"Argo" Retrospective: Why We're Wrong to Condemn A Once-Renowned Oscar Winner

It's far from perfect, but Ben Affleck's 2012 Best Picture winner is still an admirable historical thriller.

July 15, 2024

On October 3, 1993, two American Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters were shot down by Somali militia forces in Mogadishu. The mission was to secure two lieutenants employed by Mohamed Farrah Aidid, a Somali general responsible for deadly attacks against U.N. peacekeepers in an attempt to seize control of the capital.

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The survivors defended the crash site from militia soldiers, aided by forces from the United States, Malaysia, and Pakistan. The fighting lasted throughout the night, only ending when a convoy moved into the city to liberate the trapped American soldiers.

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It was an international outrage, a tragedy of death for the sake of freedom, one of those “successful failures” that proved more failure than success.

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It took only eight years for Hollywood to dramatize the incident.

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Black Hawk Down had all the makings of a great movie. It was piloted by Ridley Scott, fresh off an Oscar nomination for Gladiator; it starred Josh Hartnett, the heir apparent heartthrob to Leonardo DiCaprio; box office titan Jerry Bruckheimer was the architect.

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But for how well it captured the searing Somali heat, the blood and sweat of battle, the panic and fear of life teetering on the brink, it was historical Swiss cheese. It reduced the Malaysian forces to bus drivers ferrying the American soldiers to and fro the hallowed ground on which they forged their heroism. It behaved as though the invaluable Pakistani efforts never happened at all. We, the very people whose planes got shot down and found themselves in this mess to begin with, were the saviors.

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Complaints sounded over these liberties, but few cared to hear them. Revisionist history is the backbone of revisionist history. It is a self-supporting structure that cannot only be reinforced by itself. If the false reality topples, no Malaysians or Pakistanis are coming to save the day.

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Thus, what gets discussed about Black Hawk Down is whether it deserves a place in the pantheon of war pictures. We do not chastise its inaccuracies, partly because they went unpublicized in the age of immediate information, but it's mostly because we all agree on something unless it suits our sensibilities to disagree: movies are not beholden to history.

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Twelve years after its release, Argo, despite immense contemporary acclaim (including an Oscar Best Picture win), still faces condemnation for its inaccuracies and omissions, chiefly the Canadian role in securing the safety of the six Americans who escaped when Iranian revolutionaries took control of the US embassy on November 4, 1979.

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It is not the responsibility of storytellers to tell a story accurately. They often take more liberty than is necessary, contorting fact into trope to pacify filmgoers seeking classic escapism instead of realism, but those liberties can prove crucial. Stories are, by definition, told for entertainment. If one spin is more compelling than another, then objectively, honoring the story is perverting the truth.

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But what of the perversion being typical Hollywood self-congratulations? What of the elitists gathering in the Kodak Theater once again patting themselves on the back for something they didn’t do?

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It doesn't matter, not this time anyway. We pat ourselves on the back all the time. Cinephiles retreat to dingy indie theater with overpriced coffee and don their berets to rejoice in their brilliance, how attuned they are to artistic genius as the rest of the world toils in mediocrity. They do not care for your cliché. They do not suffer your iniquity. They only enjoy garden variety if it comes from their garden, which is always in bloom.

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Argo is not a perfect film. It thinks it's slicker than it is, milking its barroom jokes and acerbic wit for more than they are worth. It isn’t particularly inventive if one appreciates invention. Its lead performance gets subdued for the sake of achievement by committee but is too restrained to propel the movie forward.

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It is inconsistently paced. It loses itself as it figures out how to justify extra scenes in Tehran, like when the Americans walk through the bazaar to legitimize their disguise as a Canadian film crew on a location scout.

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It eventually exposes its deception, crediting Canada for her efforts at the very end, undermining its credibility as a shameless bastardization of history to wimp out in the hopes we will forgive its transgressions.

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But for its faults, Argo is worth setting aside our limp complaints to appreciate great filmmaking.

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Argo is the rare successful concept film, where the very idea of what is happening is enough to invest us emotionally. We do not need character exploration, slowly unveiling what motivates them or colors their perspective. Life, and wanting to keep it, is all we need.

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Within this principle, Argo can deepen our perspective with organic moments of development. It establishes who the six are and will be as the Iranians quickly take control of the embassy. Joe Stafford is panicky and pessimistic, but outspoken. His wife, Kathy, is a fearful optimist, quick to stand pat in belief of the best-case scenario. Mark and Cora Lijek are realists, firm in their opposition to sentiment and unwilling to take unnecessary risks. Robert Anders, though assumed to be group leader, is a follower. Lee Schatz is a man of action, though only insofar as others dictate those actions.

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There are no tricks or gimmicks, no forcing people to bend to sentiment for the sake of making a moment, save an unfortunate sidestep into Mendez's personal life. We do not see them become something they are not or do things they would not do to force progression. The truth of every character ensures momentum.

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Argo understands the relationship between sound and emotion, drowning out all but a stamp on travel documents or holding the sound of screaming revolutionaries as the six hit the streets and seek refuge.

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Its cuts suspend us as it lingers on the moment. We do not see Lester or Chambers enter the office, only them answering the phone. It knows how to incite feeling without exploiting, taking us through a well-scored script reading as we feel the clock slowly wind down on the helpless hostages trapped in the embassy.

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It gets timing. It empathizes with our stressors, like missing reservations and issues at customs, and stretches them to the limit before letting us breathe. It contrasts the calm of doing simple tasks, like loading luggage and boarding a plane, with the urgency of capturing fugitives fleeing the country. It accepts its lack of options, leaning into a Hollywood ending without relying on it to create suspense.

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It gets that opposing factors enable each other. If we are to feel suspense, we must get lulled into it. We have to feel the stakes while hoping for a reprieve. Every second away from doom must feel like a step towards salvation. We must always believe the plan will work without trusting that it will. We must laugh at cutting jabs or dismissive wit to deepen the distance we feel from them as the escape plays out. We need someone to shoot down the bad ideas to justify investing in the one we have. We need to trust Mendez knows what he’s doing, but not enough to guarantee success.

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Argo is always building. It doesn’t know moments are coming and constructs itself to reach them; it shapes itself to justify them and their impact. It is a mastery of technique, although in being that, it struggles to find its voice. It is not distinctive or particularly memorable. Its strongest impression will always be the first one. But its flair for the moment and ability to seize it is a testament to the diversity of movies.

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We see films that unfold themselves with each new viewing or ones that lay their cards on the table the first time. We see movies that resonate more as you dwell on them and ones that hit you hard in the moment and never rent a room in your thoughts again. We know that quality does not depend on which category it fits into, only what we extract from it. Argo extracts feelings. It inspires desire, hope, and fear. It will always be a great film, though its impact rests in its initial viewing.

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Argo does things we do not like and cannot make time for what might give it depth. It cannot develop the history of US-Iranian relations outside of an animated cliff notes version. It cannot show any Iranian as a human being with beliefs, ideals, experiences, and perspectives. It cannot make us accomplices in the fate of our people unless it intersperses the Iranian view with hostages enduring mock executions.

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But we must ask if our expectations are practical, reasonable, or beneficial. We must ask if there is use to what we demand or if we level criticism for the sake of it, never conceiving the implications of our expectations and demands. A film has only so much time. It can only accomplish so much and be so many things. Argo is successful by not bending to our whims, where we mistake insightful criticism as looking for elements to dislike and then failing to contextualize them.

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Argo made its choices, and it stuck by them. It embraced an American perspective, catered to that American perspective, and built all of its thrills, laughs, joys, and sorrows on the back of that perspective. It settled into an identity and refused to waver from it. It did not bite off more than it could chew or try to appease people who could not get appeased. It did not shift around like a thematic slide puzzle, adopting different principles scene by scene to create abstractions that allow projections to determine its merit.

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It took its destiny into its own hands. It flew its planes into enemy territory. It assumed the risks and got shot down mid-flight, but its defenders did not fight for it the way those American soldiers got protection from the Malaysians and the Pakistanis. It is likely that Argo, thanks to its success, will never receive the blissful ignorance of other inaccurate dramas. Hypocrisy rules the roost of film criticism, and sadly for Argo, that is not likely to change.