(Canada, 85 min.)
Dir. Drew Taylor and Larry Weinstein
Feat. Ken Taylor, Pat Taylor, Joe Clark, Flora MacDonald,
Tony Mendez, Carole Jerome.
Programme: Mavericks (World Premiere)
Last year's Toronto International Film Festival hosted the
World Premiere of Ben Affleck's wildly entertaining blockbuster Argo. Controversy followed the TIFF
screening as the film ended its thrilling embellishment of the 1979-1981
Iranian Hostage Crisis, for which Canada played an especially important role in
sheltering and rescuing six Americans who escaped the siege on the American
Embassy. The feat became dubbed “The Canadian Caper” and it made national
heroes out of Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor, his wife Pat, and the team of
Canadians at the embassy in Iran who took part in saving six of Canada’s neighbours.
Argo takes some
liberties with the truth in the process of creating an exhilarating piece of
escapism, but some viewers also found that the portion of the story Argo tells in its two-hour running time
diminishes the efforts of many parties involved in the mission, especially
Taylor, who undertook enormous risks with the additional work he performed for
The American government. Our Man in
Tehran, a new documentary on the Iranian Hostage Crisis, gives a fuller and
more comprehensive view of a Canadian story that hasn't been told in the detail
it deserves. Our Man in Tehran puts
the Canadian back in The Canadian Caper and gives Taylor and his peers due
credit.
Directors Larry Weinstein and Drew Taylor (no relation to
Ken and Pat) tell the story of The Canadian Caper from an informed and
decidedly Canadian point of view. The filmmakers allow a roster of participants
from the mission explain the events of the Iranian Hostage Crisis with insight
and detail. Ken Taylor, the proverbial “Man in Tehran” gets the starring role
as he describes in his own words the actions he and other staffers at the
Canadian Embassy in Tehran took to save the lives of the six Americans. Taylor
intuitively—and diplomatically—elaborates upon the political implications
entailed in the Canadian government's participation in the event, especially
his additional cooperation with the American government in the covert planning
of a military rescue mission aimed to free the remaining hostages from the
embassy.
The film also provides significant insight into efforts
taken by Canadians in North America to help facilitate the escape of the
hostages. Former Prime Minister Joe Clark, for example, recalls how he swiftly
gave the Taylors his support after receiving some urgent advice from then Minister
of External Affairs Flora MacDonald. Especially radical was the decision of the
Canadian government to falsify Canadian passports that allowed the Americans to
escape Iran safely. The actions went far beyond playing host.
Our Man in Tehran
(thankfully) makes no mention of Argo
as it chronicles the exfiltration mission of the now famous “best bad idea” that
smuggled the six Americans out of Iran under the guise of a Hollywood film crew
preparing for a sci-fi movie. The other idea, Taylor notes, was to make the
escapees out to be a documentary film crew in Tehran to make a sympathetic
portrait of the revolution. (How Canadian.) The gung-ho American enthusiasm to
turn an escape into escapism is therefore captured with a fun degree of
accuracy in either cinematic rendering of The Canadian Caper.
As Taylor and Weinstein allow several of the primary
participants to explain the unfolding of the events, they also invite many
Americans from the hostage crisis to explain how the escape unfolded. Included
among the interviewees is CIA agent Tony Mendez, as well as several of the
Americans who escaped the embassy and some who did not. The film therefore
gives a distinctly Canadian perspective on The Canadian Caper, but it doesn’t
do so at the expense of the fuller picture. The event was a collaborative
effort in diplomatic relations, so Our
Man in Tehran appropriately takes an objective and diplomatic tone and works
to acknowledge the many heroes who participated in this chapter of history.
Equally important is the film’s attention to the details of
Iran’s socio-political climate that precipitated the crisis in the first place.
Our Man in Tehran illuminates the backstory
of the events, which in turn accentuates the gravity of the stories proffered
by the interviewees. The film, edited by Steve Weslak, moves at a swift pace
and unfolds the story in riveting detail.
Our Man in Tehran
does justice to its subjects and acknowledges the true-life heroes behind a
great Canadian story. It’s fitting to see Ken Taylor speak eloquently and
diplomatically, and get due credit in a comprehensive, informative, and, above
all, vastly compelling film. Our Man in
Tehran is proof that a film doesn't need to sacrifice the facts in order to
tell a great story.
Rating: ★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)