Zero Dark Thirty - Anticipation/Discussion Thread

Honestly I'm interested to figure out what the hell the story is, and how there's action in it.

I did too, Eric, but my sister among many others saw it as a beautiful ode to bravery and sacrifice. xposts

I don't think that showing how soldiers can be suckered/seduced/hypnotized/brainwashed into suckling from their own mythos = them coming off very, very poorly

They're not portrayed as victims, just victims of circumstance. Win-win.

amidst all of this, i'm kind of bummed that Generation Kill seems largely forgotten.

Hoberman may also have said the same about Schindler

i was bothered by that scene too, though i think SL is (mostly) a great film.

Haneke talked about depicting real life people and situations in an extended interview with the Hollywood Reporter alongside the guys who wrote ZDT and Argo

yeah i really enjoyed that

Mr Haneke engineers some dubious moral puppeteering in his films too, in the name of spanking the audience.

yeah but they look at the audience and tell them so that makes it better (no it doesn't)

Audiences should be on their guard when they feel flattered. Audiences should be on their guard when they're getting spanked.

What a minefield.

“It’s always rape. Manipulation is rape, no?” he says. “The question is, to what end, for what purpose? Especially when you come from a German-language background. That is why in my films I try to rape the audience into independence, autonomy.”

Thinking back, Gerry might be the easiest watch the audience has ever had.

Mr Haneke engineers some dubious moral puppeteering in his films too, in the name of spanking the audience.

I agree with this in general, but I was glad that I didn't really detect this in Amour.

"Especially when you come from a German-language background."

I vas born in Dusseldorf und dat is vhy dey call me ROLFE

Don't be stupid, be a smarty, impeach Obama for war crimes.

well we'd have to impeach everybody til we get to ELIZABETH WARREN amirite?

http://arthazelwood.com/prints/posters/images/complicit=flag.gif

Don't be stupid, be a smarty, impeach Obama for war crimes.

― Zero Dark 33⅓: The Final Insult (Eric H.), Monday, December 10, 2012 4:38 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

nice.

well we'd have to impeach everybody til we get to ELIZABETH WARREN amirite?

― saltwater incursion (Dr Morbius), Monday, 10 December 2012 21:40 (5 minutes ago) Permalink

says Feingold superfan

I don't have anything much against E.W., just those who have exalted her to future savior of the Republic.

it's gonna be amazing when you come racing down the mountain on christmas morning, your heart three times bigger, throwing our illusions back to us

Why don't you have a catchy nickname for Warren fans yet? xpost

"Dr Morbius's Facebook friends"

"I don't believe that this film is being so well-received despite its glorification of American torture. It's more accurate to say it's so admired because of this."

I haven't seen this movie but surely all the people who say it is great in spite of the torture apologetics are lying and really just love torture

7m Andrew O'Hehir ‏@andohehir
I respect the hell out of @ggreenwald, e.g., but his piece on ZDT makes a number of unwarranted analytical leaps http://goo.gl/KNFFD
View summary

10m Andrew O'Hehir ‏@andohehir
Split between film critics and lefty pundits on merits of torture in ZERO DARK THIRTY is intriguing -- but the latter haven't seen it yet!
Expand

it's weird in that context that he brings up Riefenstahl. Are all her defenders who admit their problems with the Nazi glorification in them actually hiding their secret Nazi admiration?

xp

glorification in her movies*

He and Zoller Seitz had a back and forth earlier about running straight to Leni for comparison.

<I>1) those reviewers who state that the film glorifies torture with falsehoods yet nonetheless praise the film as great; I'm arguing that this should not be possible since their view that it contains falsehood-ridden torture glorification should preclude that sort of praise; and,</I>

This is embarrassing even for Greenwald.

Glenn Kenny ‏@Glenn__Kenny
That movie doesn't say "torture works." It says "The Real doesn't care what you think of torture." Unpleasant notion but NOT THE SAME THING

when did Obama start using The Real as his Twitter name

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/12/zero-dark-thirty/all/1?ww

isn't this somewhat like what Kubrick said re: the violence in A Clockwork Orange. something to the effect of being against the torture of an innocent isn't the point--you have to consider the torture of the guilty. he wanted to put the audience in the uncomfortable position of feeling sympathy for a monster.

the same point being the successful extraction of info from torture has to be shown/argued as still wrong. if the movie merely shows torture *working* i dont think that necessarily elides that debate--cf. Kenny's point.

apparently it doesn't show torture working?

well i guess i shouldn't speak about a movie i havent seen.

that wired writeup makes me want to see it

clearly I am a terrorist

1) The film shows UBL's courier being identified partly through the torture of a detainee
2) That courier is found and leads intel directly to the UBL safe house

The rest you'll have to interpret from the film directly.

You can't even use American initials, dammit.

that's what they call him in the film! our spooks were spelling it Usama back when Bill Clinton failed to take him seriously enough.

Usyrmama

sorry

Ubomber

hah

SPOILERS

Morbs: The closest the movie comes to presenting a case for the utility of torture is by presenting the name of a key bin Laden courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, as resulting from an interrogation not shown on screen. But — spoiler alert — the CIA ultimately comes to learn that it misunderstood the context of who that courier was and what he actually looked like. All that happens over five years after the torture program initiated. Meanwhile, the real intelligence work begins when a CIA agent bribes a Kuwaiti with a yellow Lamborghini for the phone number of the courier’s mother, and through extensive surveillance, like a police procedural, the manhunt rolls to its climax. If this is the case for the utility of torture, it’s a weak case — nested within a strong case for the inhumanity of it.

?

mixed messages? in a (likely) hit movie?

Scott Tobias ‏@scott_tobias
Enjoying @MarkHarrisNYC's schooling of @ggreenwald and @froomkin over ZERO DARK and torture. Big advantage to have, you know, seen the film.

And to not be Morbs.

from Harris' New York essay:

Judicial Watch and GOP noisemakers like Long Island congressman Peter King were hungry for evidence that the CIA was offering inappropriate cooperation—and possibly revealing classified material—so Hollywood could make a movie that would get President Obama reelected. But the two most scandalous reveals in the CIA memos are (1) that the agency is rather too agog about Hollywood (one Argo-esque e-mail discusses the importance of establishing “stronger relationships with CAA”) and (2) that the CIA uses emoticons. “I want you to note how good I’ve been about not mentioning the premiere tickets :-),” wrote George Little, at the time the agency’s director of public affairs, to Boal.

XD

Zero Dark Thirty does not present torture as a silver bullet that led to bin Laden; it presents torture as the ignorant alternative to that silver bullet.

Yeah, that's just as much an overstatement as saying the film "glorifies torture." (I wouldn't say it does.)

Eric, have you seen the film?