Exactly 20 years ago, writer-director Stephen Gaghan released an intricate geopolitical thriller, the kind of which is unlikely to get made. It was my introduction to "hyperlink cinema" — a term popularised by critic Roger Ebert — before realising that I've encountered similar examples earlier, most notably Gaghan's own brilliant screenplay of the multi-Oscar winning Traffic (directed by Steven Soderbergh), Alejandro González Iñárritu's Amores Perros, Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, and Satyajit Ray's Kanchenjunga.
Syriana tracks intriguing machinations of slimy corporate executives and cunning lawyers, espionage, disillusionment, terrorism, shifting alliances, betrayal, and above all, the race for oil — all captured with the necessary immediacy by master cinematographer Robert Elswitt (There Will Be Blood, Nightcrawler). If not for Gaghan's name under the director credit, the film would've possibly been mistaken for something made by Michael Mann, given the nail-biting faux documentary quality that was strongly felt in the latter’s The Insider, Heat, and Collateral.
Instead of following a single central protagonist, we get multiple protagonists from several narrative strands that are inextricably linked, each exploring the events that shape the life of the individual. Gaghan's bold narrative accommodates an incredibly complex, multi-layered story that spans continents, exploring the invisible threads that bind multinational corporations, governments, espionage agents, immigrant workers, lawyers, and an energy analyst. George Clooney is CIA field agent Bob Barnes, who oversees a missile deal involving Iranian arms dealers. When a missile is diverted to an Egyptian terror group, Bob reports his suspicions. His superiors, made uneasy by his memos, offer him a desk job but first assign him to assassinate a Middle Eastern prince. Barnes travels to Beirut for the task, but complications arise, and the CIA distances itself from him.
Along the way, we meet Prince Nasir (Alexander Siddig), a good-hearted idealist who opposes his father's decision to make his younger brother the next Emir. Nasir's decision to grant natural gas drilling rights to a Chinese company angers the American firm Connex. When the latter learns that Killen, a rival, has secured rights in Kazakhstan, they seek a merger. This attracts the attention of the U.S. Justice Department and Dean Whiting (Christopher Plummer), a powerful lawyer who assigns Bennett Holiday (Jeffrey Wright) to the case. Whiting persuades Nasir's family to accept his help. Matt Damon plays Bryan Goodman, an energy analyst in Switzerland hired by Nasir, after the former experiences a personal tragedy.
Concurrent events comprise the story of migrant Pakistani labourers working in one of Connex's oil plants in another Middle Eastern country. An unexpected Chinese takeover leaves them jobless. While seeking new prospects, two of the young workers strike up a friendship with an Egyptian fundamentalist who, seeing them as potential candidates for an upcoming mission, invites them to a garage tour where the very same missile that Barnes sold earlier is discovered. Without giving anything away, everything leads to a tense finale that begs the expression, "Two birds with one stone."
Despite the film’s overall icy and detached tone, it invites some stirring emotions courtesy of the recurring theme of the father-son dynamic that dominates each narrative strand. Barnes has a college-going son who is irked by the fact that both his parents are "professional liars" and feels betrayed by his father. Elsewhere, another son, Prince Nasir, is actually betrayed by his father. In the meantime, a father mourns the loss of his son. In another part of the globe, a grown-up, well-to-do man awkwardly deals with his fractured relationship with his father. And there is, of course, the migrant father who is about to lose his son to terrorists.
Syriana is a classic conspiracy thriller in the vein of some of the best examples in the genre from the 1970s — The Parallax View, All the President's Men, and Three Days of the Condor, to name a few. Loosely based on the book "See No Evil", by Robert Baer, an ex-CIA employee, the film's complex screenplay understandably caused significant confusion among many moviegoers and critics. However, those who were enamoured with it have returned to it more than twice, discovering new layers upon each revisit. It has been the case with me. Syriana is exactly the kind of multi-layered, dialogue-driven story that always gives me the kicks.
While not all answers are offered on a silver platter, Syriana continues to be undoubtedly rewarding to this day. At a few points in the narrative, Gaghan challenges us to put two and two together instead of doing it for us. There are areas where we are as much in the dark as some of its characters, unclear about who is really pulling all the strings and who is doing what to whom and why — a pretty good reflection of the current state of our world.