Zero Dark Thirty - Anticipation/Discussion Thread

I agree about the emptiness but found that a profound virtue. disagree about it not being challenging. people are gonna bring their jingoism to the theater with them but the movie doesn't congratulate them for it. You can fault it for not explicitly challenging those notions but I don't think that would improve the movie or what it's really trying to do.

OTM

I don't really see that flat empty docudrama style to be compelling. I find it to be a dishonest affectation that filmmakers use to stand in for seriousness.

Actually most of my gripes about the movie's aesthetics are really just symptomatic of how movies treat this subject matter in general. This film is only the biggest most recent example.

That's really the irksome thing about it, too: it's getting all these raves but it really isn't even that formally interesting. There's some really well-executed moments of tension but not much else.

critics are really impressed when filmmakers aren't afraid to tackle the big stories and make streamlined narratives out of them

I agree about the emptiness but found that a profound virtue.

― ryan, Sunday, January 13, 2013 3:38 PM (47 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

dear god

"emptiness" perhaps not the best word, but there's a sense in which it's dehumanizing and vacant. Systems of control swallowing up people. I found the movie quite harrowing for that. Of course, that's after only one viewing. But it seems to me an awful lot of critics see fit to critique this movie for its genre and not what's actually put on screen, or at least the (to me) complicated relationship it has to genre. This is a western, essentially, but more like those 70s anti-westerns.

you know, "Geronimo" and all that. Final shot with same pathos as the searchers. (Tho of course not as a great a movie.)

i guess it's hard to find a portentous pseudo-authentic procedural profound when you know bigelow can get portentous about surfing bank robbers

i mean really, getting heavy with keanu is more impressive than getting heavy with bin laden

well sure!

there's some incredible, potent images in this. still crystallizing my thoughts... i might need to see it again tbh. i like ryan's take though.

303 posts and no one's mentioned the Rorshach song in this?

― lol cassidy fan club (Whiney G. Weingarten), Sunday, January 13, 2013 10:50 AM (12 hours ago) Bookmark

nobody cares...mate

same DP as killing them softly, which also looked great

i haven't seen this yet. i'm really excited to, tho. i can't wait for the scene at the end, when the soldiers penetrate the compound and find a beleaguered osama bin ladin surrounded by his fat stacks of pornography. a firefight blazes and he is filled w/ bullets. as he dies and begins to fall to the ground, everything goes into slow motion. pages of his hustler magazines scatter into the air and then slowly drift down around his body like snowflakes. a giant vag pic slowly settles down onto bin ladin's face. credits roll.

People in the theater were cheering and clapping during the raid scene, especially after the "for god and country" line. Ick.

Saw it with critics, but obv knew this wd happen cuz it's America.

You can fault it for not explicitly challenging those notions but I don't think that would improve the movie or what it's really trying to do.

Balls.

One guy shouted out "YEAH" when Osama was killed. Everyone else in the theatre was dead silent.

it must be pretty sweet to be the guy who killed ubl, are you allowed to tell, i would tell everyone

One guy shouted out "YEAH" when Osama was killed. Everyone else in the theatre was dead silent.

― Gukbe, Monday, January 14, 2013 3:33 PM (2 hours ago)

When you walked out of the theater you realized it was John Brennan.

Might have been! Saw it in the 3rd highest grossing ZDT theatre in the US.

the White House?

Close! Alexandria, Virginia. Highest was near Langley. Second highest in Fairfax County, VA.

it must be pretty sweet to be the guy who killed ubl, are you allowed to tell, i would tell everyone

― lag∞n, Monday, January 14, 2013 3:04 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol srs but I recall from some writeup of events (think the journo had some access to the SEAL team) that they totally know who but are definitely not going to disclose.

was Obama, who flew in disguise w/ sunglasses and a Chicago Bears hat iirc

really...undecided on this. it was never boring and i can't really imagine any decent human being watching the raid sequence, much less the torture sequences, and not feeling troubled and nauseated. even bin laden's killing isn't played like a 'way to go!' movie moment -- it's messy and confused and the aftermath is ugly and unpleasant, not triumphant. i saw it in a near-empty theater, but it's hard for me to imagine anyone cheering at that scene.

otoh the movie doesn't really give you much reason not to think 'they tortured some ppl, and that eventually somehow helped them get bin laden.'

this was so, so good

the only reaction in my showing was a round of cackling when the soldier was beckoning bin laden: "osama?"

the torture aspect of this is so ridiculously overblown that i'm even more embarrassed for political media than normal

I dunno, it's hard to walk away from the movie with any message but "torture brought together all the pieces that landed Osama."

I think it would have been better if we never saw DEVGRU and the actual attack, just follow her as she watches it in real-time. Something about 3/4 procedural 1/4 action movie was off-putting.

there was this one scene where they they just fucking laid his nuts on a fucking dresser, just his nuts laying on a fucking dresser, and bang them shits with a spiked fucking bat, blaow

I dunno, it's hard to walk away from the movie with any message but "torture brought together all the pieces that landed Osama."

the movie definitely sees her as heroic but this isn't like old "24"-style typical torture depiction in films or movies where a bad guy finally spurts out an answer after having his nipples shocked. the movie shows one name popping up routinely during "interrogations" and from there a little morsel of information is used to find something bigger. to me there was a subtext of both inefficiency and luck involved with the torture aspect. i also thought the scenes were brutal to watch and not forgiving in any way. imo you have to be very narrow-minded to come away from that thinking "hey, torture works!" of course i'm sure people did but that's not bigelow's or boal's responsibility imo.

I think it would have been better if we never saw DEVGRU and the actual attack, just follow her as she watches it in real-time. Something about 3/4 procedural 1/4 action movie was off-putting.

i could see that but i also thought the raid of the house was shot strikingly well

Not the torture scenes themselves but the dialogue - talking about how all the info they're working on until the last guy who tips them to the courier came directly from detainees who'd been tortured, and even the last guy IIRC says he doesn't want to be tortured again.

It doesn't glorify torture, but the case being made was, to me, that torture works in getting good information.

The torture scenes themselves were not particularly brutal, IMO - there was little visceral feel for the horrors of waterboarding or, um, hot-boxing.

idk I kind of wanted to die, what movies have you been watching

i thought they were pretty hard to watch, but i can't sit through most horror movies. maya's clearly the stand-in for the viewer -- standing off to the side and wincing, not seeing the worst details but hearing everything.

Not the torture scenes themselves but the dialogue - talking about how all the info they're working on until the last guy who tips them to the courier came directly from detainees who'd been tortured, and even the last guy IIRC says he doesn't want to be tortured again.

yeah this is definitely noticeable -- she makes it explicit in her briefing of the seal team -- but if anything that's to me a reflection of the beliefs of people inside the CIA. i believe that a lot of people inside the CIA especially ones that worked under bush think torture works!

well why wouldnt they believe it, they used it and it worked

hey man it only got them a lil info, thats not like working, its not like they were after info

it would be a really weird conclusion to think that torture worked just based on the fact that guys didnt want to tell them stuff and then after being tortured they told them stuff

and not once was the stuff untrue

well that doesn't really happen in the movie but okay

yes it absolutely does

multiple times

torture torture torture, stare at walls, write on windows, go to meetings, yell at boss, for a movie about an investigation it was kind of an odd depiction of one, half an hour of in depth torture then a lot of office politics

tbh that's kind of how i already pictured life in the cia

lag∞n right, J0rdan wrong, millennium approacheth

morbs recognizes righteousness, millennium was like ten years ago

had the chance to watch it last weekend, but I'm squeamish these days about even killing roaches.

Liz Cheney ‏@Liz_Cheney
Just saw Zero Dark Thirty. Excellent film about years of heroism, including in the enhanced interrogation program, that led to bin Laden.

heh

it's a biblical thing, j0e

xxp

maybe Liz saw it w/ J0rdan?