FILM: Zero Dark Thirty

It’s interesting to note how quickly the US feels the need to celebrate their military exploits. Less than two years after the death of Osama bin Laden, we already have a Hollywood blockbuster about his assassination. It’s called Zero Dark Thirty, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, who also brought us another film about the war on terror, The Hurt Locker. I enjoyed The Hurt Locker thoroughly, which was very well directed, employing commendable use of tension and suspense, and a great use of characterization.

The thing which brought ZDT to my attention most was the alleged controversy surrounding the film’s portrayal of torture. Many claimed it adopted a distinctly pro-torture stance, inaccurately depicting torture as being a crucial aspect of the search for Osama bin Laden and his associates, when in reality it supposedly led to the extraction of false and unreliable information, and was not, in fact, a key factor in finding and killing bin Laden. If you like controversial works of art, you will certainly be disappointed by ZDT, as the aforementioned torture is, for the most part, not a central them of the film at all. In fact, it only features in the first half hour or so of the film, after which there is not even a single mention of torture. I even forgot about the torture by the end, which made me wonder why there was even any fuss about it in the first place.

Is it pro-torture? I don’t think so. It does undeniably show torture as being an asset in the search for bin Laden, but I don’t see why this must necessarily suggest advocation for torture. In fact, I would argue it does the opposite. The torture scenes are shown as very brutal and disturbing, and I commend Bigelow for not attempting to soften the true nature of torture in order to make it “screen friendly” (That said, I wouldn’t know for sure). It should be evident to anyone from this that the film is deliberately not making any effort to portray torture in a positive light. In addition to this, protagonist Maya is quite obviously very uncomfortable with torture, as we can deduce from her body language, and despite being hellbent on finding Osama almost to the point of obsession, it seems clear to me that she views torture as being both “a means to an end” and a “necessary evil”. In my view, the film’s exploration of torture is more along the lines of “Is it justified, even if it is useful?” Which is an important question for both sides of the debate, and it calls into question whether finding Osama bin Laden is a cause worth torturing for. Evidently, it does take liberties with historical fact, but it does so to make an ideological point, and I don’t believe Bigelow or any of the producers have claimed it was intended to be entirely historically accurate. It has the same problem Lincoln had, though, where I spent the entire film wondering exactly how accurate it actually was, and whether there are other important factors which have been omitted for whatever reason. But I digress - and as I said, the film is quick enough to abandon torture as a central theme, and for the most part focusses on Maya’s obsession with the case.

Zero Dark Thirty opens with with a 2001-esque black screen, with the date of 9/11 written in the center (coincidence?). This shot is quite a neat touch, only telling the story of 9/11 through a series of distorted radio messages played over a black screen for no more than sixty seconds, before jumping two years later to the invasion of Iraq. No doubt this has been played primarily for poignancy, to remind the audience where this whole debacle started. It likes to remind us that 3000 innocent people were killed by Al Qaeda, yet no one ever seems to notice that 3000 is a less-than-significant number in a country with a population of over 300 million. The film’s tagline is “the story of history's greatest manhunt for the world's most dangerous man”, but I don’t buy it. I’ve alway been very dubious about the true importance of killing bin Laden, and this film hasn’t convinced me. Maya remains obsessed with finding him long after the CIA loses interest, which implies bin Laden is actually much less crucial to the war on terror than I had previously thought. As a result, I didn’t get a good sense of the stakes in this film. But I can’t say I know a lot about the situation, so it would be unwise of me to say I know better.

Functionally, the film is rock solid. One thing I’ve come to realise is that good writing is not noticeable. You will notice bad writing, and exceptional writing, but not good writing, primarily because good writing appears natural and intuitive. That’s Zero Dark Thirty. There are some great exchanges, but for the most part the writing is just good enough to keep the story believable, which is the bare minimum for good writing. Visual effects are solid, the music score is appropriate for the tone, and the cast all deliver a solid performance, especially Jessica Chastain. As a movie, it’s virtually seamless from a purely functional perspective. I’d commend the characterization, but there is literally only one interesting character - Maya, who is portrayed as a multi-faceted human being with flaws and weaknesses, a drive, a passion, and a consistent personality. Whereas much of the rest of the characterization, get about as far as a bunch of serious white men in suits. Or in the case of the “canaries”, a pack of bonehead American males.

That being said, there is a slight inconsistency with Maya’s character. At the start of the film she appears as a timid sensitive woman who is thrown in with the men in the torture chamber. By the end of the film, however, she is a badass operative driven by her goal. One should remember, though, that the film does take place across ten years, and this could be a conscious reflection of how a decade of war has hardened her, but there really isn’t any in depth exploration of such implications.

The film skims across ten years of the search for bin Laden, and in doing so it spreads itself too thin. It constantly skips two-to-three years ahead periodically in order to cover the entire story, but doesn’t allow for a much deeper exploration of any given situation, despite being two and a half hours long. Towards the end, though, the time skips become shorter and shorter, to emphasise how important the final stages were, but the final mission drags on far too much. It is evidently trying to capture the intensity of the operation, but to me it was merely tedious.

Let me go on about the final mission for a moment. While landing two helicopters, the strike team on Osama’s residence make a hell of a racket trying to find somewhere practical to land, even crashing one of them in the process. Immediately afterwards, they try to stealthily infiltrate the safehouse so the residents wouldn’t notice. With the preceding noise, you would have disturbed a comatose person. It seems a little implausible, and it detracted from my willing suspension of disbelief momentarily. Shortly after, the soldiers murder two parents in front of their children, and then have the nerve to say to the kids “it’s okay”. It was doing great up until this point, but the final mission scene is both tedious and poorly planned.

But at this stage I can only nitpick. Zero Dark Thirty also has its brilliant moments, and can at times be a profound gut-wrencher. There is one scene in particular in which the second female lead, Jessica, is required to meet with an accomplice of Osama for information, who turn out to be suicide bombers, and everyone involved dies. It is a well executed, powerful and somewhat devastating moment, and despite being a little predictable, took me by surprise nonetheless. It is these moments in which I think Bigelow shines as a director, and I eagerly await her next effort. It’s also nice to see a film passing the Bechdel test with flying colours, and although I don’t necessarily believe the Bechdel test is the most important or constructive thing to be conscious of, it’s still nice. Despite its flaws, it is a profound film, and I definitely recommend Zero Dark Thirty.