Zero Dark Thirty - Anticipation/Discussion Thread

i would love to see a pundit acknowledge that the insidiousness of the film (as i see it) is that its portentousness allows for people to have conflicted feelings about torture etc while still accepting a dubious Love The Troops narrative of What Happened, For Better Or Worse. But if they just say "ZDT is propaganda bullshit" while ignoring that nuance, I don't feel high'n'mighty about it because they're not wrong.

I saw that aspect differently than you and Zizek.

But I really enjoyed that Zizek article, which I guess is crucial to my griping. It's not about disagreeing, it's about how they're reading what's actually on screen and then discussing it in a banal and unenlightening blog post.

just gonna repost bigelow's read of her own movie

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.

Yes, but what Bigelow says for promotional purposes, or even what she genuinely believes, isn't the end all be all.

"ugh, none of these people know how to read this movie, to deal with what it's actually saying"

"here's how the director reads it"

"well she might be lying and who cares"

No, not at all. I do think there is a degree of "look at how hard these people worked and how some died for it" - though I think the film lays Ehle's death down at her own stupidity - I just think it's more ambiguous than that. I know people who saw THL as a glorious ode to the troops, and maybe Bigelow thought that way when she made the movie, but the end product is, when it's at it's best, a critique of the Noble Warrior mentality that Americans tend to view the military with.

i'm just saying that, if you're going to mock others for not being able to engage with the movie, you might consider that the ambiguity you admire is fairly superficial from an auteurist perspective (from curtis to keanu to chastain, she's implied that being the Good Guy is no fun and not without moral dilemmas) and, from political perspective, arguably mere window-dressing.

and that bigelow herself has reduced it to "sometimes they crossed lines, but"

Well we can disagree about the politics and the ambiguities, and I think it's reductive to say that bigelow's comments are "well they crossed a line, but...". I'm not mocking the people who interpret the film differently, I'm mocking the people who approach this as "hey what about drones and dead afghanis and dead Iraqis..."

how else would you approach it?

By considering the film based on what it depicts and what it is about.

And of course, how it depicts

gukbe, this is a DIRECT QUOTE: "(ubl) 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."

Also "we're not interested in depicting this military action as free of moral consequences."

I don't see a problem with approaching the men and women presented here as something other than a straight up good or a straight up evil.

if you honestly think anyone is arguing for that binary, you're evading the point

And what point is that?

that while it's emotionally ambiguous about What Happened, it's not politically ambiguous at all.

it's also ironic to disqualify any opinion that the film should have acknowledged more aspects of the us' presence in afghanistan when the cia is complaining the film includes more torture than is relevant and the film infers a timeline between numerous terrorist activities outside The Hunt to argue for the necessity of ubl's death

I think it is politically ambiguous but hey ho.

I also dont think those outside the hunt bits necessarily argue for the need for UBLs death.

Surely it's more ironic to say this film is CIA propaganda when the CIA is complaining about it? Which is not a tack I would take but following on from your comment...

this has all been said before on this thread, but just because a movie allows for more conflicted feels than a rambo movie doesn't mean it's not a rambo narrative

the cia is complaining because it's even more rambo then they wanted

yeah i think this was a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too kind of movie, very hollywood in ideology

I don't see this as a Rambo narrative. I know we've gone over all this already, but I do like that it strongly suggests that torture led to UBL.

sure it throws out enough particular ideas at you as maybes: maybe the degradation of torture is of greater moral weight than any purported utility, maybe getting osama is a pointless distraction, maybe devoting your life to the CIA is miserable, maybe we have no clue what we're doing in other societies, maybe our leaders are half-blind at best -- but there's no maybe about the central plotline: one woman worked like hell on her crazy scheme and the whole thing came off great!

idk if it's a rambo narrative as much as a "let's put on a show" narrative. or one of those misfit dance movies or something

the most interesting tension of the movie is how bad maya's reasoning is throughout, how little she has to really go on and how absolutely fanatically certain she is, how frankly right all of her detractors sound in their moment (ramirez, chandler). and of course we know "she" was successful irl. apart from the torture, this might be the creation of boal's that i think is worst.

it's all a bit Sarah Lund

in rambo, a nutty maverick fights government bureaucracy to Avenge American Lives and Win A War that would otherwise go on interminably. I would argue the narrative of ZDT is fairly similar even if it's more emotionally conflicted

I think the "whole thing came up great" aspect is debatable. I linked up thread to the Taibbi piece where describes how the raid avoided the Michael Bay flash and yet he still had a "fuck yeah" moment, which just seems bizarre to me. I certainly felt a bit queasy by the end, and most of the people I saw it with didn't seem to find it terribly exhilarating or at least triumphant, and I saw it with a bunch of soldiers and probably a fair number of people that work in defense.

I guess Hoberman got pretty close to what I did at the end: Is Maya, like Ishmael, the lone survivor left clinging to the flotsam of the Pequod? Is she condemned, like Ethan Edwards at the end of The Searchers, to "wander forever between the winds"? What did it cost the girl (or Obama) or America to kill Bin Laden? Zero Dark Thirty slakes a thirst for vengeance and leaves an aftertaste of gall.

It's hugely conflicted compared to Rambo, with its "do we get to win this time" aspect. There's certainly a degree of that and Dirty Harry maverick-ism going on, but I don't think the film portrays it in a positive way.

so you agree it's a rambo narrative

Outside the homeland, Zero Dark Thirty has a great potential to play as an anti-American propaganda piece.

I think there are elements of that, though I would never call it a "Rambo" narrative because that's disingenuous. Rambo is all about a man of righteous purity and nobility killing Vietnamese and Russian soldiers for our excitement, and when the film pretty much explicitly states that this is about "winning" a lost war, it's a blatantly pro-American Imperialism work. I think Maya has that element of self-righteousness in her, but the film doesn't present that in a necessarily positive light.

gubke, this is how absurd it's getting

just because a movie allows for more conflicted feels than a rambo movie doesn't mean it's not a rambo narrative

― da croupier, Friday, February 1, 2013 5:21 PM (30 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's hugely conflicted compared to Rambo

― Gukbe, Friday, February 1, 2013 5:44 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

we don't actually disagree on the content of the movie at this point, you just think that the Searchers-osity is way more important than the people who have beef with what that Searchers vibe is being put on top of.

Well I think you're stacking the decks when you say it's a Rambo narrative is all. I think it's pretty absurd to compare the two actually. I guess I'm not sure what people are thinking when they complain about what's beneath that Searchers vibe.

if every narrative with a plucky protagonist bucking the bureaucracy to get what s/he wants is a "rambo narrative" then like, i dunno UHF starring weird al yankovic is a rambo narrative

it's also about bucking the bureaucracy in the name of america's fallen, but yeah. the movie gives a streamlined, questionable narrative about a very controversial event. While bigelow tells her story moodily, she's given the same vibe to a keanu reeves movie about surfing bank robbers, and she's downplayed it in print, making clear it's important to remember that We Are The Good Guys, even if we've crossed some lines. so patting yourself on the back for noticing it when so many don't ignores that she does it all the time and it doesn't actually mean it's saying anything.

Can't believe she'd downplay ambiguities in her film to promote it to Americans, many of whom were cheering in the street when UBL was killed like a bunch of creepy idiots.

But aside from that, damn her for making a film at all I guess. Downplaying the direction as just "moodily" does a disservice though.

finally caved and saw this last night. infinitely more successful than brave imo as princess movies go.

no reason to expect anything different from the director of Blue Steel and Point Break

― da croupier, Sunday, December 16, 2012 5:22 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

saw this today and was thinking abt how this film does and doesn't relate to bigelow's previous work - like, ZDT and Hurt Locker are in some ways a break from things like near dark, strange days, point break and blue steel, which are nominally less 'realistic' and more aesthetic-operatic - YET - the same troubling fetishising of weapons and bodies - and the mixing of them together in so many images - 'SHOTS' - is all over ZDT (in that way it's another american film like The Master, taking some of the same cues from denis' beau travail of athletic military bodies and masculine enclaves of western colonial power). somehow, this kind of sensual filmmaking feels esp problematic allied to a narrative based on 'truth' and recent historical tragedy (for obv reasons, i felt esp uneasy in the scene that recreates - brilliantly - the london bus bombing - no 'tasteful' use of audio over a black screen here...) - i think bigelow needs to step away from this 'ripped from the pages of today's headlines' stuff and go back to her earlier semi-exploitation roots, because her technical command/mastery is undeniable, evidenced by ZDT's final 20 minutes

she needs to make another vampire movie pronto

finally watched this last night - apologies in advance for getting my rant on and/or covering things already said upthread.

to be truthful, I was kinda rmde at all the torture handwringing when the reviews first started coming in. not that I'm some pro-torture jackboot weirdo but I was more in the frame of mind of Hurt Locker was only as realistic as it wanted to be and being up in arms that the movie wasn't factually correct seemed kinda duh to me.

but when I watched it, I completely understood. Because why the fuck would you choose to tell this story, supposedly go on some kind of fact-finding mission and then just throw it all up in the air and say, ah fuck it the story's better *this* way. That whole first third of the movie pissed me off. And then next third of it being OCD Maya's personal mission to smoke Bin Laden is why they're sending Seal Team Six in. That she's the ONLY reason that happened. It's a nice story but why are you telling me this. This shit JUST happened. Yes I know we don't know the whole story and we never will but don't fucking piss on me and tell me it's raining.

Once the Seal Team Six section started was when I realized that I'd be much happier watching a Generation Kill-type movie revolving around them and the mission than any of the leadup. I don't really know what that says about me except maybe a sad affinity for military procedurals and war movies, but I'm like, at least you can't fudge what they were there to do and how they did it.

Ugh. I dunno. I didn't mind the 'solve the mystery' aspect to the story and that all those elements ultimately served THAT intrigue, such as it was. But I don't like being treated like a softheaded infant.

I guess the military has their own version of The Onion

http://www.duffelblog.com/2013/01/seal-team-6-calls-zero-dark-thirty-inaccurate-say-they-dont-pop-collars-or-wear-tapout-gear/

It's a nice story but why are you telling me this. This shit JUST happened. Yes I know we don't know the whole story and we never will but don't fucking piss on me and tell me it's raining.

^^^ favorite review of this

best review ever

lol, I think I scared Mr Veg last night with how mad I was

Ha! I don't need to read any more reviews of this movie. And I don't need to see it. VG, have you considered writing reviews?

Oh you.