Canada and Iran aren’t the only countries offended by the portrayal of their diplomatic stance in the movie Argo as a passing reference to New Zealand has sparked controversy.
It was not long before Affleck, in defending his movie, responded, by saying, “Let me just start by saying I love New Zealand, and I love New Zealanders. I think that it’s tricky. You walk a fine line. You are doing a historical movie and naturally you have to make some creative choices about how you are going to condense this into a three-act structure.”
The passing reference to the Kiwis, which has caused such controversy, occurs in the thirteenth minute of the movie where the supervisor Jack O’Donnell tells Tony Mendez, played by Affleck himself, that the “Brits turned them away. Kiwis turned them away. Canadians took them in.”
Yet according to official sources, the British, Swedish and New Zealand embassies all sheltered and protected these six Americans for a short period of time with the Canadian embassy taking the biggest risk of all.
While outsiders are wondering what the fuss is all about, Steve Matthewman, a sociology professor at the University of Auckland, explains that New Zealanders take pride in being hospitable and helpful to hitch hikers and which is why they are not so happy with Hollywood’s take on the movie’s depiction of their country during the Islamic Revolution of 1979 in Iran.
However it isn’t just Argo but Zero Dark Thirty as well, a movie about the capture of Osama Bin Laden, that has been slammed by critics for factual inaccuracy.
