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Given
Stephen Gaghan’s screenplay for Traffic,
it’s no secret that Gaghan can handle
multiple narratives – and one of the joys of
Gaghan’s direction and screenplay for
Syriana is his expectation that the audience
can and will follow his lead. Just as
Traffic was an unflinching exposé of the
many human lives caught in the so-called
“drug war,” so is Syriana direct and
head-on, a steady-gazed film about the oil
industry’s global tentacles. A scathing
indictment of the means utilized by both the
Muslin and Christian worlds to secure oil
and its resultant wealth, Syriana does
little to inspire hope that the current
polarized state of the planet will end any
time soon. At times, Gaghan’s screenplay
evokes a disillusion similar to
Watergate-era films such as Three Days of
the Condor or The Conversation, and at
Syriana’s end, it is easy enough to feel as
if nothing has changed – not just since
Nixon, but since Machiavelli.
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