Zero Dark Thirty - Anticipation/Discussion Thread

morbs otm

aw, i was hoping it would be the "comedy = tragedy + time" entry in this year of US government retrospectives

More like comedy and tragedy fill time.

That's the puncture of funny.

http://blogs.indiewire.com/criticwire/from-the-wire-critics-and-morally-engaged-viewers

I liked this a lot, and was honestly strongly emotionally effected by it. It's a deeply mournful film--almost a funeral dirge. We start in blackness and bare panic and suffering and open in a literal torture chamber. Tellingly, there is a shot where the audience is shut inside a box. We end in billowing black clouds and non-cathartic grief. "Do you know what you just did?"

Also, a very suggestive idea of "risk" seems to be at play. UBL hunt compared to Iraq WMD, both at 60% certainly. Interesting question raised as to what makes the calculation of risk on either side more ethical. A very troubling movie, intentionally so I think.

have you read the thread?

Yes. Did I miss something I should read again?

only that the movie troubles us

Indeed! Only pointlessly throwing in my belated two cents. Maybe more than "troubling" I mean it seems like a profoundly troubled movie. It's an open wound, UBL seems to stand more for a lost chance at restitution than eye for eye justice. As in the Obama clip which is so pointedly ignored, it's about "moral standing" and the lack thereof.

not belated, most people still haven't seen it

I was going to link to the Reverse Shot review by Reichert that is commented on in Eric's link; he gets at what I find morally troubling and irresponsible.

from that Reichert piece:

What’s perhaps worse and more damning is a later scene where, for little apparent narrative reason, the small group working the bin Laden case sits around a conference room table while an NBC interview with a recently elected Barack Obama plays in the background. In that interview, Obama definitively states his opposition to torture; in the foreground of the frame, Maya’s hardened colleague Jessica (Jennifer Ehle) shakes her head as if to suggest the president’s ignorance—she’s been in the field, he hasn’t. If Bigelow and Boal want to insist they haven’t made a movie that validates torture morally, that’s fine. But to label it apolitical, as they have repeatedly done, either suggests willful mendacity or ignorance. Their film quite clearly stakes out a position on one of the more controversial political questions of the last decade in American politics, and soon it will be making its case several times a day on thousands of screens around the country. Greenwald’s writings on the film may hyperventilate, but when one considers the scale of the historical rewrite we’re about to witness, his pitched tenor is more forgivable. Maybe “propaganda” isn’t so far off the mark after all.

it's funny the "this is journalism" tag is really (for me) an aesthetically defensive gesture to protect themselves against just this kind of reading that insists the movie must have some position on torture's efficacy or morality--it's a movie about dehumanization and trauma, and only in that respect doest it really relate to the (very important, of course) legal and ethical arguments about torture.

i mean, if anything, the movie i saw goes to great lengths to repudiate the bush administration and its handling of torture and the iraq war. but even more it sees that period not as some regrettable lapse that obama set right but something far darker and irreversible. i think the movie sees its "journalism" claim (falsely) as its best means of making that case without being slotted into predictable "political" discourse. it would be better if it said "this is art and therefore worth taking seriously" but that's just not the discourse we have sadly.

to put a finer point on what i am clumsily trying to say: i'd argue that the "based on first hand accounts" and "this is journalism" stuff works, in this movie at least, as an invitation for the audience to make actual judgments (moral and otherwise) about what they are seeing--it's marking an (fully artificial) non-political space in which to better critique political judgments.

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/01/zero-dark-thirty-is-not-pro-torture/266759/

I don't disagree with all your points, ryan.

We end in billowing black clouds and non-cathartic grief. "Do you know what you just did?"

... but that line I read as "You killed Darth Vader, dude!"

it's funny that this movie's meditative, non-cathartic dirge qualities can be seen as cultural commentary, but also as evidence that the director of point break and blue steel is still interested in meditative, non-cathartic dirges

i think part of what i resent about this movie is that, for all the people demanding this movie be separated from the torture/political element, take out the politics and you've got an especially gloomy episode of CSI: Pakistan

i was trying to work out exactly why i wasn't bothered with the hurt locker while i'm so bothered with this, but issues of "authenticity" aside, hurt locker had intense set piece after intense set piece, and some career-making performances.

also i didn't know how it ended

In that interview, Obama definitively states his opposition to torture; in the foreground of the frame, Maya’s hardened colleague Jessica (Jennifer Ehle) shakes her head as if to suggest the president’s ignorance—she’s been in the field, he hasn’t. If Bigelow and Boal want to insist they haven’t made a movie that validates torture morally, that’s fine.

maybe bigelow wanted to make a movie about a CIA that made very clear to its young new president that it wasn't going to be fucked with for what it did under the old one and got away with everything

Lots of critics-of-the-critics are getting the criticism confused: few people are arguing that Bigelow thinks torture is ok - just that this film misrepresents torture's (lack of) efficacy.

x-post: yeah that struck me as a major thread. that scene in particular (Obama as a distant voice from outside the CIA) seemed particularly important as a moment in which the bubble is, if not burst, as least shown as a bubble. the repeated sheepish remarks about iraq WMDs seemed to perform a similar function.

Would like a count of how many times Jason Clarke says "bro" in the first 10 minutes...

is ZDT better than Hurt Locker? worse? same?

only seen the latter and liked it.

LOL why did no one tell me that John Barrowman was in this? Kudos to Bigelow for casting the real life Troy McClure.

As a typically ignorant American, feel gutted that it took this film to realize the hotel I stay in more often than not while in London is adjacent to an infamous 7/7 bombing location (Tavistock).

I was like "hmmm this looks familiar, there's that Starbuc..." [bomb goes off] "oh man..." then when I get out of theater I immediately wiki and learn of my stupidity.

basically an overly long, remarkably boring ep of Homeland IMO. lead was annoying and I would have broken her hand off the 57th day she came and marked on my office window with a red marker.

(and while i missed all the 'utility of "enhanced interrogation" and the message it sends' debate that apparently was going on on the internet a month ago, i thought it was p clear that the actionable intelligence came from bribery)

and is Mark Duplass the hardest working dude in the biz right now?

not the ONLY actionable intelligence. In the most infamous quote associated w/ this movie, there was that "civilized lunch" (tell us or we'll string you up again).

xp

you guys are really most fascinated by the three dozen underwhelming bit roles in this huh

I purposely avoided watching it yesterday afternoon, balking at its length.

otoh will be #1 this weekend

ah you're right, Morbs.

on both points!

basically an overly long, remarkably boring ep of Homeland IMO. lead was annoying and I would have broken her hand off the 57th day she came and marked on my office window with a red marker.

― Still S.M.D.H. ft. (will), Sunday, January 13, 2013 8:36 AM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha yes the marker schtick was so dumb, and it was just a really weird choice to stick an ahistorical torture power hour at the beginning of the movie, and the final shot what a fn cliche, i did not really like this that much it was p gross

u guyz just don't like STRONG WOMEN

its weird she was the star of the movie but her character seemed really underdeveloped, maybe that was the point she had kinda an empty life just sort of ambitious and obsessive, but even that seemed underdeveloped

seal bros are way cooler than the cia is what i learned from this movie

im not sure it's underdeveloped--it's made pretty clear imo that this is literally all she's ever done. she's pretty much a black hole of grief and empty revenge.

i feel like the procedural is such a staple of television shows (did anyone compare Zodiac to tv?) that it's hard for a film procedural to separate itself, but the relative patience and moral swamp of this one certainly did that for me.

people even if theyre black holes of grief and empty revenge tend to have observable characteristics, i didnt get much sense of personhood out of her, i got what the filmmakers were trying to say about her, but not much past that

ryan have you seen blue steel

I did hear a critic compare this character to Jamie Lee in Blue Steel, wd have to rewatch to evaluate.

i have not. would like to though.

def recommended if you want patience in a moral swamp

Bigelow is an interesting director for this material. She is interested in the ways her characters live dangerously for philosophical reasons. They aren't men of action, but men of thought who choose action as a way of expressing their beliefs. That adds an intriguing element to their characters, and makes the final confrontation in this movie as meaningful as it can be, given the admittedly preposterous nature of the material.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19910712/REVIEWS/107120303/1023

"final confrontation" implies some Big Boss fight like on NES games at the end of a level

interesting interested intriguing

not on netflix sadly but I'll track it down. Sounds great!