While on a recent plane ride between Florida and my childhood home, Chicago, I decided to revisit Argo (2012).  I saw it in the theater, mainly because I enjoyed Ben Affleck’s previous directorial effort, The Town (2010).  I always thought of that one in the same spirit as The Departed (2006), wanting to do his own Boston movie like his good friend, Matt Damon.  I have no idea if this is accurate, it is just an impression.  Yet, I do not remember being as moved by Argo as I was by The Town.  This was before I began watching my movies through a Catholic lens, so that might have something to do with it.  If you are familiar with The Town, you might also think this is a silly assertion.  That is about organized crime in inner-city Boston.  Argo involves geo-politics and bigger ideas.  With both of them, there is a sense of selflessness in the main characters, played by Affleck in each instance.  That is an idea this Catholic can support, and I am not sure why I did not recognize it fully when I viewed Argo in the theater.

The title, Argo, has nothing to do with the geo-politics you see explained in a voiceover at the beginning.  It is important to know, though, why a fake movie needed to be developed in order to extract six Americans from Tehran, the capital of Iran, in 1980.  That is a rough outline of the entire plot, but I shall go deeper.  The overall reason why Americans would be imperiled here is because of the United States’ government’s involvement in the country.  Namely, they backed the toppling of a democratically elected government in order to install the pro-Western (particularly regarding oil) Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi (archival footage).  During his rule, elites prospered but regular Iranians did poorly, leading to the revolution of the late 1970s headed by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini (archival footage), a religious cleric and eventual supreme leader.  Because of the United States’ meddling, it is not long into the uprising that mobs are gathering outside of the embassy in Tehran.  Their angry chants turn to action, and soon they are storming what is meant (like all embassies around the world) to be sovereign American territory.  There is chaos as Iranians ransack the diplomatic buildings looking for hostages and other useful material, while those working on site attempt to destroy documents or make other plans.  Our six had been at the consulate desk working to grant visas to certain Iranian nationals.  Given their location relative to the city streets, they decide their best option is to make their way outside and hopefully not be noticed.  They manage to do so, and are taken in by Ken Taylor (Victor Garber), the Canadian ambassador to Iran.  With the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, not to mention regular citizens, seeking any Americans they can find, this situation is tenuous.  On top of not living under the best conditions and being confined to the ambassador’s house, the Taylors have an Iranian maid, Sahar (Sheila Vand), who could give away the presence of the Americans.  The long and short of the situation is that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) needs to figure out a way to get these six Americans out of Iran.  The person they turn for such missions is CIA officer Tony Mendez (Ben Affleck), who specializes in extractions.  There have been a number of ideas for accomplishing this feat put forward by different parts of the government, the most prominent of which is the State Department advocating that they be given bicycles and pedal their way to the border with Turkey.  Tony tiredly dismisses most of the proposals, citing logical reasons each time.  It is while watching television with his son over the telephone (he is currently not living with his family) that he is inspired to go the Hollywood route.  With the blessing of his boss, Deputy Director Jack O’Donnell (Brian Cranston), Tony flies to Los Angeles to meet with his contact, John Chambers (John Goodman), a special effects artist.  John gives a number of pointers, mainly that they have to make the production look as legitimate as possible.  This means hiring a real producer, but one that would not mind putting money into something that is will never make anything back financially speaking.  John suggests Lester Siegel (Alan Arkin), a long time Hollywood man whose career has been on the decline.  He agrees, seemingly out of concern for the plight of those trapped overseas.  This leaves Tony to take the plan back to Washington, D.C., where it is met with incredulity.  He points out that it is the best of a few bad schemes.  Hesitatingly, he is given the go ahead, and begins making his way to Tehran.  After meeting with a contact in Istanbul to get an idea of conditions in Iran, he finally gets there and makes contact with the six Americans.  They are not thrilled by the idea of pretending to be a film crew in order to get out of the country.  They are even less happy when they are told they have to go out in public in order to do some location scouting to better establish their cover.  Meanwhile, the Iranian government is aware that six people from the embassy are missing, and they are beginning to piece together their identities from shredded documents they obtained from the American embassy.  The scouting trip almost ends in disaster.  Further, tensions with Iran keep rising to the point that the United States’ government decides to stop the mission before it goes any further.  This last decision is not to Tony’s liking, and he carries on with it after telling Jack this is what he would be doing before hanging up the phone.  This forces Jack to do some unofficial maneuvering that results in the tickets for all seven being ready for the Americans not long after they get to the airport.  There are some close calls as they make it through security, but they all get on the plane.  There is a mad scramble as Iranian officials realize their mistake at the last moment, but it is not enough to prevent them from taking off.  The embassy workers are triumphantly welcomed home, but Tony cannot take any credit given the classified nature of the undertaking.  His reward comes in being reunited with his family, and that is the closing scene.

In Argo, Tony’s selfless act is a Christian one.  That is partially me adding a Catholic analysis, yet there is a shot of a Catholic church at one point, and him slipping a prayer card into some papers in the hopes of favorable divine intervention.  Though this one is of the Child Jesus, these are also often depicted with saints on the front.  Many Catholics erroneously use these as talismans, not unlike what Tony does.  Either way, his efforts, it appears, are a bit dramatized by Affleck.  Based on the little research I did, the Canadians deserve more credit for what happened than is depicted.  No matter who most affected the extraction of these six Americans, the theme of trust is something that comes through in the story.  These six Americans first had to trust Ken, and then Tony, with their safety in a situation that seemed to only ensure certain death.  It is not easy to put your life in someone else’s hands.  It is even harder, for Christians included, to do so with a God that we supposedly cannot see.  There are many followers of God who will tell you if asked, and without hesitation, that they are ready to die for God.  Please note that I am neither trying to suggest that any of these six saw their plight in these terms, or to compare martyrdoms between religions.  I feel that last caveat is important given some of the stereotypes that could be attached to this subject.  Though every martyr sees their act as being done for a greater good, over the centuries Christians have given their lives in this way in intensely personal ways.  In a non-spiritual sense, it is an act to which Tony is resigned to as he departs for his mission.  He carries this attitude over to not being able to have recognition for his actions.  That is a different, though no less significant, form of martyrdom.  In some respects, dying to self in this way is harder than physical death because we have to live with a knowledge that can be difficult to bear.

The real-life Tony from Argo seems to have been content with remaining in obscurity.  Either way, even if the depiction is a little off, watching this one is worth your time.  I am still not sure why I did not think so at the time, but we will chalk it up to maturity.