'Argo' (2012)

[Aurelius]

I read about that earlier today. Hilarious, isn't it?

[Howard Beale's Toothpaste]

I feel I might be being a huge hipster in reevaluating my position on this, but whatever. Maybe it's just that all the praise has got me suspicious. Something about me suspects that a film that everyone likes like this must be very bad indeed. I'll really have to watch it again to be sure, but while it paid lip service to the US and the CIA's failures and outright crimes in Iran, it ended up being really congratulatory towards the CIA, and also towards another party that deserved a more critical treatment: Hollywood. I cannot deny the craftsmanship that went into Argo, but I think it's horrifically immoral to make a film that even inadvertently praises the CIA. And this is not inadvertent praise, so it's so much the worse. The CIA is dangerous to American democracy and to world peace, and Argo's glossing over of that does a tremendous disservice to its audience. The Oscars' deep conservative turn over the last few years has been disturbing, and Argo goes even further beyond The King's Speech and The Artist in celebrating the status quo, in looking backwards to when things were supposed to have been better. Even though Argo takes place in a time of turmoil, and does briefly mention the culpability of the US in the Iranian mess, it manages to focus on the one thing the establisment did do right, missing the ugly, charred forest for the gorgeous, flourishing tree. No Country for Old Men and The Hurt Locker were to some extent true films (although I know Buster would disagree on the latter, but whatever), and Slumdog, while framed in Hollywood cliches, was centered in India around poor people (honestly I don't know how to fit it into my theory, so I'm ignoring it). Argo, The Artist, and The King's Speech are gorgeous lies. Lies Hollywood desperately wants to believe. If something like George Clooney's next film wins Picture, it'll be a four year run of this. I'm going to have to remain silent on that upcoming film, or embarrass myself in a manner similar to the way I've done in the past. Anyway, I'm not sure yet where I'm going with this other than to say Cloud Atlas is a thousand times better than Argo, and eventually I will explain this in a ten thousand word essay that will convince many of that assertion's fundamental truth. And I guess that Argo is a well-crafted, but morally objectionable film.
I really need to see ZDT to tie that into all this, though. Uggh, why have I not seen it?