Zero Dark Thirty - Anticipation/Discussion Thread

man so at least three nearly guaranteed best movie noms will be about how a government's gotta do what a government's gotta do

I love this place!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZWbpEKqWRE

Roy Edroso:

I hate to get on Glenn Greenwald's bad side but his claim that he isn't really reviewing-without-having-seen Zero Dark Thirty, when his hostile non-review contains phrases like this . . . is extremely disingenuous. Greenwald's points about some of the journalism surrounding the film are valid, but his characterizations of the film itself are ridiculous. Zero Dark Thirty isn't a shadowy political figure whose hidden movements you track by eyewitness reports. It's a fucking movie. Have your editor buy you a ticket.

This is still more proof -- as if more were needed -- that you shouldn't bring your political obsessions to the temple of art. It is both more personally edifying and more pleasing to the Muses to approach a work of art as a work of art, however obnoxious it may be to you on other grounds, than to approach it as a political phenomenon. Because when you do the latter, you get into company you really don't want to be keeping.

If the thing you've actually seen, heard, or read is a piece of shit, then fire away.

I would explain further, yet again, why this is so, but I'm busy and I assume adults already know this.

you shouldn't bring your political obsessions to the temple of art

adults stop reading there.

(obnoxious libs would really be lost these days without desperately sneering about how "adult" they are)

Roy Edroso and the Temple of Art

Haha, if Roy Edroso is "obnoxious" to you, especially vis a vis Glenn Greenwald of all people, I don't know what to say.

you shouldn't bring your political obsessions to the temple of art

adults stop reading there.

The key word there I'm sure is meant to be "obsessions," but basically yeah, OTM.

Ad on the side of my FB page for ZDT: "LIKE the brave heroes who hunted down the world's most dangerous man."

Very ambiguous!

But but but it's a tailored ad for you where you're the hero and you're hunting the President.

When I was watching this I thought the protagonist was going to be the mystery woman in the situation room photo :/

Greenwald may well be right about the movie he hasn't seen but his Twitter responses to anyone challenging him (all "dumb", "confused" or suffering from "reading comprehension issues," apparently) confirm what a tetchy, condescending asshole he is. And one who ignores or sneers at the many critics who have in fact already noted that the torture is problematic.

spencer ackerman saw the movie:

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/12/zero-dark-thirty/

These are not “enhanced interrogation techniques,” as apologists for the abuse have called it. There is little interrogation presented in Zero Dark Thirty. There is a shouted question, followed by brutality. At one point, “Maya,” a stand-in for the dedicated CIA agents who actually succeeded at hunting bin Laden, points out that one abused detainee couldn’t possibly have the information the agents are demanding of him. 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.

that was posted yesterday, and i still disagree w/ his interp of that plot strand.

ah ok. guess i'll have to see it myself to determine the degree to which you are wrong :)

The most important thing is that we keep our own conscience clear.

i think the "glorifies torture" is kind tangential to the general reason to find the movie kind of distasteful. It's not like the administration WANTS to glorify torture. Acknowledging its lack of success and making sadfaces - while leaving it on the table is pretty much the cw

interesting in that WaPo piece that some CIA folks are annoyed it was even brought up at all

Heard there is a sequence with a Mariachi band in this?

The movie treating this like a Great Event in History (and it does, however non-football-spikily) is what I found most distasteful.

I believe "capture" is only used once in the dialogue re UBL; B&B don't try to sell that bullshit.

GG finally saw it, and GUESS WHAT http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/14/zero-dark-thirty-cia-propaganda

Well that was unexpected.

Sullivan, on the other hand:

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/12/the-torture-narrative.html

I wonder what Greenwald's monthly Excedrin bill looks like?

I'm guessing Sullivan has no problem w/ extrajudicial assassination.

just discovered that the film contains a scene depicting the bombing that killed 7 cia agents in afghanistan, one of whom was a friend of mine from high school. can anyone tell me how that scene was handled?

if it's the one I remember, one of the subsidiary characters is our surrogate in that sequence. If you don't remember the specific incident, the film leaves no doubt to how the scene will resolve. It's a key to why I think this is, in fact, a revenge movie.

thanks...just trying to figure out how hard to handle it would be.

It's played for suspense (I suppose it might provide a shock to the average filmgoer), which I did not feel good about.

O RLY

Sully is...torn

Peter Maass in the Atlantic:

Much of the pre-release debate about the movie has focused on whether it portrays torture as effective, in the sense of prying information out of al Qaeda suspects. Yes, the movie conveys that view, and I think it's inaccurate. Many experts, including key senators who oversaw an extensive congressional investigation, have concluded that torture did not play a significant role in finding bin Laden, and that torture in general is a counter-productive way to get information from prisoners. But the heated debate on torture misses what's far more important and troubling about a film that seems destined for blockbuster and Academy Award status. Zero Dark Thirty represents a new genre of embedded filmmaking that is the problematic offspring of the worrisome endeavor known as embedded journalism.....

The fundamental problem is that our government has again gotten away with offering privileged access to carefully selected individuals and getting a flattering story in return. Embeds, officially begun during the invasion of Iraq, are deeply troubling because not every journalist or filmmaker can get these coveted invitations (Seymour Hersh and Matt Taibbi are probably not on the CIA press office's speed dial), and once you get one, you face the quandary of keeping a critical distance from sympathetic people whom you get to know and who are probably quite convincing. That's the reason the embed or special invitation exists; the government does its best to keep journalists, even friendly ones, away from disgruntled officials who have unflattering stories to tell....

Is this the fault of Boal and Bigelow? Not really. I can't imagine any filmmaker or journalist saying "no" to the sort of access they apparently received (I say "apparently" because they haven't provided details; much of the information about their access comes from news stories). And I can't imagine many filmmakers or journalists, having gotten that access, writing a story or making a movie that would be less favorable to the CIA than Zero Dark Thirty. That is the nature of embedding: It primes its targets (I mean, journalists and filmmakers) to create stories that are skewed in the government's favor. That is one reason, I think, the film presents torture as effective—the CIA is ground zero of that unholy belief. If Boal and Bigelow had embedded at the FBI, whose agents have been critical of torture, their film would probably have a different message about waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and cramming a prisoner into a sealed box that's no bigger than an oven.

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/12/dont-trust-zero-dark-thirty/266253/#

I CAN imagine some filmmakers turning down such access, though, but Ken Loach would not be offered it.

GG finally saw it, and GUESS WHAT

He's fucking right, is what -- and cites plenty of specialist/journos in the field who agree with him.

(tho as he says, spoilers aplenty)

The GG piece was pretty effective in a) not making me want to see ZDT and b) making me remember that there's no reason to expect anything different from the director of Blue Steel and Point Break

I like Bigelow's work on the whole, to be clear, but it's definitely not a shock for her to glamorize something ugly

ATR happens to be right about this scene; I'm with Kyle Chandler in it, p much.

http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/003645.html

http://www.thewrap.com/movies/article/kathryn-bigelow-denies-zero-dark-thirty-apologizes-torture-exclusive-69541?page=0,0

The point that they show torture working where it seems documented that it did not is the central objection for many.

“The film shows that the guy was waterboarded, he doesn’t say anything and there’s an attack. It shows that the same detainee gives them some information, which was new to them, over a civilized lunch."

^^^Really, the balls of this motherfucker Boal. I'm sure the past stress positions / waterboarding had nothing to do with any subsequent encounters. They fib to him at "lunch," "Oh, here's what you told us when you were in a tortured haze..." and feed him some info they want confirmed.

Stuart Klawans in The Nation, asking for it:

The main problem with Zero Dark Thirty isn’t that it revels in torture and endorses waterboarding as a surefire way to get information. Nor is the film’s utter neglect of all political issues its principal fault. The worst I can say about Zero Dark Thirty is that it pretends the best reason for hunting bin Laden down was that it meant so much personally to one smart, determined woman, whose superiors at the CIA just wouldn’t listen to her. Bin Laden might as well be one of the Tyrolean Alps, and the heroine Leni Riefenstahl.

Actually, she’s Jessica Chastain, playing a CIA agent named Maya. No matter how many tricks Bigelow plays, shooting Chastain through glass and putting her in and out of chadors, headscarves, wigs and balaclavas, there is no disguising that Maya is a bystander for much of the film—never more so than in the most effective and extended sequence by far, a brilliantly executed re-creation of the raid on bin Laden’s compound. The film keeps cutting away from the Navy SEALs to Maya sitting at her computer, as if she had something to do.

As it happens, though, looking on idly is what Chastain does best. She has posed her way prettily through an astonishing number of roles in the past two years and has managed to forget herself in none of them. In Zero Dark Thirty, she proves that it’s not enough for a filmmaker to pretend that you’re the lead character—even if you do have cheekbones out of a dream.

Huzzah, some actual film criticism.

Saw it this morning. Still processing, which is more than I thought I'd be able to say.

http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2012/12/anti-torture-anti-art.html

I would be remiss though if I did not mention the notes of Stuart Klawans, film critic for The Nation, which Greenwald cites. Writing of the torture scenes Klawans says “the movie juices the audience on the adrenaline generated by these physical confrontations,” an assertion that’s arguable at best; then he goes on to state “and offers vicariously the sense of power enjoyed by the person holding the leash.” And I say that part is just plain wrong, and it’s here particularly that it would be useful to be able to do a shot-by-shot breakdown of the torture scenes. The first sequence begins with a shot from the back of the room, with the detainee hanging there by ropes. A door opens, three people, presumably men, enter noisily, and all wearing masks save the bearded one. The film grammar is such that the viewer flinches on entry; the sight of the detainee hanging there alone establishes his helplessness, the entry of the figures establishes threat. The torture scenes continue in this fashion and never ONCE do they invite the viewer to enjoy either holding or pulling the leash. I cannot speak to how Klawans, a seasoned and perceptive viewer, came to these conclusions, but I insist they are incorrect.

But wait. Greenwald continues: “The brave crusaders slay the Evil Villains, and everyone cheers.” (I’m surprised he didn’t capitalize the “c” in “Crusaders:” his complaint goes back a LONG way.) And that is the lie. Of course his rhetoric is such that some may argue that I stretch in calling it a lie, but a lie is what I call it. The movie moment that his slaying-evil-villain-and-audience-cheering assertion conjures up for the “standard” viewer would be something like Hans Gruber’s fall from the near-top of Nakatomi Plaza in Die Hard, or Aziz being blown up by his own missile at the climax of True Lies or Terry Molloy getting the shit kicked out of him at the end of On The Waterfront oh wait…scratch that last one. You get the idea. Now, those who have not seen the film may want to just stop reading around here if they’d like, but… I don’t believe that it represents a “spoiler” to reveal that the raid on the place where bin Laden is living, that is, the movie’s climax, represents anything even resembling a “evil villains slain” cinematic crescendo. Save for Alexander Desplat’s musical score, which is moody and ominous and very low-key rather than building-to-the-triumphalist moment, this is the scene in which the movie affects to purport its most “realistic” perspective. Much of it is depicted in forbiddingly lowlight, there’s a lot of stuff through night-vision goggles. The dominant sense is of organized activity that creates chaos that is then reigned in, so to speak, via slaughter. With the exception of one or two armed resisters, the “Evil Villains” who get shot down don’t even have a chance. Unless the viewer himself has a higher than average understanding of the details of how the raid unfolded, the viewer doesn’t even know which of the men shot down was bin Laden until the SEALS reconvene on the ground floor of the compound and put two and two together and fetch the body bag. In the meantime the viewer has been treated to depictions of fearful women and cowering children being herded about by shouting Americans. Where anyone can pull “everyone cheers” out of this mess is beyond me, but maybe if I see it with a paying audience I will find out. (I do not know what kind of audience Greenwald watched it with.)

Kenny is certainly correct that there is nothing triumphant about those closing minutes (save for the belated fuck-yeah motions from some of the SEALs, which still feel more compulsory than genuine).

I do share some of the misgivings others have expressed about Chastain's character/performance, though.

the movie is way cannier and subtler than red meat like Die Hard / Red Dawn. That's its niche.

Kenny and Greenwald are evaluating ZDT in different roles, and using different criteria. To wit, from GK:

Leaving aside for the moment the extent to which Zero Dark Thirty depicts events accurately (and even here it is arguable that the accounts of events from which Boal and Bigelow took off are entirely different from any number of official or unofficial constructions of the bin Laden pursuit narrative), when I’m watching a film in which actors are performing scripted actions in front of a very deliberately set-up camera, my takeaway from a title card such as the one Mayer cites is centered on “based on.” I am looking at a fiction, period. And it is from experiencing the work as a fiction that I draw my conclusions. (To tell you the truth, I personally never had much invested in the idea of bringing bin Laden to “justice” or not. Which is not to say that I did not take the 9/11 attacks somewhat personally, but I just never believed that bin Laden’s capture or death could do much to repair the damage of the attacks. Looked at another way, I didn’t believe that either bin Laden’s capture or death would have the effect of having made him “pay” for the 9/11 attacks.)

one of Sully's readers:

read Jane Mayer's article yesterday and frankly was disgusted. Her primary complaint seemed to be that the film didn't work to redeem the reputations of her sources. As if the fact that the FBI was against torture, and people in the CIA and military were "conflicted" about it, in any way mitigated the fact that it happened.

Her attacks on some of the characterizations in the movie, the "it's biology" bit and so forth, seem to be of a piece with Glenn Greenwald's critique, in that they seem to take all of the CIA characters at face value. This would be appropriate if Maya and Dan were heroes like Jack Bauer, but they're much more unreliable, like Humbert Humbert or Colonel Mathieu from "The Battle of Algiers". In "Lolita," if you want to see a pro-pedophilia message, you'll see it, but only by completely accepting Humbert's framing, and that requires a pretty closed mind and/or a lot of obtuseness. Similarly in "Zero Dark Thirty," you'll see a pro-torture message, or a "hagiography" of the CIA, but only by accepting the CIA characters on their face as the "Good Guys."

But, I think it's clear these people aren't good people.

Dan (Jason Clarke), the most vigorous torturer, feeds ice cream to monkeys at a CIA black site. = Good Guy

Good Cop surely