Argo Makes Politics Thinking in Hollywood

Like all great films, Argo accounts for various visions of which the most immediately understandable had to do with politics, derived — as it is known — from real events that occurred during the hostage crisis between Iran and the U.S. in 1979. A very accurate historical-political context, worked on down to the last detail of its reconstruction, and which can also be read and reviewed in light of current affairs nowadays, just like 1979, since there is increasing tension between Tehran and Washington today. Together with fluttering flags with the stars and stripes flags in the end, details (stated and implied) abound, especially in the first 20 minutes, of strong criticism of U.S. policy in the region — especially over the explicit support of the Reza Pahlavi regime.

Similarly, there is a fascinating, back-and-forth game established between U.S. policy and the politics of a 1970s Hollywood beaten by the crisis of the major studios, whose symbol is the famous— and then semi-destroyed — sign that the film showed from the air. One has to see how Ben Affleck handles that connection in symmetrical terms: At one point, film people — a real makeup artist and a fictitious producer — begin to become political and a group of hostages confined in the Canadian embassy in Tehran pretend to be part of team making a movie. Asserting itself in its historical time, Argo achieves the rare feat of immediately becoming a classic.