Zero Dark Thirty - Anticipation/Discussion Thread

the smart critiques haven't. xp

even Greenwald hasn't said this

"sometimes lines were crossed but never forget the bravery," in theaters now.

None of the tortured folks were presented as potentially uninvolved or innocent.

― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Wednesday, January 16, 2013 2:52 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

this is true. it probably could have been remedied but the scope of this movie is pretty narrow that i'm not sure from a filmmaking perspective that it would've made sense to create an innocent prisoner.

as far as the verisimilitude of the whole torture scenario it completely ignored the prime practical issue w/torture which is people lie, like they dont hold back for days saying nothing until finally you beat it out of them like is portrayed in every movie ever including this one, when you start to hurt them they just say stuff that will hopefully make you stop whether its true or not

they do get wrong intel at one point, though, when during one interrogation a guy says that he buried the courier. another crucial part of the film.

Guk, do you think ZDT critics would say Kubrick favored executing soldiers picked at random from a retreating battalion, because Paths of Glory depicted it?

Of course not. That doesn't mean others have made the criticism (not smartly, mind) that by showing torture and suggesting it might have worked is an endorsement.

But it's funny you bring up Kubrick, as I was just now watching Full Metal Jacket, a film that reeks of anti-war to me, and yet it's hugely popular amongst soldiers.

None of the tortured folks were presented as potentially uninvolved or innocent.

― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Wednesday, January 16, 2013 2:52 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark

then again, i think there's an ambiguity to the interrogations that clouds the air. with the first detainee that we see -- who is also the one that gets brutalized the worst -- the interrogators throw out a bunch of "facts" that also aren't proven to be true. they're shown lying to him (or bluffing him), and i don't get the sense that you're supposed to explicitly believe that the interrogators are telling the truth.

a film can be popular among soldiers and anti-war!

I get the decision from a story perspective, but if you want to be less than pro-torture, maybe show one of the dozens of people Maya and her boss tortured who didn't have any info? Or at least allude to it?
The party line of the movie is that torture always led to good intelligence.

"yes torture happened, but good americans got the bad guy" may not be "pro-torture" but it sure ain't anti

of course it can! But certain soldiers take away different things from it than might have been intended, or they can ignore the anti-war aspects and just think it's about badass marines being badass.

it doesn't need to be "anti-torture", does it? xpost

A lot of soldiers ARE anti-war.

the Jarhead guy wrote that no film is antiwar, cuz it will excite young men as long as it shows action.

don't really buy that but i get the point

there was also a montage bit that shows Maya callously waterboarding a dude and we don't know what came of that. xposts

Yes they are Eric, but not all of them. xpost

the Jarhead guy wrote that no film is antiwar, cuz it will excite young men as long as it shows action.

i've heard this argument from an ex-addict re: anti-drug movies too

it's silly to be "how can you think this is pro-torture" when a film shows people we're supposed to be grateful to committing torture and then killing the bad guy. Yes, it's more artful than a 24 episode, but why should anyone have to be grateful for a film that grudgingly accepts conventional wisdom on us foreign policy.

they do get wrong intel at one point, though, when during one interrogation a guy says that he buried the courier. another crucial part of the film.

― J0rdan S., Wednesday, January 16, 2013 3:03 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh come on that was a mistake not a lie

I don't think it expects us to be grateful for committing torture and killing the bad guy. xpost

read bigelow's op-ed again

By this measure, Spiritual Voices must count as the most anti-war "war movie" ever.

I read it. I linked it!

A lot of soldiers ARE anti-war.

I got on a bus a few months back which was idle for 10 minutes before it pulled out. A grizzled passenger chatted with the driver, who revealed he'd been in the Marines for 17 (?) years. The passenger got up and said "I hear all the time that no one says thank you -- THANK YOU," shakes the driver's hand, and the driver looks like he wants to disappear under his seat. Then the driver says, "Thanks, but when it comes to killing people ... you've got to have a good reason. And... OIL?"

War, obviously, isn't pretty, and we were not interested in portraying this military action as free of moral consequences.

In that vein, we should never discount and never forget the thousands of innocent lives lost on 9/11 and subsequent terrorist attacks. We should never forget the brave work of those professionals in the military and intelligence communities who paid the ultimate price in the effort to combat a grave threat to this nation's safety and security.

Bin Laden wasn't defeated by superheroes zooming down from the sky; he was defeated by ordinary Americans who fought bravely even as they sometimes crossed moral lines, who labored greatly and intently, who gave all of themselves in both victory and defeat, in life and in death, for the defense of this nation.

The party line of the movie is that torture always led to good intelligence.

― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Wednesday, January 16, 2013 3:06 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ya it fits neatly into the hard eyed realist party line that there are bad people out there and sometimes you need people on yr side willing to do the things you cant so that you can maintain yr illusion of safety and moral superiority, not saying thats what they were trying to say but its not hard to fit it into that box

I really think this is a movie where you take out what you bring into it.

sounds like a shitty movie then

zzzz

i mean a news article about the killing of ubl can pull that off

you should probably not see it

no, seriously, what's impressive about a movie that tells the story of how ubl was killed and everyone walks out feeling the same way about it they did coming in

it's an artful expression of conventional wisdom

I never said it was impressive.

if you want to see a kathryn bigelow movie about a woman's struggle to stop a murderous madman in the face of a patriarchal bureaucracy, i recommend this one where SHIT BE POPPING OFF and nobody pretends it's a true story

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJTOmShc9E0

I got on a bus a few months back which was idle for 10 minutes before it pulled out. A grizzled passenger chatted with the driver, who revealed he'd been in the Marines for 17 (?) years. The passenger got up and said "I hear all the time that no one says thank you -- THANK YOU," shakes the driver's hand, and the driver looks like he wants to disappear under his seat. Then the driver says, "Thanks, but when it comes to killing people ... you've got to have a good reason. And... OIL?"

Maybe if the driver hadn't let the bus idle for 10 minutes, he could've stopped the next war.

lol

oh good Taibbi is here: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/zero-dark-thirty-is-osama-bin-ladens-last-victory-over-america-20130116

haha

His take on the movie itself is pretty otm, IMO.

How in hell are people cheering at the raid sequence?

I know the last shot is ambiguous and maybe I'm over reading it but it really stuck me as a pretty classic "the searchers" type of ending (ie, the hero and civilized of the frontier is also banished from it, he's "gone indian," and all that stuff.) and that maya is a sort of (clumsy) stand in for the general madness of post 9-11 America. This is an end of empire kind of thing--becoming "other" as I said above. I dunno, I just think this movie is far more pessimistic about the good ole USA than it may seem to it's detractors.

That's what I meant when I said you take out what you bring in. As someone who is anti-torture, anti-the nebulous "War on Terror", anti-infinite detention, thought the killing of UBL was meaningless and was generally a bit queasy at the WOO-HOO WE KILLED A DUDE response to the news of the raid, I saw it as a tale of moral decay and tunnel-vision to the point of obsession. The raid sequence sort of confirmed that for me with it's cold, tactical "let's watch these men work" style that had no problem showing the stomach-churning but probably real practice of shooting bullets into a corpse "just to make sure", especially with the kids right there. The killing of UBL was such a quick blurry flash that for me it felt like "well that's that then" moment as opposed to a "HOORAY". I don't see how people got excited for it but that's because I went in with the mindset I have. If you think that the endgame was worth it, you're gonna see the torture and maybe cringe but deem it necessary or you're going to think "these are bad guys fuck yeah USA" and boy wasn't it all worth it that Maya was a loose cannon obsessed with completing the mission.

i agree completely ryan. otoh 'the searchers' kind of works that way too -- i doubt many ppl in the original audience left the theater thinking 'that was a really intense study of american racism!'

UBL's death is over with so fast and it's shot in such an anticlimactic way that i have a hard time imagining anyone actually going nuts at it, it doesn't exactly give any 'this is where you cheer' cues to the audience, but i think there was pretty much no way to film that scene without getting that response.

Would John Ford have written an op ed

i do think it's fair to say the movie is perhaps confused and takes certain things for granted, and perhaps even KB isn't in total control of it, but to me that's interesting and not really a flaw as such. but that's just for me personally and not really any objective statement on it's worth.

ever since i had to stop seeing revivals of older films because of people laughing at anything that made them uncomfortable i've done my best it tune out how the rest of the audience is reacting to things.

I don't think The Searchers is all that good

well, you think the same of Frank Ocean.

it's a bad religion