summercomfort (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
summercomfort) wrote2012-11-25 03:11 pm
summercomfort) wrote2012-11-25 03:11 pm
(no subject)
To continue my recent film-watching streak (Wreck-it-Ralph=cool, Skyfall=meh), I watched Argo over Thanksgiving.
Parts of it were pretty cool -- I appreciated the attempt to genuinely make it look like 1980. I also liked the beginning narration, which pretty much admitted that the Shah was horrible and totally America's fault. The general "heist" style movie was pretty cool, though.
But, a few things that got on my nerves:
1) White-washing of Tony Mendez. Seriously, is it that hard to find a latino actor for this? It's especially telling because in the end credits they show photo comparisons of the real people with the actors, and all of them look very similar, EXCEPT Ben Affleck/Tony Mendez. If you care so much about historical accuracy, why is one of the big parts that you decide to re-write is to make a generic white guy the hero of the film?
2) Lack of character development for secondary characters. For example, the housekeeper at the Canadian Embassy was Iranian and played a key role in the movie to protect the Americans -- there was a really cool scene which shows the increasing conservatism of the country... but does she have family? What are her motivations? All the Americans get out safely, but she becomes a refugee in Iraq?? Or Tony Mendez -- it's shown that he has wife and kid, but that they're doing a trial separation thing, but ... why? He doesn't seem like a bad father. He doesn't have weird violent streaks, etc. And then it's magically okay at the end of the movie. Um... that's good?
3) The main tension of the movie is: "can they successfully lie to the Iranian authorities?" And "if they catch us it will be certain death!!" -- completely disregarding the certain deaths of others who may have sided with the Americans. There's a part in the movie where they decide that they don't want to do this because it's too risky, and I was like: "Do you not see how many people are risking their lives so that you can sit and play chess with the Canadian ambassador? Do you not see how it was American selfishness that lead to this situation in the first place?" It eventually gets resolved, but it was still frustrating.
I guess I really wanted to see a movie about the Iranian Revolution from an Iranian perspective.
Parts of it were pretty cool -- I appreciated the attempt to genuinely make it look like 1980. I also liked the beginning narration, which pretty much admitted that the Shah was horrible and totally America's fault. The general "heist" style movie was pretty cool, though.
But, a few things that got on my nerves:
1) White-washing of Tony Mendez. Seriously, is it that hard to find a latino actor for this? It's especially telling because in the end credits they show photo comparisons of the real people with the actors, and all of them look very similar, EXCEPT Ben Affleck/Tony Mendez. If you care so much about historical accuracy, why is one of the big parts that you decide to re-write is to make a generic white guy the hero of the film?
2) Lack of character development for secondary characters. For example, the housekeeper at the Canadian Embassy was Iranian and played a key role in the movie to protect the Americans -- there was a really cool scene which shows the increasing conservatism of the country... but does she have family? What are her motivations? All the Americans get out safely, but she becomes a refugee in Iraq?? Or Tony Mendez -- it's shown that he has wife and kid, but that they're doing a trial separation thing, but ... why? He doesn't seem like a bad father. He doesn't have weird violent streaks, etc. And then it's magically okay at the end of the movie. Um... that's good?
3) The main tension of the movie is: "can they successfully lie to the Iranian authorities?" And "if they catch us it will be certain death!!" -- completely disregarding the certain deaths of others who may have sided with the Americans. There's a part in the movie where they decide that they don't want to do this because it's too risky, and I was like: "Do you not see how many people are risking their lives so that you can sit and play chess with the Canadian ambassador? Do you not see how it was American selfishness that lead to this situation in the first place?" It eventually gets resolved, but it was still frustrating.
I guess I really wanted to see a movie about the Iranian Revolution from an Iranian perspective.