Zero Dark Thirty - Anticipation/Discussion Thread

Bigelow and Boal are speaking out of both sides of their mouths here. As noted, she is going around praising herself for taking "almost a journalistic approach to film". But when confronted by factual falsehoods she propagates on critical questions, her screenwriting partner resorts to the excuse that "it's a movie, not a documentary."

hard not to agree w. this from greenwald, even if he hasn't seen the flick

When a movie like this comes so soon after the events it depicts, and when the filmmakers are utilizing non-public inside information directly given to them by the White House and the CIA, it's really hard not to look at this film in a propagandistic light.

Hints from local filmcrits suggest they're going to ignore the "politics"

Yeah, it's the "inside info" bit that really chafes for me (not having seen this yet).

Shoot.

well, discussion of American war crimes will have an interesting venue in "Oscar season." I'm confident Clooney will say something revolting.

I do wish GG had waited to see the film bcz I have a feeling he isn't gonna get in without a ticket now.

Would rather he went to Holy Motors instead.

Shoot.

Is that an expression of disappointment that the crazed wimpass lefties are spoiling the last Obama victory party of the season, Eric?

Nope.

http://www.thesniper.us/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/obama-navy-seal-doll.jpg

A woman exiting the ZDT screening I attended said in the elevator "I feel so educated." *Danger*

Best thing about this movie is that it's opened up a whole new thread for Morbs' axe-grinding

alert John Kerry!

Was the *Danger* the sound of her robot companion warning her that you were about to come over and give her a stern dressing down?

sorry Guk, creeping fascism and extralegal assassinations piss me off. But I've got nuthin more to say til the rest of you see this (feel free not to, tho).

Tell me how you felt about the 9/11 opening.

No, it's fine. I appreciate you're youthful vim and vigour. Like being a college freshman again. xpost

I can't stand KB's insistence on 'journalism' and, by extension, 'authenticity'. Best aspects of Hurt Locker were not its (false and exaggerated) depictions of the life of a bomb disposal unit.

It'd be hilarious for Morbs if O comes out and says "it is as it was" though

lol

morbs (and greenwald) OTM, this looks vile.

seeing a trailer for this in front of 'lincoln,' it was hard not to be extra-struck and kinda saddened by the scene where lincoln tells grant to just let jeff davis and the rest of the gang flee the country because he doesn't want any more suffering.

at first I thought that quote was Woodrow Wilson on The Birth of a Nation.

Eric: I suppose a mix of "legitimate depending on what follows" and "America -- get over it, you've killed many times over 3000 innocents since."

I'm genuinely intrigued by the plaudits. As I said, if it's a process movie, I'm up for that. If it's flag-waving bunk, less so.

And as I may have mentioned, I'm ambling through that Hoberman book so this seems relevant to that.

so...am i a terrorist if I want to see this y/n

Filmcrits starved for prodigious action sequences, that's what

you've declared a jihad on taste xpost

xpost Action sequences that aren't connected with Dredd, yes.

(Armond excepted, of course.)

aw man Dredd was pretty sweet

Also, I genuinely unsure whether mentioning the truth about the raids violates a daily.paper 's guidelines about keeping "politics" out of content

Like being a college freshman again.

congrats, condescending O-bots with Aspergers usually say "child."

Everyone remember: respect for international law and expectations of due process are unseemly in anyone out of their teens; that's what Hope and Change were all about.

I figure it's best to fight condescension with condescension

To clarify: It's not your position that is childish, it's your expression of that position.

"with Aspergers"

Classy.

It's being downgraded in DSM-V so that remark isn't as offensive as it used to be

Summation of ZDTGREENWALDGATE: http://www.vulture.com/2012/12/does-zero-dark-thirty-endorse-torture.html

hopefully armond white will wait this time to find out if ZDT is loved or reviled before reviewing it, that early 'hurt locker' rave was awkwaaaard in hindsight whenever everyone else started liking it. i think it was rough on him.

When a movie like this comes so soon after the events it depicts, and when the filmmakers are utilizing non-public inside information directly given to them by the White House and the CIA, it's really hard not to look at this film in a propagandistic light.

otm

haha

xp

"the now-overrated Zero Dark Thirty"

As I said, if it's a process movie, I'm up for that. If it's flag-waving bunk, less so.

i really don't see this as a binary - a process movie from the government is flag-waving bunk

Yep

Not necessarily. I hate to fall back on the old "not what it's about but how it's about it" routine but there's ways in which this can be problematic from a political standpoint but brilliant from a filmmaking one. The same goes for badly made films with politics that I generally agree with (anyone else want to puke at the last scene in In the Valley of Elah?).

This is all silly to talk about considering a number of people (including on this board) have seen it so I'm theorizing about what it *could* be, but I generally don't like to dismiss films out of hand.

yeah it could be brilliant filmmaking, but if it's well-crafted, gripping, thoughtful, full of the grim, determined faces of our favorite characters, it's all in the service of telling the story the government wants told. This isn't a dismissal, but an acknowledgement of its origins.

ha i meant to write "favorite character actors"

As that vulture article I linked to indicated, there seems to be room for interpretation on some of these issues, but just because it depicts the US Government killing Bin Laden doesn't necessarily mean "propaganda". A lot will come down to depictions of characters as heroes or morally good or what have you. I know a number of pro-military people who loved the depiction of soldiers in The Hurt Locker, while I think they came off very, very poorly.

"propaganda" that allows for nuance, consideration, grudging acceptance, disagreement, etc is still propaganda if the mission is to provide the narrative

I can't speak for others but I have grown less...patient with movies that elide or obscure the deaths of real people for the same of suspense and A Good Time. To put it another way, why would Bigelow change the truth -- already gripping enough -- if she wasn't interested in giving the audience a.doseof electrical shockers? It's porn.

I think there's some room between Born on the Fourth of July and Triumph of the Will. xpost

Alfred sounding like Haneke, which is not an unworthy position.

i mean this is is written by people who need to seem competent/influential to their audience, i.e. their bosses.

but in any case, if you assume (1) what the cia told him is true, and (2) their description of their meetings with boal is accurate and complete, this sounds like an account of boal doing fact-checking.

but if you're the kind of person who rejects 1, then you've got to reject 2 as well, in which case i'm not sure what you learn.

Sully destroys Bigelow

crosspost w/ Frontline thread

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-elections-politics/secrets-politics-and-torture/watch-how-the-cia-helped-make-zero-dark-thirty/

Didn't catch that frontline but this was interesting

https://news.vice.com/article/tequila-painted-pearls-and-prada-how-the-cia-helped-produce-zero-dark-thirty

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/magazine/what-do-we-really-know-about-osama-bin-ladens-death.html?_r=0

This was a story that was so good it didn’t need to be fictionalized, or so it seemed. It began with a series of C.I.A.-led torture sessions, which the movie suggested provided the crucial break in the hunt for bin Laden. Only they didn’t, at least according to a report conducted over the course of many years by the Senate Intelligence Committee (and others with access to classified information). Senator Dianne Feinstein, who oversaw the report as the committee’s chairwoman, said she walked out of a screening of the film. ‘‘I couldn’t handle it,’’ she said. ‘‘Because it’s so false.’’ The filmmakers’ intent had presumably been to tell a nuanced story — the ugly truth of how we found bin Laden — but in so doing, they seem to have perpetuated a lie.

the most offensive aspect of that movie to me is the restrained, neutral tone of the thing... how adeptly it feigns even-handedness and objectivity. it is a "revenge porn flick" like gawker noted, but it doesn't feel that way, which is why it's so pernicious imo.

― Treeship, Tuesday, May 7, 2013 7:03 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM

Also, the raid sequence was literally unwatchable. I have no interest in getting off on "revenge porn," but I would like to be able to visually process wtf is actually happening on screen. Didn't Bigelow used to be a decent action director?

https://www.theringer.com/movies/2018/2/26/17055154/zero-dark-thirty-backlash-kathyrn-bigelow-2013-oscars

i can't parse what that article is trying to say tbh

it says 'it’s the personal narrative that is worth remembering' and closes on 'But what remains fascinating is that this is a question pitched, again, toward the individual. Is it worth it for whom—Maya, or the country? The United States falls out of view in the final moments of Zero Dark Thirty. The Abbottabad compound disappears, the soldiers disappear, CIA procedure disappears. Maya is all that’s left.'

maya is a fictional character in a film inspired by real events - how can she have a 'personal narrative'? i genuinely don't get what it's trying to day

er, 'say' not 'day'

i can't parse what that article is trying to say tbh

I came to the same conclusion.

They probably thought this was a hard-sounding title, but it's really Butt Crack of Dawn: The Movie.

Also, wasn't Seymour Hersh widely discredited?

I would be curious to rewatch this. I experienced a weird sense of disconnect from the critical discourse on my viewing - I found the raid sequence and the concluding shots overwhelming but in no way triumphant.

No, she and Boal are too subtle for 'triumphant.'

i've only seen it once but from what i recall the raid and the actual assassination of bin laden is def underplayed

having said that, i found it every bit as stylised as a rah-rah michael bay celebration of military power - it's just that instead of tealandorange.xls hero shots of brave, square-jawed marines there's a 'look how fuckin' verité we are' night-vision ride-along with seal team six in which the world's most wanted man is taken down with the same terse, professional teamwork they'd employ with any other target

it's a slightly less obvious way to valorise the military but it's still valorisation - 'all in a day's work for our brave boys' basically

yeah, I would have to rewatch. it's very possible I was overly charitable because I like a lot of bigelow's movies

it's no point break that's for sure

and i mean that with no snark intended, some of my all-time-favourite action scenes come from that movie

Near Dark is my fave

also a banger, agreed

Strange Days -- not bad imo

K-19 -- pretty damn good tbh

There’s definitely a pre and post prestige Bigelow shift beginning with Hurt Locker. I liked that and ZDT both but kind of wish she’d back to being an advanced genre stylist.

I always kinda hated Strange Days. it's so relentlessly humorless and sadistic and bleak in that tired 90s way. Verhoeven would have had some fun with it.