Does Argo Put Enough ‘Islamic’ in the ‘Revolution’?
Who says Hollywood isn’t wading into political terrain anymore? Before the start of Argo today, my local theater showed a trailer for a remake of Red Dawn. But instead of Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen fighting red commie Soviets who invade their town, teens including Tom Cruise’s son Connor will be fighting off an invasion of red commie North Koreans.
Hooray for the implausible scenario but at least plausible bad guys in a town that has reduced the pool of politically acceptable villains to the milquetoast bad generic Europeans with Julian Assange hair (a la Alias) and the occasional Somali pirate. Pyongyang’s buttons will burst with pride at the thought of bringing Washington state (not Colorado, as in the original, but I guess it’s closer for a financially strapped fighting force) to its knees, and Kim Jong Un will likely screen the movie in Kim Il-Sung Square in honor of dear old departed movie-buff Dad (editing out the ending where they invariably lose).
So I was especially intrigued to see how Ben Affleck and Co., institutional Hollywood to the core, would handle the Iran hostage crisis.
Especially as Iran is currently up to more dastardly (nuclear) deeds and time has shown that the Islamic Revolution has only sown hatred, anti-Semitism, and global insecurity.
Especially as time has shown that the Islamic Republic still holds Americans hostage — see the 2009-2011 detention of hikers Sarah Shourd, Shane Bauer, and Joshua Fattal after they likely didn’t cross the border in Kurdish mountains.
One couldn’t have predicted this in scheduling the film’s release date, but the opening scenes of protesters burning the American flag and scaling the walls of the embassy in Tehran are eerily reminiscent of scenes we saw just weeks ago out of Cairo, and the storming of the compound brings a chill when thinking of Benghazi.
The film opens with an abridged timeline that points the finger at the U.S. for installing Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who ushered in “an era of torture and fear” and began “a campaign to Westernize Iran.” This mini-history left out the role of the Islamist movement and its motivations to forge a theocratic state.
The opening sequence of Argo, as the Iran hostage crisis begins, is similar to the sequence of terrorists storming the Israeli athletes’ dorm in Munich. Whatever one thinks of the substance or direction in the rest of the movie, these scenes stand on their own, displaying the chilling brutality of terrorism without any further explanation needed.
The militants ransacking the Tehran compound find an Ayatollah Khomeini dartboard, which is pretty awesome and predictably infuriates the bunch. They also find the documents hastily shredded when embassy staff couldn’t get an incinerator to do its job, and the Revolutionary Guards task a bunch of children to piece together the shreds, sweatshop-style. What Washington fears they’ll soon realize is that six staffers slipped out in the chaos and made their way to the Canadian embassy.
The reaction from a head spook back at the CIA wanders into the “but we must’ve deserved it” territory – also familiar territory these days.
“What’d you expect?” one character says. “We helped a guy torture and deball their entire population.”
The agency comes to the conclusion that they must “send in a Moses” to extract the six Americans — exfiltration expert Tony Mendez.
While watching Return to the Planet of the Apes, Mendez, played extremely well by Affleck, comes up with the “flamboyant cover identity” through which he believes he can get the Americans out of Iran. He enlists the help of veteran make-up artist John Chambers, played by John Goodman, to set up the fake sci-fi film Argo that would need a Middle Eastern landscape. “So you want to come to Hollywood and act like a big shot without doing anything?” Chambers quips. “You’ll fit right in.”
Alan Arkin plays a producer, Lester Siegel, who is on his way to pick up some lifetime achievement award, and is being asked to help with the cover by Chambers and Mendez, and is stirred to action by seeing a blindfolded hostage on the TV. “If I’m doing a fake movie it’s gonna be a fake hit,” he declares in one of his many pitch-perfect lines.
When Mendez questions why they need to option the script for the fake movie, Siegel replies, “You’re worried about the ayatollah? Try the WGA.”
And when they need that extra lift — aka a nice story in Variety to shove in suspicious Iranian guards’ faces — Arkin’s character notes, “If you want to sell a lie, get the press to sell it for you.”
For the films’ shared ’70s vibe, wide lapels, and polyester ties, Argo doesn’t attempt to get as political as Munich, save for the shah-blaming.
Save for when an Iranian consulate official in Turkey crosses out “kingdom” on a now-defunct stamp and writes in “Islamic Republic,” the Islamic tie isn’t all that prevalent in the film. A clip of the ayatollah notes that “people are looking forward to martyrdom,” and the unforgiving, piercing eyes of Ruhollah Khomeini peer out from various corners of the movie.
The streets of Tehran are choked with fear and tension instead of joyful rebellion: a man’s body hanging by the neck from a crane along a busy street, cars burning in the streets, young Islamist gunmen staking out street corners and eyeing passers-by. When Mendez’s “film crew” is invited out by Iran’s filming liaison, they are surrounded by the eyes of spies, angry mobs, and an era of fear and torture no better than the one earlier described.
Argo is a taut thriller and I was hooked every minute. But it would have been helpful to note that these angry guys staging mock executions on American hostages — and real executions of anyone thought to be a sympathizer of the Great Satan — had a deeper underlying motivation than anger over the shah’s exile.
Homeland, despite its detractors, clearly makes the link between Islam and terrorism. Sgt. Brody, as an American captive, sees prayers one day and is lured toward the religion. We see this as his binding link to terrorist (bin Laden stand-in) Abu Nazir, and their bond was forged further by the death of Nazir’s son Isa in a U.S. airstrike. Brody is enraged when his wife, equally enraged to find out that he became a secret Muslim, throws his Koran on the floor. Brody paints his conversion to Islam to CIA agent Carrie Mathison as a comforting crutch in a time of crisis when there weren’t exactly Bibles around, but viewers also see that it’s the tie that binds him to terrorism.
Argo not only resurrects the Iran hostage crisis, but old news clips that highlighted the public anger that helped make Jimmy Carter’s first term his last.
“John Wayne’s in the ground six months and this is what’s left of America,” Arkin as producer notes.
There is no footnote to say that Iran has returned to peace and prosperity. It seems as if the filmmakers are content to let the headlines speak for themselves; the greater real-life controversy was whether Canada got enough onscreen credit for its role in the rescue.
“If I look at the archival footage that I used for research, from 30 or whatever years ago, it looks just like some of the stuff we’re seeing on television now,” Affleck told The Hollywood Reporter. “…And it’s the same regime, it was Khomeni, now it’s Khamenei — there’s still this Islamist, this Stalinist regime, and that makes me sad.”
In fact, one of Mendez’s lines in justifying the risky operation could speak to the running clock on Iran’s nuclear development today: “There are only bad options; it’s about finding the best one.”
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See also at PJ Lifestyle:
Bridget, I haven’t seen the movie (nor will I, I have a problem with revisionist history) but with uber liberal Ben Affleck at the helm the question you posed, “Does Argo Put Enough ‘Islamic’ in the ‘Revolution’”? answers itself.
The very fact that the movie failed to juxtapose Islamism with terror says it all.
While the Shah was the handy excuse then, so too are videos, cartoons and every other slight imaginable, whenever Islamists do what they do best – jihad in the name of Allah.
Of course, a movie can still be well done in every other realm, but be completely historically inaccurate, and mired in PC rhetoric.
Those who understand Islamic tenets know full well that it is political system steeped in religion, very much akin to a death cult.Is there any other religion which worships blood like those who follow Islam -http://adinakutnicki.com/2012/08/21/repeat-until-the-cows-come-home-there-is-no-moderate-islam-period-addendum-to-what-the-west-in-general-and-its-leaders-in-particular-know-about-islam-can-fill-less-than-a-thimble-m/
The Shah was ruthless but in the Middle East then and today he would be considered enlightened compared to Assad, Saddam, Khomenei, etc. Women had full rights under the law. The radical muslims were kept in check. The Khomenei regime record of killing, torturing and imprisoning since 79′ is a hundred times worse. In fact, the fall of the Shah and the rise of Khomenei triggered every major Middle East event over the last 30 + years, the hostage crisis, Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, Iran-Iraq war, the first and second Gulf wars, the rise of Bin Laden, 9/11, etc.
Imagine how vastly different Iran in particular and the middle east in general would look if the soviets hadn’t overthrown Rezā Shāh Pahlavi? If only I had a time machine…
Hillary Clinton Admits the U.S. Government Created al-Qaeda Published on Apr 10, 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifZK6SVlQ1Y&feature=related
She admits “they had this idea”.. you are dumb if you think America “Created” al-qaida.
“They” were ignorant of islam and jihad. “They” only helped along a group of muslims that had their OWN ideas.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/27/osama-bin-laden-blind-eye
Al-Qaida’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, has revealed that his predecessor, Osama bin Laden, was blind in one eye and confirmed that in his youth he had been a member of the Saudi Arabian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.
“It is the nature of Islam to dominate, not to be dominated, to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet.”
Hassan al-Banna, muslim brotherhood founder
The organization’s motto: “Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”
In reviewing the film and the question “Does Argo Put Enough ‘Islamic’ in the ‘Revolution?’” the question cannot be truthfully answered without wiping out our 30+ years of Islamic experience. Since we can’t do that I would say, from the review, the movie is probably accurate as can be.
The movie and most likely the book doesn’t parse Iranian motives. I don’t think we should try to impose a 21st Century view of violent Islam, developed over the intervening 32 years, onto the sensibilities of the 1979-80 participants in events. It had been only 9 years since the PLO had blown up planes in the desert to underscore their demands; only 7 years since Munich murders of the Israeli athletes; the assassination of Sadat and attempts on the Pope’s life were still two years away.
I drove 30 mi. to see Argo today. Worth every minute. The movie has everything a good political thriller should have, including a hair-raising chase scene (when the IRG try to run down the Swiss Air plane taking the 7 to freedom). I knew they got out, and I was still on the edge of my seat. There’s one moment that almost brought me to tears, when State pulls the plug on the operation, and Mendez and Amb. Taylor decide not to tell the six, who are trying to enjoy their last meal in a festive atmosphere. Mendez returns to his hotel, prepared to follow orders and return to Langley. But he thinks about it all night, and finally calls his boss at Langley. “Someone is responsible for these people,” he tells his boss. “I’M responsible for these people! We’re going!” Where are people today with this sense of duty and respsonsibility? Not in the Obama administration, that’s for damn sure.
Kudos to Affleck for such a fine job!
The movie will be a good Hollywood entertainment. Caveat emptor. Fact and fiction will probably be very skillfully blurred….so it’s only an entertainment.
The thing to do is read Tony Mendez’s book, “Master of Disguise”, that’s the source material.
Actually, his book Argo is the source material. http://www.amazon.com/Argo-Hollywood-Pulled-Audacious-History/dp/0670026220/ref=la_B001HCW9MM_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1350103449&sr=1-1
At least that’s what he says.
http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/308318-1
Google, “Master Of Disguise Antonio Mendez” without the quotes….
….here’s a pertinent excerpt from one of the reviews:
….”In January 1980 Mendez was awarded the Intelligence Star for Valor for single-handedly engineering and conducting the rescue of six U.S. diplomats from Iran during the hostage crisis. This rescue operation involved creating an ostensible Hollywood film production company, complete with personnel, scripts, publicity and real estate.”
[....not to be confused with the comic movie of similar name...]
Our best opportunity for regime change in Iran came in 2009 after the elections in Iran. But Obama squandered that opportunity and didn’t lift a finger to help the rebels. Think about it. The mullahs would have been overthrown without losing a single American life, but Obama was too weak and naive to seize the opportunity. How different the world would be today had Obama openly supported the rebels. But his timidity and inexperience in global power politics did Obama in, and now we’re seeing Iran about to get a nuclear bomb. What about those sanctions Biden was talking about during the debate? Well, no country on this planet has more sanctions against it than North Korea, and they still made several nuclear bombs. Sanctions usually don’t work and if they do, it could take years for them to kick in. No, Obama is just an extension of the Carter administration, and his problems with Iran only confirm that point.
IMO our best opportunity for regime change was when Reagan came in. If you recall, the reason the hostages were released at all on the day he was inaugurated was because the Iranians thought he would bomb the crap out them if they didn’t. It was one thing to hold a whimpy, hand-wringing Democrat who couldn’t kill anything but Americans (I refer here to Desert 1) hostage for 444 days. It was quite another to kick sand in the face of a Republican with a reputation for toughness. Unfortunately, Reagan didn’t do it.
Drill here, Refine here! Problem solved! No more war! Bring everybody home now!
Published October 10, 2012, Application for ND oil refinery approved, would be first built in US in 30 years NEW TOWN, N.D. – Plans for an oil refinery on the Fort Berthold Reservation, the first major refinery to be built in the United States in more than 30 years, cleared a milestone Wednesday. By: Amy Dalrymple, INFORUM
http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/376913/
The most irritating thing (for me) in an otherwise-entertaining film is the Jimmy Carter voice-over during the credits: He said something like (from memory so don’t hold me to the exact language), “The hostages were released on January 20, “WE” got them all released without any violence.” Hey Jimmy, I was there – you did SQUAT to get them back. They were released the day Reagan was inaugurated and BECAUSE we finally had a president with cojones. Typical liberal revisionist history.