Three tentpoles for Argo, real quick.

Form, superego. Its breathtaking visual beauty, particularly the way cities are presented
(Affleck’s main strength as a director, visually).

Content, ego. The twist on making a film about making a film. This is a film about pretending to
make a film. Now, aren’t all films about making films really about people pretending to be
making a film? But they all certainly look as if they were making it, pretty much like the actual
filmmakers making the film in real life look. Now if those people in those films really look like
they are making a film but in reality aren’t, what guarantee do we have (and I’m no longer
talking just about filmmaking) filmmakers who really look like they are making a film actually
are making it. All this is enhanced by the fact that Argo is based on a real story about people
pretending to be making a film, and by the fact that all art implies always a deception.

Drive, id. The film possesses a mythical force based on the idea of the escape from hell. It is an
Orphic myth retold. Hence the name Argo, which might very well be applied to the vessel that
carries them out of hell (consider Orpheus was one of the Argonauts). The ridiculous ideology
of the film aids to the development of this motif. Iran is presented as a terrible place because
the movie has to convince us that it is hell, that the very place is evil. It has to present a black
and white depiction of characters and places. There are certain shades, it is true, like the mild,
quaint corruption of Hollywood and the mild, quaint justifications for some of the Iranian
attitudes, but still, the film is pretty clear: West good, East bad. This serves the grander
purpose of creating the “myth mood”, the idea of “they” and “we” confronted. And the film
succeeds in this deception to such an extent that when the characters finally escape this hell,
we all feel a relief, a splendid catharsis. In fact, those “moral” shades might be the only flaw in
the film. Perhaps it would’ve benefited from a more “Tarantinoesque” approach in its
depiction of good-bad relations.