A tough look at a tough topic...

The first weekend of Christmas break - or Winter Break, as I think we're supposed to call it - saw me at the earliest showing of Syriana.

It's an excellent but very difficult film, one that requires pretty much undivided attention to follow the interlocking plots, and it's one that I feel I need to see a second time in order to fully understand everything that happened in the film.

The film Traffic has been referenced in a number of the online reviews that I've read, and it's a fair comparrison as the two films were written by the same screenwriter and both have the same style of showing bits of a half dozen plot lines, all of which would come together near the end of the film but that begin as disparate elements. In Traffic, however, the filmmakers chose to differentiate the stories via the use of color filters. Syriana does not provide even that helpful trick for us.

Instead, we are dropped into the middle of each of the stories with little introduction or explanation of who the players are or what their goals and motivations are. This leaves us feeling confused at first - a feeling that does not entirely dispell itself even by the film's resolution - which seems to be widely regarded as the filmmakers' plan. The characters in the film don't seem to know the connections and ramifications of their actions but can only see their small part of the puzzle, so we are supposed to have the same feeling. Because I wanted to see this film, because I want to try to understand the issues involved in the complexities of the Middle East, I'm willing to go along for the difficult and confusing ride. My biggest complaint about the film, however, is that many folks will not be willing to go along.

This is a complex and excellent film that tries to communicate - but not to explain - a complex set of relationships and problems. If the filmmakers were to make things a little easier to understand, their message might make more of a change in the world. These are, after all, important issues.