, they fucking thrive. Not only that, but the viewer is left with the distinct impression that, even if the big wigs did go down, they would merely be replaced by the B squad of corridors of power.* The satisfaction of America's demand for oil is the only mandate that must be met.

That oil supplies and demand are the engine of American foriegn policy is such an obvious truism that it has become invisible in the popular political debate. During the run-up to the war in Iraq, to discuss the issue of oil was to indulge in crazed conspiracy mongering, instead of being the first step in any rational discussion of American Mid-East policy. The entire structure of Syriana is designed to make that truism visible again. And in doing so, it does a tremendous service to the national dialogue (such as it is). Only when Americans really confront the reality of our oil situation can we start asking and hopefully answering questions of actual import. Not sideshow fun and games like "Did Saddam really have WMD?" or "What must American do to win in Iraq", but serious questions, like "If oil really does keep our society intact, must we accept any course of action, no matter how amoral, to keep it flowing?" and "If we reject an amoral foreign policy, what do we do to end this cycle of dependence and cold-blooded aggression?" Even though Syriana will surely fail at the box office, it will be a smashing success if it refocuses these issues for even a few Americans.

Politics aside, Syriana is also a really effective piece of pure filmmaking. The verite' style immerses the viewer in every one of the film's disparate cultural and geographic settings; from foreign worker camps in the Gulf to the streets of Beirut to the air conditioning and throaty bonhomie of Houston conference rooms, every set-up feels vividly realized. Contrary to the blathering of a bunch of critics, the plot is not too hard to follow: if you shut the fuck up, turn your goddamn cellphone off and listen to the dialogue above the sound of your mouth full of Milk Duds, the film is actually quite clear. Plot machinations largely overshadows the characters, but the film gives them enough texture to provide depth without slowing down the procedings. The acting is uniformily excellent, with George Clooney providing the film's soul as a world weary CIA agent, beaten down by years of fighting for unclear causes, of using people and being used in turn. When pressed on issues of his ultimate purpose or alliegiences, he responds again and again with what might well be the film's signature gesture: a wordless, befuddled shrug. He is helpless to name the forces that have manipulated his life; all he can do is look on like a beaten dog and try to survive with some sense of personal integrity intact. It's a tall order, one that, in the end, is impossible to fullfill in a world where the demands of the market batter all human considerations into pulp.

*This is a fact that is very important for those of us gleefully observing the various and sundry criminal contrempts of the congressional Republicans to remember. Even if the Abramhoff investigation ends up sending half of the Republican congressional delegation to prison, it's not going to change the underlying structure of corruption and power that allowed it all to happen in the first place. The indicted will shuffle off, and be replaced in turn with a fresh generation of dewy-eyed idealists who will learn quickly how the game is played.