Changing my mind: occasional essays - By Zadie Smith Page 0,93

the streets of Brooklyn can be traced back to the rich dealers in Florida, to the desperate backstreets of Mexico City, to the peasants who slave in the cocaine fields of Colombia. So it is in Syriana, where a dull piece of political stagecraft is shown to contain multitudes: Arab princes, CIA agents, Texas oil barons, energy analysts, Washington attorneys and two young Pakistani boys who lose their pitifully paid jobs in the oil fields when the merger causes huge layoffs. Guerrilla camera work and bravura acting fuse to create a realism not unlike the edgy, off-kilter work of Cassavetes, a particularly striking achievement when one considers the fame of many of the actors involved. Playing an all-American, square-chinned energy analyst, Matt Damon joins Clooney, here fat, bearded and sluggish as a U.S. agent with a conscience, and both appear to be just what they claim to be—real players in this dark world.

My complaint is clarity: it is evident that the sociopolitical contexts of this film have been closely observed, so much so that at times it feels like an overresearched novel, the writer having forgotten that we have not shared in his research. This film treats its audience not merely as adults but as experts. I was frequently thrown into scenes on the back foot; only understanding what had passed when it was almost over. You don’t walk out of Syriana outraged and decided, as from Traffic, but this is part of its sophistication. It prompts you to begin thinking, not to finish. Ultimately, what is most impressive about Syriana is the scrupulousness of its production: the genuinely multicultural casting; the sensitivity and nuance of its use of languages, accents, vocabulary; the clothes people wear in each city; the respectful attention to the smallest cultural details.

Syriana is an American movie that reaches out beyond itself. Watching it made me feel hopeful—a rare sensation in a multiplex. Of course, no one film or book will make of us a reasonable, decent people, and what we are living through is not simply a war of ideas; but ideas are no small part of our troubles, and the American film industry is, for better or worse, among the largest engines and disseminators of ideas on the planet. Films like Syriana are not revolutions, but they are contributions. And if this film reaches the countries of which it speaks—on illegal DVDs or in backroom cinemas—a novel message will be passed to the people who live there: we believe you exist and are human, as we are. “When I grew up the only time you would see Arabs on-screen would be in something like Sinbad, where they’re climbing over the side of the ship with a saber in their mouth,” says Alexander Siddig, who plays the character of Prince Nasir, a young, reform-minded emir-in-waiting who has an idea about halting the sale of cheap oil to Americans and getting a better deal for the people of his country. To deal fairly with other humans one must first see them as human. American movies disseminate more images of humans than any other medium. Here Hollywood has something approaching a responsibility; Syriana goes some way to honoring that.

The Sunday Telegraph does not hold with the idea of half stars. I understand the thinking, but it makes it difficult for this reviewer to rate a certain kind of “quirky” American film set in the suburbs, of which half a dozen are released each year and for which two and a half stars is precisely the correct denomination. The Weather Man is one of those films; in fact, it might be the ür-quirky film, for it is an exact splicing of two mild giants of the genre: American Beauty and About Schmidt.

I think I found this film palatable because I read it perversely. As I see it, this film’s central concept is the aversion most right thinking people have to the actor Nicolas Cage. And he accepts this mantle so honorably and humbly in this film that I think maybe now I quite like him. It’s an honest and comic performance and seems filled with all the genuine humiliations that one imagines Cage himself has suffered in the past ten years. I don’t want to tell you any more about it—it’s best stumbled upon without expectations but with my reading kept in mind. One recommendation, though: Nicholas Hoult (the kid from About a Boy) is almost grown and is possibly on the cusp of becoming better looking than