The Analysis Of The Historical Drama Film "Argo"
The historical drama film Argo was made in 2012, it’was production companies are Smokehouse Films and GK Films. Smokehouse Films is an American company and GK Films is a British company. The film takes place in 1979 in Tehran, Iran. Iranian activists take over the United States Embassy in retaliation of the president granting asylum in the United States to the Shah of Iran. The people in the building saw the activists trying to intrude in, so they shredded all the most secretive information before they could reach them. The activist storm the Embassy and take almost all the Americans as hostages but six manage to escape capture. As a result of no one knowing they made it out, the six Americans find shelter at the Canadian Ambassadors place until they can make a plan to get out of Iran.
The United States tries to come up with a meticulous plan to get the six Americans out of the country undetected and decided to make them fake Canadian lives and instructed them to say they’re filming a movie there. They get a big American producer in on the plan to voucher for them if they needed that extra security which they did when they were at the airport. They combust this big plan while Iranian kids in a sweatshop were made to put all the shreds together and that is they figure out that there are six people missing.
The movie ends when they make the flight out of Iran as cops and Iranian Army are speeding to the plane as they take off just in the nick of time. The American movie Argo inadequately depicts most activist from any country especially the Iranian activists and Americans in this film are seen as the most dominant culture. The film poorly shows the way most activist in any country act. The Iranians are shown to be barbaric in their way of storming the Embassy by lighting things on fire and pushing and pulling on the gates to force them open. The movie was the most loud at this part in this film as well which made the viewer intimidated by the Iranians which I feel poorly depicts their people.
The use of parallel music with the people chanting and yelling while they’re flashing pictures of what the activists are doing to the embassy was useful in getting the vibe to the viewer. Although, not every Iranian activist supports unpeaceful protests but how it was depicted in this movie moved me to feel otherwise, like the whole country wanted them dead. There are two scenes in this film I’d like to analyze, one from the beginning of the movie and one at the end of the film. About three minutes in you see a shot of the street from a few stories off the ground level from a window, and you see a street filled with chanting Iranian people.
The height off the ground establishes dominance of the Americans to the people but that wasn’t the case for long. The next shot is moved back showing two Americans standing at the window illuminated from the backlight giving them a halo effect. This effect seems to make the Americans seem like angels. The men are engaged in small talk about the windows being bulletproof. It then comes in close to one of the men as he says as knocking on the window, “they’ve never been tested” meaning that they’re going to be tested today if the activists make their way in.
At the end of the film one of the final shots is an American homecoming. It is a man and his wife hugging and behind them is an American flag waving in the wind. This leaves the viewer as if the Americans won this little war between the two countries. Which is a lose lose situation so it’s not a good thing what happened. Especially because this film is based off a true story is troublesome because all the negativity and money spent on things like this ruin a lot of people's lives and digresses the world as a whole in coming a peaceful place. It further exemplifies negative stereotypes and causes ignorance which is never useful in a society like ours. In the examples and summary provided the American made film, Argo, negatively depicts all cultures in this film and exemplifies America and American culture as the most dominant and best of them all contributes to the ignorance and insensitivity of the world today.
