The line between fiction and reality is nowadays often blurred, with television and newspapers assaulting people with all kind of half-checked information, so it's refreshing to see a piece of work that makes clear distinction between the two. And it's even better that it does so by mixing them together.
"Argo", Ben Affleck's latest effort as both, a director and an actor, is a fictional work about a real event which consisted of creating a fictional event about a work of fiction. Confused? If you've seen the movie you're not. It is all displayed so clearly that it's easy to overlook its complexity. In 1979 Iranians took hold of US embassy in Tehran as a retaliation for US sheltering their overthrown Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. They held people who were working there as captives, but 6 diplomats managed to hide in the house of the Canadian ambassador, and escaped two months later with the help of CIA exfiltration expert Tony Mendez, posing as a Canadian film crew making a (fake) sci-fi with an eastern vibe. It sounds like one of those things that could only happen in a movie, so it was a logical decision to put it there. And putting it there means crossing from reality to fiction. So a joint CIA and Canadian Government operation can become one man's quest to save his fellow countrymen, as it basically did. There are, of course, other involved, but the movie's main character is Tony Mendez. He came up with the idea, found all the people needed to do the job, and himself went to Tehran to help the diplomats escape.
Affleck the director does a very good job. Although we know how it's all going to end, there's an unbearable tension and a sense of fear for the characters we feel right till the last minute. What's even more fascinating is that we're at the same time aware of the silly and clichéd solutions utilized to create those feelings (everything happens in the nick of time) but we don't care about them. Affleck the actor isn't as good. He's mostly expressionless and makes the weakest link in the otherwise almost perfect cast. A shame considering he gets most of the screen time. Fortunately, the likes of Clea DuVall and Christopher Denham present us with some of the most intense performances we've seen in the last couple of years. Make-up, costume design and the overall production design make us go back in time as well as see and feel the differences between the east and the west, while Rodrigo Prieto's cinematography makes the fear and tension palpable with the help of great editing by William Goldenberg. There's a brilliant interchange of Iranian woman reading accusations against the US and the cast of the fake movie reading the screenplay, which displays all of it.
In spite of its serious subject matter the movie contains a lot of humour, presented mostly by the two Hollywood characters and directed towards the same movie industry. And while the Hollywood gets criticized for a lot of things, it's ultimately lauded for the hope and sense of magic it brings to people whether the movie is real or fake. But, as Affleck shows us by naming his movie after the one it tells about, all the movies are actually fake. It's only their meaning and the impact they have that matter.
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