We just watched ‘Syriana’ a George Clooney flim. And I must say, like Traffic the movie, we are endeared and blown away. Highly recommended ika nga.
Spoilers here so please don’t read further unless you’ve already seen it or is oblivious to what’s it all about.
You’ve been warned…
Anyhow, the movie is composed of sub-plots but all revolving around oil and the middle east.
As usual you have the greedy big american companies looking after their interests (everybody knows them by now). And then you have the typical US government collusion (most films have that too) with the former. But what struck a nerve was the pakistani OFW, here you have a bloke going to this oil rich gulf emirate trying to ink out a living and hoping he could uplift the lives of his family back home (a typical pinoy OFW story right there) and end up being recruited by a terrorist organization.
Your immediate reaction would be these folks are dumb mindless morons willing to kill and be killed (what do you expect when the news you only hear always come from one side of the story). But no, not this time, the film has painted a face on that so called drone. He too is a man like me. He too has the same aspirations I have . Mind you, not that I approve of such things, but if you look a lot deeper you’d soon realize that every man’s action no matter how irrational from our point of view always has an explanation, we’re just too caught up with our own troubles oftentimes we take the easy route and generalize, we don’t exert any effort in understanding the reasons behind.
That’s why sometimes I ask myself is it fair that we denounce anyone as evil just because they harmed us? Have we stopped to think that maybe just maybe they have the same problems we are experiencing but their circumstances are more dire than ours? Guess most of us don’t.
World peace can only be achieved thru understanding, thru education and specially thru listening. If only everyone could act more properly then we wouldn’t be in this quagmire.