Zero Dark Thirty - Anticipation/Discussion Thread

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.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/feb/07/disturbing-misleading-zero-dark-thirty/

Lunching with a few local film critics today, I was accused of being a "reactionary" for disliking this film. "I don't care for truth," one guy said. "It shook me and disturbed me and made me uncomfortable." I said: Because this boring movie makes you complicit in its endorsement of a fiction? He almost threw his beer in my face.

Another shocked silence followed when I dismissed the inevitable "But what Leni Riefenstahal?" question with "She made a terrible film that everyone who cares about film should nevertheless watch." These guys are professors -- how is this not obvious?

smdh

not shocked to hear about some film profs trying to keep wide-eyed and accepting

Film Prof #2's favorite 2012 film: Argo.

oh ffs

aka Instagram of Iran

Beard of Affleck

You just have to appreciate hollywood not being afraid to tackle the big issues, like how being an american in the middle east must be real scary.

It doesn't make you complicit but other than that

I'm amused by the inevitable Triumph of the Will discussions. You can argue that TotW is great -- "wickedly great," as Louis Farrakhan said of Hitler.

I probably would've thrown that beer into Alfred's face.

teenagers on the internet going "Hitler was evil, yeah, but he was an effective leader"

some nice measured points by Sicinski

4. Maya (no last name given) is the attractive, intuitive female side of a CIA apparatus, and her charisma permits, even demands, an unproblematic identification with both the CIA and the hunt for bin Laden on the part of the viewer. I submit that, were ZDT to ask us to offer ourselves up for similar identification with others in Maya’s orbit – say, Dan (Jason Clarke), her “enhanced interrogation” colleague at the undisclosed Middle Eastern black site, or Joseph Bradley (Kyle Chandler), her Pakistan field office chief / Bush era functionary -- we would not slip nearly so easily into the film’s preferred mode of spectatorship. Rather, we would experience ideological dissonances almost instantly.

5. ZDT has already become a popular talking point for elected officials, smug pundits and other self-appointed guardians of our national innocence. Virtually all of these statements, from outraged leftist weeklies all the way to the floor of the Senate, center on one question. Does ZDT make a clear case that the torture of al Qaeda-affiliated detainees provided specific information leading to the location and killing of Usama bin Laden?

6. There are so many answers to this question floating around the contemporary Van Allen belt of bloviation, that I hesitate to add any further air, hot or cold. However, it seems that the manner in which the question has been continually posed has forced us to overlook some equally important considerations regarding Bigelow’s film. Has the Oscar-winning director made a work of ham-fisted pro-Bushie propaganda, or is ZDT a complex, ambivalent work of art that abjures easy answers? I am very much inclined to say, neither. Just on the narrative level, ZDT could be said to depict the transition from Bush/Cheney to Obama doctrine as a kind of “hinge” moment, when the Company’s usual practices of torture are forced to turn a corner into a more technological (and technocratic) form of intelligence gathering. (The tracking of the courier Abu Ahmed, using mobile phone triangulation, is an example of this.) While ZDT clearly depicts actionable intel resulting from enhanced interrogation, it also depicts a CIA that grasps (not without some carping) that its day is done. Maya exemplifies this transitional phase.

http://academichack.net/reviewsDecember2012.htm

tbh i think 'triumph of the will' is pretty boring. it's more interesting to talk about than it is to watch.

Film Prof #2's favorite 2012 film: Argo.

Everybody has awful taste in everything.

that's not bad from Sicinski, but it's becoming interesting to me how many film critics seem to usher in some notion of an "ideal viewer" who operates as sort of a blank slate that unquestioningly adopts the "film's preferred mode of spectatorship" and then use this phantom to project the movie's own unadulterated intentions of meaning. just a bugaboo of mine.

given some of the points I didn't paste, i'm not sure he's doing that.

fair enough, i should follow links before commenting on them!

also this:

In fact, Maya’s gender factors into ZDT consistently as a sliding signifier of her unique capabilities, the thing which sets her apart and allows her to gain fresh perspective on the bin Laden problem. It’s not just that Maya is permitted to behave in a petulant manner toward her superiors, something that would get her smacked down in a heartbeat if she were a man. (Her ongoing challenge to her boss [Jeremy Strong] to raid the compound, counting the number of days the CIA has sat on the intelligence by scrawling them on his office window in red marker, is particularly preposterous.) And it’s not just that the film shows her winning over members of Seal Team 6 by flirting with them, in her own chilly way. (“Bin Laden is there. And you’re going to kill him for me.”)

Rather, Maya’s single-mindedness is given strange overtones throughout ZDT, as hovering between absolute professional competence and an almost romantic fixation. We see this in the odd way her colleague at the Islamabad office comforts her when her investigation runs aground (“I’m sorry, Maya. I always liked that lead…”), or when CIA Director Leon Panetta (James Gandofini) asks her in the lunchroom what else she’s done, for the CIA and by extension her life. (“Nothing. I’ve done nothing else.”) And so, in the very last shot of ZDT, when the raid is done and UBL has been zipped up in a body bag, we see Maya alone, the sole passenger in a military aircraft leaving Pakistan. “Where do you want to go?” the pilot asks, and, having no answer, Maya begins to silently cry. Again, so very much has been made of this final shot, as a tragic dehiscence within Maya’s life following the end of an obsession, or even as a sudden moment of reflection on everything she’s done over the years, good and bad. But psychoanalytically, Maya has lost her object of desire.

wait til he reads Moby Dick