Syriana

I saw "Syriana" last night with Seth. It was pretty good, although I admit I'm not smart enough to follow all the plot twists. One thing I liked about it is that much of the dirty stuff that happens is entirely plausible. Too many movies attack "social issues" by demonizing certain targets, usually corporations, portraying them as cartoonish evil-doers. It's difficult to dramatize the truth, so Hollywood takes the easy way out.

The reason this is galling is that corporations do in fact cause lots of human suffering. When they are simply painted as evil, though, it is too easy for their defenders to debunk the attacks and their critics to miss the point. The really horrible things they do are mostly legal and mostly accessible to anyone who reads the Wall Street Journal, or really any good paper.

So I guess I wish there were more movies like "Syriana," at least in the sense that our problems are explained as the result of complicated interactions between the imperatives of wealth, religion, and power.