Merged duplicate threads.
When I posted this, the thread title was “Am I the only one who thought Argo wasn’t that good?” Damn mods, ruining the joke. 
LOL. If anyone takes the Oscars at all seriously, here’s another wake up call. Quite the absurd decision.
If it weren’t fiction, it would have been nominated in a different category. Of course it was fiction. “Based on a true story” does not equal “Documentary.”
I disagree. I saw 8 of the best picture nominees, and although I would have been happy with a win for any of several of them, Argo really was my favorite. Zero Dark Thirty, for example, may have been more historically accurate, but it had me looking at my watch half way through and really not caring about what happened to anyone. Wait, I take that back; I started to sympathize with the terrorists. On the other hand, even though I knew how Argo was going to end, I found it engrossing and entertaining. Plus I thought they did a tremendous job of capturing the era of 1979-1980: the music, the cinematography, the costumes. If you watched that movie without knowing when it was made it would be very easy to believe it was made in the 1980s.
I thought Argo was great and deserved every award it received, and Affleck should have not only been nominated for Best Director, but he should have won it also. I saw a majority of the nominees this year and it’s the film I’d give the statue to if I were a voter, with Life of Pi and Silver Linings Playbook both near the top of the list as well.
All I know about the film is that it has a lot of Canadians upset because it downplays Canada’s roll in freeing the dignitaries.
I haven’t seen the film, but apparently they make it out to be a CIA job supported by Canada, when in fact Canada, and especially Ken Taylor, were 100% responsible.
ETA: I see Northern Piper is on board with this.
I just watched an hour long special on the “Real” story of Argo with interviews with Mendez, and several of the American’s that were rescued.
One of the things they talked about was that after the operation was over, the CIA asked Ken Taylor to take full credit and all public accolades for the mission, which he did. This was to protect their ability to carry out a similar mission in the future or something. They also told the rescued Americans that even though they may want to, they shouldn’t write a book about their experience. Surprisingly, they all kept their word on that count.
So while the Canadian government was certainly a huge player in this mission, the CIA was also there hand-in-hand, I’d say 50/50. Views that Ken Taylor and the Canadians are getting the short end of the stick in the retelling is probably because of the way Taylor and others went out of their way to purposefully take full-credit at the time.
The special showed a clip of Reagan giving Taylor an award, and one of the interviewees mentioned that Reagan probably didn’t even know the full story of the US’s involvement in the rescue.
I’m not particularly concerned with whether the historical details were correct or not - it’s like complaining about the bad history in Braveheart.
Besides, I thought the movie did a fairly good job at presenting Taylor as responsible for keeping the embassy workers safe at no small personal risk to himself. Maybe Canada played a bigger role in the rescue - and maybe their role in real life was exaggerated to protect the CIA. Either way it doesn’t make the move more or less worthy of acclaim; the movie stands on it’s own by what’s in the film.
This is more of a complaint than a critical review of a film.
However, I have two major issues with it and one is slightly related to the “complaint by Canadians” about the veracity of the whole story.
With this argument I will also observe why “Lincoln” is - when judged from what I consider to be a merit of work of art – a much better film.
Also, I’m at work so I don’t have time to re-read this and fix (like I ever do – lol) so it may come across as raw and unfinished so apologies for that.
One of the key laws of dramatic arts to which film – along with literature and plays – subscribes goes like this: “persons represented should be, in consequence of actions proper to their characters, and owing to a natural course of events, placed in positions requiring them to struggle with the surrounding world to which they find themselves in opposition, and in this struggle should display their inherent qualities”.
“Argo” has put this law upside down and allowed a change in the plot of significant amplitude and as a result it placed under-developed character into a set of actions and surroundings such that the character itself lost that feeling of natural course of events and presented a struggle which a lowly character simply could not overcome. The character simply was not up to demands of the plot and it fails flat most of the time. Every film is testing your suspension of belief but at one point a film has to settle on is it an attempt of realistic (as in natural) or is it a fantasy of some sort – this film walks that line like a DUI driver. Add to that quite uninspired performance by Ben Affleck and it becomes very difficult to see more than set of dialog zingers that can fit in 3 minute trailer.
In “Lincoln” – while we acknowledge certain artistic freedoms of character composition and aggregation typical in historical movies of this magnitude (e.g. “Amistad”) – the character is not only fully developed and mature to face the course of events, in fact, it is the main character that drives most of the action and attends to it if it goes off route. Throughout the film, we are not told of Lincoln’s qualities, we rather see in his interactions with others, in group as well as one on one, of his inherent qualities and they are only accentuated by the dialog but convincingly cemented by action outcome.
Every time a character is placed in a situation arbitrarily as it is in “Argo” the flow of a dramatic course thus affected creates a creature that limps in and out of our imagination. On the other hand, while Lincoln has only one horse riding scene, in our imagination he is on a horse at all times.
The other important element of a successful work of dramatic art including film is the “individuality of language; i.e. the style of speech of every person being natural to his character”. In “Argo” almost all of the characters speak in the similar language further exemplified by so called “snappy dialogs” that, as marketing researchers’ suggestion goes, apparently is the norm in a fast-paced tech society we now live in so if any dialog has more depth or subtlety it will fly over people’s heads and all that fine artistic effort will be in vain. So, cut the dialog is the new mantra. Once you reduce dialog to slogans the only way to fill in the space is screaming hordes of locals and…. well, lots of explosions.
I could go on and on about “individuality of the language” in “Lincoln” but that would be too obvious so I’ll just leave it there.
The Discovery Channel just ran a documentary (featuring Mendez) in which it said that Ken Taylor and the Canadian authorities took full credit at the time, by agreement, out of fear that Iran would have retaliated against the other hostages if the operation had been exposed as CIA activity.
This program emphasized contributions from both countries. Taylor took the escapees in, at great personal risk. Mendez conceived of the movie-making idea. Canada’s Parliament met in secret to authorize the issuance of fake passports. President Carter approved the mission. Mendez went in, prepped the escapees, and led them out via the airport and Swissair.
I have no way of judging the accuracy of this program and whether it too unfairly downplays Canadian actions.
ETA: Ninjaed by Bob Ducca.
That seems doubtful to me, for two reasons.
First, passports are issued under the royal prerogative, not under statutory authority, so as a matter of law, I don’t see the need for Parliament’s involvement.
Second, Parliament has around 400 members. It doesn’t sound likely that in a matter where complete confidentiality is needed to protect lives, Parliament would sit. The risk of a leak would be too great.
I presume that law in Canada grants the issuing authority discretion in who to issue passport and the government the power to waive certain requirements in some cases.
Man, I just don’t get the love for “Argo.” I thought it was unremarkable. Great idea, pedestrian execution, paint by numbers script. Nothing atrocious, solid B. But not even nomination worthy, let alone winning, unless as a purely political gesture.
I should have read this before posting. This was exactly my reaction to the film. Meh.
As a purely conceptual-legal question, this makes me wonder something.*
What’s the definition of a fake passport in Iran, and could Parliament have gotten around that definition by authorizing the “fake passports” using just the right language? I’m thinking something like, unilaterally declaring the six Americans to be Canadian citizens, only to take their citizenship away again once the operation was over.
*Something which I know would have no real-world legal applications, because if Iran wants to hang you and you’re in their borders I’m guessing they find a way.
I thought Argo was good, just not quite as good as advertised. The tension in the Iranian revolution scenes was great, the cast was excellent, and John Goodman seemed to be having a ball. But by the middle of the movie it turned into a formulaic heist film (a good one, but still) and the ending at the airport was obviously fiction.
That’s what I thought too. Entertaining, B/B+. Not a best picture. I mean, I’m glad any time Spielberg doesn’t win, but that was the only reason I was glad.
OK, so on the above point I was seriously wrong.
Otherwise, I am sticking to my original OP review and saying this film was good but not great - and* most certainly not Oscar worthy*.
I am convinced a lot of the vote was sympathy vote because Ben was snubbed in the Best Director category. This is the equivalent of giving little Timmy an “A” in his third grade science project because his dog, Lassie, died and everyone feels sorry for him. Nice gesture for the kid, but not deserved upon merit.
BTW, I wasn’t in an Oscar office pool this year, but I would have killed - I saw Argo winning a few weeks ago as the tide started to shift with this sympathy vote. To win a pot of money in an office pool, I too would have voted Argo as most likely to win,
Oh well, it won’t be the first Best Film award that got it wrong, and I am sure it won’t be the last. I will lose no sleep over this - but I am fairly certain that in a year, five years and 10+ years, people will look back and say, “Why in the hell did that film win the Oscar?!”
Indeed.
No dimension, no art.
So all those other awards that Affleck has been winning at all the other ceremonies - all of them are because those groups felt bad that he was snubbed a Best Director nomination for a movie of average merit?
Sorry, I think you’re just out of touch. I thought this was a fine movie to win (I could have gone with Lincoln or Pi as well) and many critics and industry people agreed - not limited to just the academy voters. You didn’t see it and that’s fine but don’t try to dismiss the win by claiming it’s some kind of pity vote.