I won’t mince words on this one: the media narrative and critical response built around Katheryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty has become all the way fucked up. While the film is not without its many intelligent defenders and is seemingly in the midst of great popular success, a baffling and idiotic Academy snub for Best Director is merely icing on a bitter cake baked out of misguided or outright irresponsible attacks on the character of the film and filmmakers.
Much of this debate went down when the film was still in limited release and thus out of reach of most viewers. It was a situation I found so frustrating that, with the pressure of a 2012 Best Of list also on my mind and armed with some free flights 
at my disposal, I ultimately threw up my hands on the last day of 2012 and made a 1,500 mile, 12 hour day-trip to NY solely to see the film before immediately flying back to Atlanta. While I was able to catch Bigelow’s brilliant, stunning film a couple weeks earlier and place it rightfully at #2 on the aforementioned list, it also brought on the infuriating experience of seeing these raging takedowns of the film from pundits, politicians, critics, and even other filmmakers be suddenly illuminated as the incorrect, hysterical hit jobs most of them are. These pieces were and remain rampant with factual errors, misremembered details and outright false characterizations of scenes and plot turns in a film with a much more complex relationship with torture than has been painted.
Zero Dark Thirty makes a few things very clear: torture happened, a limited but notable pool of intelligence data was derived from prisoners who were either tortured, or coerced to speak with the threat of it, that a portion of the massive amount of information that ultimately led to Bin Laden’s whereabouts came from this data pool, and that the truly major and key components of the investigation were obtained by other means.
I could go on and on about the brilliant ways in which the film frames torture as an ugly, imprecise, and often fruitless tool, or how it integrates the moral toll such things takes on character, or weaves in the shifting politics of the situation throughout the story. I could also speak on the naive and dangerous attempt to repaint history as a narrative that fits your own political and moral feelings, righteous as they may be. Others have said it better though, and many of you still have to see the film for yourselves.
Even better? Kathryn Bigelow has decided to step up and speak for herself and the film more formally, via this eidtorial in the New York Times, in which she makes a few key points very plain.
“Those of us who work in the arts know that depiction is not endorsement. If it was, no artist would be able to paint inhumane practices, no author could write about them, and no filmmaker could delve into the thorny subjects of our time.
…
On a practical and political level, it does seem illogical to me to make a case against torture by ignoring or denying the role it played in U.S. counter-terrorism policy and practices.
Experts disagree sharply on the facts and particulars of the intelligence hunt, and doubtlessly that debate will continue. As for what I personally believe, which has been the subject of inquiries, accusations and speculation, I think Osama bin Laden was found due to ingenious detective work. Torture was, however, as we all know, employed in the early years of the hunt. That doesn’t mean it was the key to finding Bin Laden. It means it is a part of the story we couldn’t ignore. War, obviously, isn’t pretty, and we were not interested in portraying this military action as free of moral consequences.”
The entire piece is thoughtful and well articulated, and I encourage you to read it whether you’ve seen the film or not.
Almost simultaneously though, comes a piece from THR noting that Lincoln will be enjoying its second episode of 60 Minutes devoted to aspects and personalities of its production, while a pitched episode concerning Zero Dark Thirty has been flatly denied.
One movie 60 Minutes will not be featuring is Zero Dark Thirty. The show was “pitched hard,” says executive editor Bill Owens, but the newsmagazine profiled director Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker in 2009, and the pic’s representatives were selling Zero Dark Thirty almost as a documentary, touting the filmmakers’ CIA access (which has led to a Senate investigation).
This is not to suggest that 60 Minutes is part of a grand conspiracy to tear down Bigelow’s film in favor of other, easier Hollywood favorites, but it’s another frustrating development nonetheless when Lincoln nabs two specials, and Les Misérables too is featured during voting season. Zero Dark Thirty deserves to be out front of the pack this awards season, getting in front of more eyeballs, and being rightly held up as a standard of brave, journalistic, and delicately artful filmmaking. It deserves to have the conversation around it more thoughtfully examined and contextualized, and the program would have been a great place for such a thing to happen. Oh well.
The one thing that will make sure the cheap shredding of its reputation and diminishing traction in the awards season more swallowable is continued success in theaters, and that at least appears to be on a good track. Here in Atlanta the film was selling out shows all weekend and even my Sunday night screening was packed wall to wall. Here’s hoping that remains the case across the country and people take it on themselves to see past all the bullshit and sit down for the most important movie of 2012 and, likely enough, one of the most important of the decade.
16 comments
I turned on this movie the second I heard the 9/11 audio. Journalistic my ass.
There’s nothing better than a patronizing and condescending attitude. Maybe patronizing and condescending with a side of run-on sentences.
Wow, seriously? You need to get a grip.
I can sort of understand why you had that reaction,–it sounds like you viewed it as a cynical attempt to manipulate the audience–but I found that it was an interesting way to set the stage without resorting to using the same footage we’ve unfortunately seen over and over again. Aside from that, I also felt it was interesting that despite whatever emotions may have been conjured up by the 9/11 audio, I immediately felt sympathetic toward the detainee. (The agent played by Jason Clarke came across as a bully, and hearing someone refer to another person as “bro” incessantly will very quickly make not like him.)
SPOILERS!!!
The question of sympathies continued to the climax where we see the SEALS take down the residents of the house, shooting unarmed men and women in front of their terrified children. It truly made me wonder, providing the sequences are accurate, how will those children grow up? Will they seek to perpetuate the cycle of violence and join arms against the U.S. in order to obtain vengeance against those who murdered their parents? Obviously, a viewer will take from it what he brings to it, but seeing a well-armed soldier coldly shoot a man, who is already likely dead, in the chest just to make sure he stays down (as well as the aforementioned shots of terrified children) are not likely to make many start chanting, “USA! USA!”
It’s a bit absurd for Alex Gibney to be publicly attacking this film for not being “journalistic” (whatever that means in a fictionalized dramatization), when his “documentaries” tell you exactly what to think about whatever subject he’s choosing to attack. I generally admire Gibney’s work, but he has little if any journalistic credibility. To me, “journalism” implies a careful examination of facts with an effort to avoid inputting personal opinion or bias, and to generally remove the persona of the reporter from reportage. Gibney fails to do any of those things. He makes advocacy films, not documentaries. He’s Michael Moore without the humor and ADD.
And if you can say one thing about Zero Dark Thirty, and this is the key to the film: it presents as best a feature film can the evidence of what was done to get Bin Laden, both the triumphs and horrors, and makes no judgement. It leaves judgement to the audience.
I’d like to Alex Gibney do that, just once.
To be fair, they only shoot armed inhabitants and apprehend the rest. Even the woman they shoot is grabbing the AK-47 when she is shot. As for the confirmation shots, that’s a matter of operating procedure for missions of that volatility. It’s a matter of eliminating any risk of any possible threat.
Not to say any of this isn’t cold, but it’s cold the way any special ops mission ever has been cold.
Perhaps I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure the guy on the stairs isn’t armed, nor is Bin Laden or his wife, who gets shot in the leg when they storm his bedroom. It happens pretty quickly, and I’ve only seen the film once, so perhaps I’m mistaken, but I was left with the impression that at least some of the people who die are completely unarmed but are killed mainly because they aren’t in plain sight and <i>could</i> be armed as far as the SEALS know.
You’re right- I should specificy that they shoot armed inhabitants or inhabitants that are likely to be armed or acting as if they’re armed. So a guy slowly peeking back around a corner is definitely going down.
Bin Laden being the target, he’s going down regardless.
Frankly, after the shooting from behind the door the distinction becomes much more narrow. Keep in mind, this all in contrast to the bomb option…
It’s not very journalistic to start with 9/11 audio and not even discuss what came before that. I don’t care that the film is taking sides, I just hate that it claims it isn’t.
If by sides you mean that 9/11 happened and it was bad for all involved, then sure, it does imply that. Otherwise, what side do you think it takes? It makes a distinct effort to not be jingoistic nor does it try to teach an object lesson on American imperialism. It could be criticized for making the Maya character appear heroic, but it also doesn’t shy away from portraying her numerous moral failings in her quest.
I’m beginning to get the idea that most of the folks complaining about ZDT haven’t bothered to watch it, and those that did are mad at it mainly because it’s not the movie about 9/11 they’ve been expecting to be made for the last 10 years.
Yes, Seal Team Six is depicted as killing an unarmed woman. The rules of engagement justify this, and they have every reason to believe she’s a threat in the moment, but that is what they did and that is what is shown. And U.S. Special Forces were conducting raids like this on a daily basis for years at the height of Iraq and Afghanistan occupations, especially during the respective troop surges. They didn’t shoot and kill people on every raid, but shit happens, as it did on this raid. The film shows that, without making any effort to paint it one way or the other, and I think it’s admirable that they don’t white wash it. It happens, because that is how the military operates, and they’re in a potentially hostile environment going after suspected bad guys. Up to you to decide if you’re OK with that.
@JoelCE: Yeah, the point I’m trying to make is that the movie isn’t nearly as black and white as I imagine Deanburger believes it to be. To have dismissed the remaining two and a half hours because of its opening two minutes is pretty ridiculous, especially with a movie like ZDT, which, to my mind, does not take any sort of jingoistic cheerleading stance towards the events it depicts. A lesser, more propagandist film would have had only armed enemies end up as casualties and might possibly have sidestepped the issue of the children being present altogether. ZDT takes a warts-and-all approach that will end up leaving many people uncomfortable, and I don’t think that’s unintentional at all. I can recall my own celebratory mood when the news of Bin Laden’s death first broke, and that’s because those details weren’t released with it. By the end of ZDT, all I could think was, “Okay, we got him, but what did we really accomplish in the end?”
@mrm1138: Definitely not disagreeing with you. We’re on the same page. As I said below, I find it frustrating that a number of detractors of this film either haven’t seen it or seem to be objecting to it because it’s not the film about 9/11 they wanted to see. It’s an excellent piece of work, in my opinion, and would probably fall in my top three of the year right now. The Academy should be ashamed for not nominating Bigelow, but then the Academy has reason to be ashamed at least once every year.
I heard bin Laden doesn’t drop to the bottom of the ocean, fall in Japanese radiation and come back at the end as MechaLaden.
Way to ditch journalistic integrity.
I immediately felt sympathetic toward the detainee. (The agent played by Jason Clarke came across as a bully, and hearing someone refer to another person as “bro” incessantly will very quickly make not like him.)
yea i agree with this 100%. he realy did come across as a bully and a douch for using the word bro that much.
i loved the movie and it was exactly what i was hoping it would be, an honest unflinching look at the manhunt that got bin Laden.
Go have a glass of warm milk and calm down…
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