Argo is this years Oscar-winning best picture and is directed by Ben Affleck, who also stars. Affleck’s Gone Baby Gone (2007) quietly yet powerfully announced him as a director really worth looking out for. The film starred his brother Casey Afleck and Michelle Monahghan as a husband and wife private investigating team looking into the disappearance of young girl. It was Ben Affleck’s first full length feature as a director and it instantly became a favourite of mine. Argo is his third full-length feature and it solidifies Affleck as a rock-solid directing talent.

The film tells the story of six American diplomats being exfiltrated from a revolutionary Iran by Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck) using the production of a made-up science fantasy motion picture as a cover for their escape. It’s a story so strange that it could only be true and it turns out the film is based on an actual CIA operation. However, as with all films based on a true story does not mean that it is 100% accurate. You could go on all day about inaccuracies in the film, however, that does not detract from how effective a piece of filmic storytelling it is. Dramatic licence when exercised carefully can be a wonderful thing and Argo proves this with every minute of its gripping running time.

This is a film that is put together meticulously to create tension using expertly implemented film-making techniques. Real news footage from the time is dotted around the film, intercut within the narrative and strategically displayed on convincingly chunky 70’s tv sets. This news footage directly informs the whole look of the film and adds a very real sense of danger to every stage of the exfiltration operation. We see hordes of angry revolutionaries, men hanging from cranes and women with automatic rifles. This is an Iran in the middle of a cataclysmic uprising. The American government has provided shelter for the former Shah of Iran, they want him back to face their justice and will siege the American embassy in Iran to force their hand. This is where the film begins with the nail-biting taking of the American Embassy by a horde of angry revolutionaries. Most of the diplomats find themselves trapped and captured by force. However, six of them do manage to escape and take shelter in a Canadian Ambassador’s home: where they find themselves marooned and surrounded by a sea of angry revolutionaries who don’t know they are hiding there – yet.

Another fantastic tension building device is the overarching threat of shredded documents being pieced back together by children in the revolutionary force – acting as a ticking clock on the diplomats lives.. These documents contain profiles of the six who are hiding in the Canadian embassy and when the paper shreds are eventually pieced back together the Iranian force will know that six have escaped their grasp and critically – what they look like. This threat of their escape being discovered adds a real sense of foreboding to the film, just as Mendez makes progress with his exflitration plan, the Iranian forces are coming ever closer to finding out about the escaped diplomats. The discovery of identity coupled with the palpable threat of danger conveyed through news footage and the siege itself creates an environment of maddening fear for the six diplomats left in the Canadian embassy and this takes its toll the on the characters.

Scott McNairy who I thought was fantastic in Killing Them Softly (2012) and Monsters (2010) plays Joe Stafford husband to Kathy Stafford (Kerry Bishé) and blames himself for bringing his wife to work in the embassy in Iran in the first place. When the embassy was short-staffed current employees were supposedly encouraged to bring their spouses to work there. As such, McNairy’s character has a massive burden of guilt hanging over his head adding to the already terrifying situation he and all of the characters are in. When it comes his time to step up and help with the escape plan, he is reluctant fearing he will put his wife in even more danger. The film never slows down to explore the psyches of the marooned diplomats for long, however, in the scenes where it does we are given a meaningful reason to care about these people and understand their terror.

Characterization in the film is expertly economical. A great example of this is Sahar played by Shiela Vand. She is the house keeper at the Canadian embassy and as she is Iranian herself – there is no escape plan for her. She faces perhaps the most difficult decision any character has to make in the film: whether to tell the Iranian soldiers that the diplomats are here or help hide them and risk her own life if she is ever found out. She only has a handful of scenes but becomes one of the most memorable characters in the film.

I’ve talked about how the film is expertly crafted for tension, however, even with the greatest of suspense cinema there should still be some small relief so that tension doesn’t become tedium. Too much of anything is never a good thing. Argo remedies this situation with some genuinely funny scenes with Alan Arkin (as Lester Siegel) and John Goodman (as John Chambers). In one scene Mendez talks to Chambers about how easy it would be to pose as a director for this fake film and Chambers quips that anyone could be trained to be a director in a day. This could be seen as poking fun at Affleck’s career hop from acting to directing and demonstrates a humble side to the director. These funny scenes serve to lighten the mood, right before plunging the audience back into the thick of it. Argo is a fantastic film from a humble director and I can’t ask for much more than that.

Darran Murphy

Darran is studying English+Film, find out more about Darran and his work at foxxiecinnamon