Zero Dark Thirty - Anticipation/Discussion Thread

I never thought I'd be interested in watching a film on the hunt for Bin Laden. But the trailer was cool, and the reviews starting to trickle out for this movie are pretty universal in their praise. Metacritic currently lists this movie with a 98 score based off nine reviews.

Anyone else highly anticipating this film?

Also, Jessica Chastain's in it!

Yeah, definitely want to see this.

watched the recent charlie rose on this w/ boal & bigelow & lots of clips - it looks kindof annoying but ill prob go see it

I'm interested to see how they frame the story. Without having read a whole lot about this film, I did read that it spans the ten years from 09/11 to Bin Laden's death. Is the screenplay based off of a specific book?

it is 'original'

as I said in the Bigelow thread, it's a vengeance movie for ObamaNation, and subtly offensive in that regard.

at the end does jessica chastain pick up osama and say "let's go home"

As a colleague said last night, the message of the waterboarding scenes is "Torture is hard on everybody."

it's true

poor fuckin' CIA

I'm always a little suspicious of anything that receives near-universal praise...

Although it usually ends in disappointment, it's near-universal praise has got me jazzed despite not even pretending to care about a month ago.

Film isn't released for another 10 days. Critics who are not de facto studio flacks are not going to publish their deviations yet.

Normally I'd agree, but I haven't actually read/seen any reviews yet. Just going by tweets and comments from certain critics I like + awards.

Did notice some pushback from the Zodiac comparisons, but if this is a process movie, I'm there.

obv anticipating this

I have a weakness for process movies as well xpost

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/opinion/sunday/bruni-bin-laden-torture-and-hollywood.html?hp&_r=0

**spoilers**

Greenwald stepping into the world of film nerds: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/10/zero-dark-thirty-torture-awards

He hasn't seen it yet.

Yes. This caused consternation on Twitter.

Among people who also, largely, haven't seen it yet either.

Most of them have.

Frank Bruni has.

People who are predisposed accept the "depoliticized" aura of torture in this film made their peace with fabrication long ago, especially War Democrats.

otm

Bigelow and Boal are speaking out of both sides of their mouths here. As noted, she is going around praising herself for taking "almost a journalistic approach to film". But when confronted by factual falsehoods she propagates on critical questions, her screenwriting partner resorts to the excuse that "it's a movie, not a documentary."

hard not to agree w. this from greenwald, even if he hasn't seen the flick

When a movie like this comes so soon after the events it depicts, and when the filmmakers are utilizing non-public inside information directly given to them by the White House and the CIA, it's really hard not to look at this film in a propagandistic light.

Hints from local filmcrits suggest they're going to ignore the "politics"

Yeah, it's the "inside info" bit that really chafes for me (not having seen this yet).

Shoot.

well, discussion of American war crimes will have an interesting venue in "Oscar season." I'm confident Clooney will say something revolting.

I do wish GG had waited to see the film bcz I have a feeling he isn't gonna get in without a ticket now.

Would rather he went to Holy Motors instead.

Shoot.

Is that an expression of disappointment that the crazed wimpass lefties are spoiling the last Obama victory party of the season, Eric?

Nope.

http://www.thesniper.us/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/obama-navy-seal-doll.jpg

A woman exiting the ZDT screening I attended said in the elevator "I feel so educated." *Danger*

Best thing about this movie is that it's opened up a whole new thread for Morbs' axe-grinding

alert John Kerry!

Was the *Danger* the sound of her robot companion warning her that you were about to come over and give her a stern dressing down?

sorry Guk, creeping fascism and extralegal assassinations piss me off. But I've got nuthin more to say til the rest of you see this (feel free not to, tho).

Tell me how you felt about the 9/11 opening.

No, it's fine. I appreciate you're youthful vim and vigour. Like being a college freshman again. xpost

I can't stand KB's insistence on 'journalism' and, by extension, 'authenticity'. Best aspects of Hurt Locker were not its (false and exaggerated) depictions of the life of a bomb disposal unit.

It'd be hilarious for Morbs if O comes out and says "it is as it was" though

lol

morbs (and greenwald) OTM, this looks vile.

seeing a trailer for this in front of 'lincoln,' it was hard not to be extra-struck and kinda saddened by the scene where lincoln tells grant to just let jeff davis and the rest of the gang flee the country because he doesn't want any more suffering.

at first I thought that quote was Woodrow Wilson on The Birth of a Nation.

Eric: I suppose a mix of "legitimate depending on what follows" and "America -- get over it, you've killed many times over 3000 innocents since."

I'm genuinely intrigued by the plaudits. As I said, if it's a process movie, I'm up for that. If it's flag-waving bunk, less so.

And as I may have mentioned, I'm ambling through that Hoberman book so this seems relevant to that.

so...am i a terrorist if I want to see this y/n

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

well, M-D has come up plenty in thinkpieces

really, if anyone has an idea why the most blatant "humanizing" moment in this is reserved for Torturer Dan feeding ice cream to monkeys, I'd like to hear it.

i didn't read that moment as humanizing at all, just made the guy look even weirder

possibly, but what kinda weird are they going for?

Even this movie couldn't resist the urge to make CIA computer interfaces look really theatric and stimulating with bells and whistles. Pulled me out of the illusion briefly...

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.

Same story as Tom Wolfe's recent piece on Wall Street's change from ballbreakers to nerds.

a certain 'apolitical' cineaste has been mostly discreetly silent on this thread, and that appears to have saved us all a lotta grief.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/23/movies/9-11-victims-family-raises-objection-to-zero-dark-thirty.html?_r=0

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.

― saltwater incursion (Dr Morbius), Monday, January 28, 2013 3:21 PM (4 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this. the "endorses torture" thing i'm not buying. embedded screenwriting though... oh je.

last 20 minutes, except the vacuous final shot, were great though, and i agree with ppl saying they wish bigelow would pick different projects to apply these talents to.

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

― goole, Wednesday, January 16, 2013 8:09 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

been talking to a lot of finance guys recently (lol death of academia), and they all love margin call.

even though this film sets a seminally ugly precedent, it would still have got my BP vote this year : (

surpriiiiiiise

http://gawker.com/declassified-memo-shows-how-cia-shaped-zero-dark-thirty-493174407

does it matter?

Watched the HBO Manhunt documentary last night and while purportedly it's "what really happened" it's equally some effective propaganda. Worth watching, but still propaganda.

these are some really shocking revelations. can see why the company would want to keep a tight lid on it.

Stalinist almost rhyming w/ Democrat after all

the most offensive aspect of that movie to me is the restrained, neutral tone of the thing... how adeptly it feigns even-handedness and objectivity. it is a "revenge porn flick" like gawker noted, but it doesn't feel that way, which is why it's so pernicious imo.

evil motives behind evil movie REVEALED

I mean c'mon no one is surprised by this are they

Glen Greenwald is surprised at all the marriage options suddenly knocking on his Brazilian door.

i thought it was already common knowledge that she consulted the CIA? i guess the reveal is that they asked her to take stuff out but... idk i assumed that was the case.

did anyone else see this at nitehawk in brooklyn? they had like this montage of racist depictions of middle easterners that they played before the movie, along with obviously hokey scenes from movies that glorified the US military. it was lol.

it's not so much a reveal as a confirmation that when the cia said "we didn't do that" boal apparently said "um, ok, will fix"

assuming this is an objective description of what happened between boal and the cia is ludicrous imo.

i mean this is is written by people who need to seem competent/influential to their audience, i.e. their bosses.

but in any case, if you assume (1) what the cia told him is true, and (2) their description of their meetings with boal is accurate and complete, this sounds like an account of boal doing fact-checking.

but if you're the kind of person who rejects 1, then you've got to reject 2 as well, in which case i'm not sure what you learn.

Sully destroys Bigelow

crosspost w/ Frontline thread

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-elections-politics/secrets-politics-and-torture/watch-how-the-cia-helped-make-zero-dark-thirty/

Didn't catch that frontline but this was interesting

https://news.vice.com/article/tequila-painted-pearls-and-prada-how-the-cia-helped-produce-zero-dark-thirty

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/magazine/what-do-we-really-know-about-osama-bin-ladens-death.html?_r=0

This was a story that was so good it didn’t need to be fictionalized, or so it seemed. It began with a series of C.I.A.-led torture sessions, which the movie suggested provided the crucial break in the hunt for bin Laden. Only they didn’t, at least according to a report conducted over the course of many years by the Senate Intelligence Committee (and others with access to classified information). Senator Dianne Feinstein, who oversaw the report as the committee’s chairwoman, said she walked out of a screening of the film. ‘‘I couldn’t handle it,’’ she said. ‘‘Because it’s so false.’’ The filmmakers’ intent had presumably been to tell a nuanced story — the ugly truth of how we found bin Laden — but in so doing, they seem to have perpetuated a lie.

the most offensive aspect of that movie to me is the restrained, neutral tone of the thing... how adeptly it feigns even-handedness and objectivity. it is a "revenge porn flick" like gawker noted, but it doesn't feel that way, which is why it's so pernicious imo.

― Treeship, Tuesday, May 7, 2013 7:03 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM

Also, the raid sequence was literally unwatchable. I have no interest in getting off on "revenge porn," but I would like to be able to visually process wtf is actually happening on screen. Didn't Bigelow used to be a decent action director?

https://www.theringer.com/movies/2018/2/26/17055154/zero-dark-thirty-backlash-kathyrn-bigelow-2013-oscars

i can't parse what that article is trying to say tbh

it says 'it’s the personal narrative that is worth remembering' and closes on 'But what remains fascinating is that this is a question pitched, again, toward the individual. Is it worth it for whom—Maya, or the country? The United States falls out of view in the final moments of Zero Dark Thirty. The Abbottabad compound disappears, the soldiers disappear, CIA procedure disappears. Maya is all that’s left.'

maya is a fictional character in a film inspired by real events - how can she have a 'personal narrative'? i genuinely don't get what it's trying to day

er, 'say' not 'day'

i can't parse what that article is trying to say tbh

I came to the same conclusion.

They probably thought this was a hard-sounding title, but it's really Butt Crack of Dawn: The Movie.

Also, wasn't Seymour Hersh widely discredited?

I would be curious to rewatch this. I experienced a weird sense of disconnect from the critical discourse on my viewing - I found the raid sequence and the concluding shots overwhelming but in no way triumphant.

No, she and Boal are too subtle for 'triumphant.'

i've only seen it once but from what i recall the raid and the actual assassination of bin laden is def underplayed

having said that, i found it every bit as stylised as a rah-rah michael bay celebration of military power - it's just that instead of tealandorange.xls hero shots of brave, square-jawed marines there's a 'look how fuckin' verité we are' night-vision ride-along with seal team six in which the world's most wanted man is taken down with the same terse, professional teamwork they'd employ with any other target

it's a slightly less obvious way to valorise the military but it's still valorisation - 'all in a day's work for our brave boys' basically

yeah, I would have to rewatch. it's very possible I was overly charitable because I like a lot of bigelow's movies

it's no point break that's for sure

and i mean that with no snark intended, some of my all-time-favourite action scenes come from that movie

Near Dark is my fave

also a banger, agreed

Strange Days -- not bad imo

K-19 -- pretty damn good tbh

There’s definitely a pre and post prestige Bigelow shift beginning with Hurt Locker. I liked that and ZDT both but kind of wish she’d back to being an advanced genre stylist.

I always kinda hated Strange Days. it's so relentlessly humorless and sadistic and bleak in that tired 90s way. Verhoeven would have had some fun with it.