If you read any interview with the director or the screenwriter, you'd know it was intentional. They were attempting to capture the feeling folks involved have. I think it was extremely sucessful. It was a movie of ideas and not plot. It was about no easy answers and the inability to parse a complex region with complex politics and a complex history. I'm sorry you didn't get that.

The idea that we have to be spoon fed everything is silly and offensive. It is perefectly acceptible for a director/screenwriter to do this. 2001, Brazil, Mulholland Drive, eXisTance, blah blah.

And of course it is valid to leave an audience confused. Life is often like that. You don't always have all the answers. (Side note: While directing The Big Sleep, Howard Hawks realized that he had no idea who killed the chaufuer. So he contacted author Raymond Chandler. He said, "Yeah. I never figure that out myself." Anyway, being confusing just for confusion sake is kind of weak, but using it as tool is perfectly okay. In Syriana's case,. the characters don't have answers at the end. Why should the viewer?

And I'm not sure about your point about multiple viewings. Are you saying it's to make more money? That is cynical. But to say that a movie can work on multiple levels, that you can get something new from it on repeated viewing, then of course. You may never get "answers." And multiple viewings, where you get someting new/different from it each time can be true of any complex movie, even one that is not 'confusing.'

Hi 6Slider,

Thanks for your reply. I completely take your point about the film's lack of coherence being a deliberate attempt by the filmmakers to accurately reflect the situation depicted in the film. I agree, it worked very well and I must stress that, overall, I liked the film.

And of course it is valid to leave an audience confused. Life is often like that.

Good point. This gets right to the heart of what I'm interested in here:

Of course, you're right that life is often confusing. What I'm really interesting in is: should films aim to accurately reflect life? You could argue that the entire point of "narrative" is to give coherence to a set of events. The feature film medium is a narrative form so I believe it's possible to argue that, in some sense, a film has failed if it lacks coherence.

Let me attack this issue from another angle:

Consider the evolution of story-telling. Supposedly, story-telling began as a way for humans to communicate autobiographical experiences so the community can benefit from the experience of individuals. "I walked for half a day in that direction and I found water. But when I drank the water I found it was rancid and unusable." That's what could be considered a primitive narrative. Importantly, this narrative does not aim to accurately mimic the experience of finding the water. The story teller's objective is not to make the listener experience the exhaustion and sweat involved in trekking for half a day to find water. Narrative forces coherence onto a set of events. Much of our own personal memories can be considered narratives. A well known failing of human memory is our eagerness to force events into a coherent structure and, in so doing, bend the accuracy of the individual events to better fit the narrative.

Personally, I think feature films should be coherent. Aiming to make a film incoherent because "that's what it's like in real life" doesn't work for me. A filmmaker who believes narrative can and should be a carbon copy of first hand experience is, in my humble opinion, misguided. Sure, it's valid to deliberately avoid coherence in other art forms like music videos, photographs, music etc but I don't think it's valid in feature films because features films are essentially narrative works and narratives require coherence.

But what about art films which have absolutely no coherence what so ever? Are they invalid? I know that I have enjoyed several films which have absolutely no narrative coherence what so ever.

I'm not sure I agree that feature films require coherence. The only thing feature films require is enough images to fill an hour or more. Saying that films require coherence sounds a little arbitrary to me.

Just thought I'd jump in.

To me coming out of Syriana I felt many different emotions, confusion was among them but overwelmingly it was one of dissapointment. And this dissapointment confused me, as my analysis of the film left me with no bad memories. I was gripped throughout the film and followed the plot well. I know a bit about the oil arguement, but not that much, so I felt I learned a lot watching the film, I understood and respected the feeling that within the conflict there is no wrong or right answer and a conclusion to the mess is going to take some act of great will beyond anything we are likely to witness.

The thing I think that has the discontent in my memories of the film is that I didn't really connect with any of the characters. Only the Matt Damon character I thought had an arc to him. This I think is the great failing in the film. With Traffic, the film bore a complicated plot that didn't end in a particulrly satisfying way politically, but you connected with the characters within the film and that guided you emotionally out of the other side. With Syriana, you get to the point where you believe you understand many of the characters, but I never really cared about any of them. With the possible exception of Matt Damon - although he only changes his ways by getting himself blown up, I would have liked his reversal to have been a more personal one.

So in closing, for me, a film can be as confusing as you like as long as there is something in the character to cling on to. I've seen Mullholland Drive a lot of times now, I still have no idea what the hell is going on, but I love it because of the emotion, because you are with the characters, you feel moved when they are moved and you feel they, and you, have been changed by the time the credits roll. This is what Syriana lacked for me.

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