As the closing credits flash on the screen, black-and-white archival news photos of the events occurring around the time of the “Iranian hostage crisis” are shown, matched with images from the movie “Argo.” The match-up serves to remind members of the audience, still striving to regain their breath after the tense last minutes of the film, that the movie they watched was indeed based on real life.
And on real people. One of the most enjoyable moments of the movie also takes place after the end, when photos of the actual people—the six American hostages, the Canadian ambassador and his wife, and even the CIA operative who stages the escape—are flashed alongside the faces of the actors in character. Uncanny indeed are the similarities.
Perhaps this is what “Argo” director Ben Affleck set out to do. He underlines the fact that, despite the preposterous plot and outsize characters, what we’re watching is a retelling of an actual episode from history, involving very real people caught in very frightening circumstances, circumstances that in one way or another are still occurring today.
“The best bad idea we’ve got” is how Jack O’Donnell (Bryan Cranston), immediate superior of CIA extraction specialist Tony Mendez (Affleck), describes the plan to free six US Embassy personnel from the residence of Canadian Ambassador to Iran Ken Taylor (Victor Garber). That the plan involves a pair of Hollywood veterans: a noted prosthetics artist (John Goodman) and fading producer (Alan Arkin) is only one of the many remarkable facts about “The Canadian Caper,” by which the escape was known when news about it first surfaced. We know the “bad idea” worked. But how it worked involves a lot of nail-biting suspense and genuinely funny moments.
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But first, a little history lesson. In 1979, Iranian students and militants had been gathering daily in front of the American embassy in Teheran to demand the return of the Shah of Iran, who had been ousted in a popular revolution and had then been allowed into the United States for cancer treatment.
Then, on Nov. 4, a group of students successfully break into the embassy grounds, with the security forces reluctant to fire into the crowd for fear of instigating an international crisis. Seeing the angry protesters fill the embassy grounds, a group of six Americans in the consular section decide to escape through a back door exit, knocking on the doors of other embassies seeking sanctuary until they are all allowed into the Canadian ambassador’s residence.
Meanwhile, the rest of the US embassy staff is taken in as hostages by the militants. The hostages number 52, as shortly after the takeover, the Iranians release some 13 African-Americans and women, in what has been described as a misguided attempt to elicit sympathy from the American public.
When they find out about the six escapees, the State Department and CIA begin figuring out ways to bring them home safely, fully aware that it’s just a matter of time before the Iranians discover that the number of hostages doesn’t exactly match up with the number of Embassy employees.
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This is where Mendez enters the picture. After other plans are abandoned, he comes up with a zany idea: enter Iran as a Canadian film producer searching for shoot locations and leave the country with the six Embassy staff posing as Canadian filmmakers.
To give his plan greater credibility, he enlists the help of a real Hollywood team, who find an existing script for a sci-fi movie titled “Argo.” To give their “movie project” further traction, they even host a press conference and take out ads in “Variety.” The Hollywood scenes are truly funny, twisting a sharp knife at the soft underbelly of the film business, with Arkin at his mordant best.
Affleck then juxtaposes the Hollywood scenes with the events unfolding in Teheran, contrasting the tension and claustrophobia within the Canadian ambassador’s home, with the irony and indulgence of Hollywood.
There’s been a lot of commentary—good and bad—about Affleck’s decision to cast himself as the CIA extractor. He plays Mendez quietly, and some critics have complained that he allowed his character to fade into the background. But I think this is how it should be. The real star of “Argo” is history, and how it moved around the many puzzle pieces—Washington players, Iranian revolutionary guards, Canadian diplomats, State Department wonks—to complete an incredible, edge-of-the-seat story.
In fact, one of the most riveting scenes in the film is how the Iranians employed a roomful of children to piece together strips of paper from documents shredded by US Embassy staff. And as the faces of the six escapees emerge, we know their departure is as urgent as it is inevitable.
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Real life concerns intrude into your consciousness even as you try to lose yourself in the movie.
Scenes of angry mobs storming the US Embassy in Teheran give you a glimpse of “what-must-have-been” at the US Embassy in Benghazi, Libya where Ambassador Chris Stevens died after protesters broke into the compound. You are reminded once more that embassy grounds—once sacrosanct in international diplomacy—are no longer safe in the wake of mob politics.
And just as “Argo” was released, news came from Canada that the government had decided to close down its embassy in Teheran, a victim of conservative politics.
If there is anything that “Argo” teaches us, it is that common human decency and quiet bravery can and will step into the chaos of ideology and politics and save the day, truly in the tradition of Hollywood—and of real life, it turns out.