Zero Dark Thirty - Anticipation/Discussion Thread

Dem 'centrists' circling the wagons

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/20/movies/hollywood-makes-its-case-for-zero-dark-thirty.html

Christopher J. Dodd, the president of the Motion Picture Association of America, raised a warning on Friday for those who are calling for investigations into the film.

“There could, in my view, be a chilling effect if, in the end of all this, you have a screenwriter or a director called before an investigating committee,” Mr. Dodd said. He stressed that he was speaking for himself rather than for the association’s member studios, including Sony Pictures, which released “Zero Dark Thirty.”

Mr. Dodd, who served five terms in the Senate before retiring in 2010, said he could not recall another movie being so heavily scrutinized by the government. He expressed concern that the military or other government agencies that have routinely helped filmmakers might withhold future cooperation rather than risk similar pressure.

“ ‘JFK’ and ‘All the President’s Men’ were controversial,” Mr. Dodd said, noting that neither of those films seemed to draw the same level of attention from lawmakers.....

After the Golden Globes, Mr. Boal flew to Europe to promote “Zero Dark Thirty” as it opened in Britain and France.

In a series of e-mails, Mr. Boal said he found the reception to the movie there to be “much smoother” than in the United States.

European interviewers appeared to regard the torture controversy more as a reckoning among Americans than as something that directly involved them, he said.

saw this last night and it left not much impression on me honestly.

it's very much the CIA's view of itself presented in a grim, heavy way

i was supposed to watch it today but I'm content with Richard Blanco alluding to "silent drones" on rooftops.

Was distracted early on by the lead interrogator's 2011 hipster dtyle: beard, ironic "bro"s and all. First 30 mins least convincing, but otherwise into it.

The most obscene defence of the film is the claim that Bigelow rejects cheap moralism and soberly presents the reality of the anti-terrorist struggle, raising difficult questions and thus compelling us to think (plus, some critics add, she "deconstructs" feminine cliches – Maya displays no sentimentality, she is tough and dedicated to her task like men). But with torture, one should not "think". A parallel with rape imposes itself here: what if a film were to show a brutal rape in the same neutral way, claiming that one should avoid cheap moralism and start to think about rape in all its complexity? Our guts tell us that there is something terribly wrong here; I would like to live in a society where rape is simply considered unacceptable, so that anyone who argues for it appears an eccentric idiot, not in a society where one has to argue against it. The same goes for torture: a sign of ethical progress is the fact that torture is "dogmatically" rejected as repulsive, without any need for argument.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/25/zero-dark-thirty-normalises-torture-unjustifiable

Writer has never seen Straw Dogs.

i'm assuming that this will be as dull and self-impressed as hurt locker tbh, not much chance i'll bother

Irreversible, too. xp

It's not as if Straw Dogs or Irreversible were "neutral" on rape. Both showed horrific psychological damage inflicted and both had the rapists' brains splattered around the floor by the end of the film.

seriously

spoiler?

rapists' brains splattered on the floor

Not an Irreversible spoiler. Story told backwards, guy killed in first scene.

Look away now if you don't want to know what happens at the end of The Virgin Spring, I Spit On Your Grave or Last House On The Left.

The only film i can call to mind that could be interpreted as being relatively neutral on rape is Once Upon A Time In America but even that would be controversial.

Once Upon A Time in America is almost like the end-point of a certain...tendency...in Italian (exploitation) cinema to treat rape as a)sexy funtimes, b)a subject for humour, c)as a delusion on the part of the victim or d)as a rite of passage that will actually led to sexual liberation (eg the treatment of rape in Once Upon a Time in the West and A Fistful of Dynamite is equally problematic.) Some of these attitudes are also pretty common in 60s and 70s British and American exploitatio movies, too - I'm thinking of the work of auteurs like Lee Frost or the Findlays - but was not uncommon even in more mainstream fare, like Coogan's Bluff, where Clint Eastwood is allowed to raise a smirk at the idea that an unattractive older woman could be a rape victim.

rape could conceivably be used in a program of torture, which shows that the two aren't comparable categories. the whole point of the debate is about torture - of any type - being a means to an end and whether the end justifies those means.

after thinking about it and reading about it, i'm glad that the movie suggests that torture can sometimes yield actionable intelligence, yes even if it bends the facts of the hunt for osama bin laden. because even if it wasn't true in this case, surely it's occasionally true, which forces the moral question. it's all quite easy if nobody ever gave up anything valuable during one of the hundreds of torture sessions instigated by the CIA (yes after 9/11 but also for decades, in iran, in guatemala, etc). good drama doesn't avoid the difficulty of what to do if, in fact, some morsel IS gleaned from torture. then you've got a dilemma. then you've got drama. then you go through the difficulty.

i mean it's hackneyed, but it's a classic pulp situation: a madman has his finger on the button and tells you that if you agree to kill your own daughter he'll spare manhattan. what do you do??? the critics seem to suggest a better situation would involve the hero telling the villain that his daughter has been rigged so that killing her will instantly disable the bomb. problem solved!

ok maybe that analogy doesn't work. i knew my ignorance of comic books would come back to bite me someday.

That's what Zizek is objecting to. For him, and for the United Nations, torture isn't a debate, it's a clear moral and legal wrong in the same way as rape or genocide. Putting it on the table as a grey area encourages us to think outside of a box that the civilised nations of the world have already agreed (publicly at least) should not be opened. The analogy to rape isn't necessarily a false one.

wait, torture isn't a debate? then what are we talking about? zizek can pretend none of that is happening, that a huge number of americans don't apparently believe that torture is a-ok as long as it gets the bad guys, but then what? declare victory and go home, i guess?

He's despairing at the fact that it's apparently become a debate the government and media engages in publicly, rather than a shameful secret they are desperate to keep away from view. He might be swimming against the tide of US public opinion but he has the law all governments are bound to abide by on his side.

i read a novel a couple of years ago that i found on a friend's mother's bookshelf, some old sub-graham greene british thing from the 40s by someone i doubt anyone has thought about for decades, and the plot turned on the heroine's father, who was a military commander in some un-named dusty north african place, torturing someone. the fact that he had done this (well, not done it himself, but ordered it) was deemed so explosive that it was understood without explanation that if it were ever brought to light it would be his professional ruin and by association stain her as well. it seemed to come from some hopelessly irretrievable place.

well, it did: your friend's mom's bookshelf.

But the issue of whether torture is a moral right or wrong has absolutely nothing to do with whether it works or not. You could argue that it exaggerates the effectiveness of torture (though it does highlight the many intelligence failings of the US during the torture era), but I don't see how it endorses torture from a moral standpoint. I think that Guardian article is a huge stretch.

For example, my wife left the theater more opposed to torture than she entered it.

I agree, which is why I think most of the criticism levelled at the movie misses the mark

that's pretty consistent with reactions from everyone i've talked to irl abt the movie so far; they've left the theater with whatever they already believed reinforced

the criticism that hits the mark is that it's as close to a state-sponsored film as you'll see in your multiplex.

also it's one thing when a film like Moneyball ends up dramatizing recent events in a way that Just. Didn't. Happen, and another when it's this.

OTM. the plot isn't really too different from "Trouble With the Curve" or something

i liked the little echo of the torture scenes when the seals are asking the wives and kids to confirm that the dead guy is bin laden, and they won't answer - was half wondering if they were going to start torturing them

What's the problem with it being "state sponsored" considering the end result? And what does the multiplex have to do with anything?

the end result? what?

an oscar?

I'd rather ppl not waste money on a docudrama that gets its 'history' primarily from the CIA's mouth.

Why not given the film, which is hardly (for me) an endorsement of the CIA.

Read an interesting article, and this is as good a place to share it as any.

Worth noting that in historical experience, whether torture can yield intelligence is fairly irrelevant compared to its negative effects outside the torture chamber. This 2004 Salon artcle describes how torture helped the French win the Battle of Algiers, and also how it caused them to lose Algeria. In counter-terrorism, counter-insurgency, and police work, the most important resource is informants, who cease further collaboration once authority is seen as palpably evil. It forces people in the middle to choose extremes.

I think it would be possible to portray that sort of reality in a long ensemble film or miniseries (like Stephen Gaghan's screenplays), but one of Bigelow's protagonist following character dramas can't do the subject justice. Its just too narrow.

yeah. perhaps the ultimate example in this conversation being sayyid qutub, bin laden's idol and inspiration, who became radicalized only after... being tortured by CIA and CIA-trained goons in iran. whoops!

sorry, i mean egypt. god, you think you have a good point to make and then you get the whole country wrong.

i still don't get the logic where it's not CIA propaganda because everyone just walks away believing what they already believed, but it's somehow still a worthwhile movie even though it doesn't actually inform or shed light on anything

"you'll come away exactly as you came in! five stars!"

i mean i guess you could say it's simply a ripping yarn

I don't at all agree "walks away believing what they already believed" -- how do you know? That gushy woman in the screening elevator I described now thinks there was a heroine named Maya who made hotels and office buildings everywhere safe from Al Qaeda.

Also the words I most believed in the dialogue were put in the mouth of her asshole boss -- ie, UBL was largely irrelevant by 2008-11.

morbz, i'm saying i find fault with the logic, not espousing it

If we're going to judge movies now based on what stupid people walk away from them believing, ain't nobody's favorites gonna be safe.

last time I checked, stupid people are part of "everyone."

i still don't get the logic where it's not CIA propaganda because everyone just walksaway believing what they already believed, but it's somehow still a worthwhilemovieeven though it doesn't actually inform or shed light on anything

― da croupier, Tuesday, 29 January 2013 15:03 (7 minutes ago) Permalink

OTM

bcz it operates by the rules of a fictional "sophisticated" mersh thriller, which is all many ppl care about.

That woman in the elevator really affected you.

Michael Atkinson:

(Bigelow's) early films represented the sort of stylistic intensity that rises and falls in popularity quickly, and the new century saw her profile in decline – until embedded-journalist Mark Boal’s screenplay for The Hurt Locker and a low budget ($15 million) gave her the chance for a trimmer, steelier, less bullshitty sensibility makeover. Now, just two movies and a stack of awards later, she’s practically institutionalised as the era’s Hemingway or James Jones, the anointed chronicler of postmodern wartime.

But the queen of the Asymmetrical War Film has never been to war – a circumstance that enables her to make a claim that no one of Hemingway’s or Fuller’s experience would ever make: that Zero Dark Thirty is “apolitical”. It’s what a CoD player might say, if pressed to account for the endless replays of gory combat that fill his day. Let’s leave aside the issue of the ginned-up torture-means-finding-bin Laden thread; since when is narrowing down a global manhunt and assassination to its pure procedural facts not political?

http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/features/duty-calls-zero-dark-thirty

she’s practically institutionalised as the era’s Hemingway or James Jones, the anointed chronicler of postmodern wartime.

if internet chatter is anything to go by, people in the military think her movies are still pretty bullshitty