I am afraid of everything but surprised by very little. I was however taken aback by the recent controversy surrounding Zero Dark Thirty. The arguments against the film strike me as disingenuous at best. There are two primary narratives that have been concocted about the film. The first, is that the movie somehow condones torture. The second, is that the movie somehow makes the case that torture was a if not the primary contributing factor in finding Osama Bin Laden.
The first assumes that the absence of argument against the use of torture is equal to condoning it. This however does not leave room for the possibility that the absence of argument might just be the absence of argument. I have doubts that there were many CIA operatives during this time (or ever for that matter) that went around moralizing to their superiors. That’s something typically left up to politicians who have much less at stake than the agents and analysts in the field. But let’s forget realism or lack thereof and let’s stick to the writing and filmmaking here employed by Boal and Bigelow.
There is nothing in this film that suggests that either Maya or Dan take the torture that they participate in for granted. In fact, the opposite is true. Maya never looks comfortable in the room and Dan would rather put up with the politics of Washington than remain where he is. They are both acutely aware that they see too much, do too much, and this understanding is central to the film. Maya’s entire arc is built upon the notion that she will lose herself in the process of finding Bin Laden. That is her journey. And there are stakes. Bombs go off in different parts of the world, people die, because Maya and Dan are failing at their jobs. That sentiment is palpable on every one of the characters.
I for one am glad that Bigelow and Boal did not give in to any instinct to moralize or to make the issues surrounding the torture program black and white. I’m glad that they didn’t tell me what to think and allowed for the shades of grey to exist. I believe that the people who are offended by this film are more uncomfortable by the grayness of it all than by the torture itself and in allowing us to come face to face with that, Bigelow and Boal knock it out of the ballpark.
The second argument is that torture was a major contributing factor in finding Osama Bin Laden and that somehow this is factually incorrect. This is also dishonest. First, because it assumes that we have been living under a rock for the last decade. That somehow we have not lived through the collective trauma of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, extraordinary rendition, and Rumsfeld. The folks perpetuating this argument mean for us to believe that at no point in the last decade no agent asked a detainee or victim of torture any questions regarding the whereabouts of Bin Laden, and that none of those questions (that never happened) ever resulted in any actionable intel. Call me a cynic, but I don’t buy it. Worse still, the folks who are making this argument also want us to believe that the film happens in a vacuum where there is no time. In fact, many years pass between the moment when Maya hears about the courier and the moment when the intelligence is acted upon. Throughout that time the lead was dropped completely and later revived. More importantly, the case the film actually makes is that only a few people believed that this was a lead at all and that Maya had to build a case and convince others in painstakingly detailed ways.
“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.” Kathryn Bigelow – LA Times 1/15/13
On the other side of the coin, defenders of the film have said that “hey, it’s just a movie” so everyone should relax. But I refuse to see things this simply. It is just a movie, sure. Its purpose is to entertain not educate, sure. But that doesn’t mean that a film cannot do both. This is in essence what I find the most surprising about the arguments surrounding Zero Dark Thirty — I found the film to be more interesting than it was dramatic.
There is a misconception about how movies communicate, particularly movies grounded in fact or research. Filmmakers do not have unlimited words with which to work. We must make our case as efficiently as possible and get you out of the theater before you walk out. The only way to do that is to strike at the essence of subject rather than the facts of subject. Think of your favorite biopics. If you leave those films understanding the type of man/woman the subject is, then you have been educated and informed regardless of how the facts have been fudged with to create drama and entertain. Raging Bull, Amadeus, Lawrence of Arabia etc. all come to mind. This is the lesson of Citizen Kane. What is at the heart of the subject? Rosebud. If you write that, then you achieve the truth regardless of the facts. It is called fiction after all.
The discussion surrounding Zero Dark Thirty ignores everything that happens outside the torture chambers. The great wealth of characters it took to find Bin Laden. The determination and sacrifice involved. In fact, the film is most effective when it mires itself down in the details of the investigation. When we see the spycraft and all of a sudden we are confronted by just how impossible the task of finding Bin Laden is. There are two needle in a haystack sequences in particular that are filled with dramatic tension and are both deeply entertaining and informative. They have characters trying to find one person in a population of millions and informants tracking a single car through a winding city. These moments are as crucial to the finding of Osama Bin Laden as the torture is. The mission required a lot of different forms of intelligence gathering and many individuals. That is the essence of the mission and the truth we are supposed to walk away with. So it surprises me that people were simply not watching the same movie that I was.
And it is not a perfect movie by any means. It is not the best picture of the year and I do not believe that Bigelow’s snub from the Oscars is all that controversial or undeserved. The film fails miserably at allowing us to feel anything. We are never given a moment in which to latch onto Maya or come to some understanding of what she has lost or gained in the process of this hunt. She says “A lot of my friends have died trying to do this. I believe I was spared so I could finish the job.” But we are never allowed to feel this with her or to experience her loss, how it pushes her, or why it matters. Her closest relationships are leaped into without development. It makes the movie feel distant, detached, and cold. There is nothing true about how these characters act towards each other and that is what I find unbelievable. Of course we cannot have it all. The task these filmmakers undertook was monumental. This is a huge story with a lot of terrain to cover and character was sacrificed in order to offer us as complete a picture as possible in two and a half hours. But it’s success in doing so hinges on what you consider complete.
Sometimes a Good Notion 