Made in Hollywood

Actor Ben Affleck is much more than the protagonist of popular and unexpected movies like “Armageddon,” “Pearl Harbor” or “Daredevil.” Early in his career he won an Oscar, shared with Matt Damon, for best original screenplay for “Good Will Hunting” in 1997. A decade later he would also begin to work as a director with “Gone Baby Gone,” followed later by “The Town” and now with “Argo.” Director Ben Affleck is not a promise: he’s a fortunate reality. His first two films showed solid classical narrative and dramatic strength, not bogged down by the trajectory of a beginner. Now with “Argo” he presents us with one of the best and most important movies released this year.

As it is almost always the case, the most interesting stories – also the most horrifying – emerge from real life. In this case it dealt with the rescue of six members from the U.S. embassy in Teheran who left the diplomatic headquarters the day it was taken over by a large number of followers of the Iranian revolution who demanded the U.S. repatriate the Shah, exiled in that country. These six people took refuge in the house of the Canadian ambassador and had to be rescued by a joint operation of the CIA and the Canadian government, carried out in 1980. The details of the amazing and literally cinematographic rescue were revealed by “Wired” magazine in an article published by Joshuah Bearman in 2007. The article was used as the basis for the script of this movie, developed by New Yorker Chris Terrio.

A film within a film is one of the most beloved subgenres by movie buffs. “Argo” is part of that select group of films. The movie uses elements representative of Hollywood – magnificence, big scale reproduction of historic events, ability to generate suspense — to show us how the movie industry put itself in the service of the CIA to design a façade useful to its purposes. In that it is similar to “Wag the Dog,” Barry Levinson’s 1997 satire in which a movie producer is hired by the government to make up, with cinematographic means, a distracting war.

Tense, and comedic at times (thanks to some veterans such as Alan Arkin and John Goodman) and always interesting, “Argo” reminds us of the ability of film fiction to give life to other worlds and to keep us safe.