My wife, daughter and I enjoyed the movie "Argo" last weekend. I personally recommend it: it maintained suspense up to the last, despite the fact that the events it was based on were well-known to us who were adults in the 1980's. Ben Affleck did a fine job of acting and directing; Alan Arkin and John Goodman stole the show!
Now I am aware that the movie may have had some inclusions for dramatic effect (like the cars chasing the plane down the runway), but it ended with a historical note on what had happened to the 44 hostages held by the Iranis.
It reported the factual datum that they were released on January 20, 1980. However, it failed to include the juxtaposition of the major event that took place on that day:
Ronald W. Reagan was inaugarated President of the United States.
John Goodman has been popping up in a lot of films recently. He's in a film called 'Flight' that's coming out soon.
ReplyDeleteInteresting.
ReplyDeleteThere's debate among historians and partisan politicians over why the Iranians chose that date. One view is that they hated Jimmy Carter so much that they deliberately held on to the hostages long enough for him to leave the presidency in shame without gaining their release. Another view is that the Iranians were scared to death of Ronald Reagan's tough guy image and were afraid of the consequences of keeping the hostages with him as president. I don't think we'll ever know which one is real.
ReplyDeleteThe omission is curious. Maybe the Iranis figured they got as much mileage out of it as they could.
ReplyDelete