Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty

The reviewer America deserves:

*if*. "hyper".
Does Bigelow's movie advocate torture? [Yup]



Final and more "spoilery" trailer.

...

I can't wait. For this to be over. Already.

lol "hyper-realistic"

That means fake right

SAY TAUT ONE MORE GOD DAMN TIME, HACK INTERNET CRITICS

Well, now I feel like an ass for having gotten you a pair of Zero Dark Thirty tickets for Christmas.

Andrew Sullivan says it doesn't advocate torture:

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/12/the-torture-narrative.html

...I'm not sure what to think, based on conflicting second-hand accounts. I thought The Hurt Locker was a morally reprehensible movie and I'm therefore disinclined to give the benefit of the doubt to Bigelow (she should totally have to play a cameo in Deuce Bigalow 3 to show her repentance), but I can't really make a call without seeing the film myself, and for the present that's impossible for me to do and even if it weren't, I'm a bit disinclined to put money in her pocket. I guess we'll see what else is stirred up by it.

I have a hard time seeing Chris Pratt as anything other than Andy from Parks and Rec, so from a casting standpoint it's a huge error from the get go.

This line from that Slate article makes me intensely angry. Whether or not torture can get information isn't the point. Corrupting our institutions for temporary gains in a foreverwar, that's what matters.

Goddamn.

Well, it's good to see the difference between foundational premises

Notice how he presumes that his grasp of believability is made more solid by his "study" of the subject for years, and how he implies the same was true about the Hurt Locker. In any case, it is entirely possible that this movie is better as a film than Hurt Locker. But I wouldn't trust someone who was blind to the first film's flaws to tell me that.

This is disingenuous on many levels. I don't think many people are starting with the assumption that the threat of anti-American terrorism is fiction. But the easy equivalence between attacks on civilians and attacks on what are, in fact, the US equivalent of combatants out of uniform in order to build a bridge to a pox on both their houses is ridiculous. All so he can say that using real 9/11 calls to justify fictionally justified torture isn't exactly the kind of "the real world is just like 24" that he fell for once and never really got over.

Again, it's possible that this is a better movie than Hurt Locker. But I'm expecting once again the SRS BSNS adopted from the signature theme of the film is going to provide it with a sense of gravitas that far exceeds the thought given to the material itself. Once again, it's likely we'll have a facile Rorschach blot for critics on which they can project all of their hopes and aspirations, except now with torture as the punchline instead of PTSD.

It's not unimportant that the film was, apparently, originally scripted before the capture of Bin Laden and thus premised around an operation that did not achieve its mission. That neither Boal or Bigelow see a need to explain a difference in how they present torture with either ending says a great deal. It would be really interesting to see the changes in the scripts as they evolved, that's for sure.

Those words don't make sense in that order. That sentence is gibberish.

Alternately:

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK YOU HURT by LOCKER

Zero hurt dark locker thirty. Electric boogaloo.

I can't wait for Lum to start banning people over this movie.

So I thought about posting John McCain's rambling attacks (there was a longer and more terrifyingly incoherent BBC radio interview but I couldn't find it) on the movie but it would have been unsatisfying at best to try to take his sometimes accurate but mostly knee-jerk criticisms too seriously. But the Slate blog has a nice summary of the CIA director's response, which I think encapsulates a lot of what high profile intelligence people have been saying about the movie. I think it's especially important to underline how as with Hurt Locker the same bait and switch of "we'll market and frame it as realism but don't expect to be held to any standards as a result" will likely be in play soon.

I heard a criticism along similar lines on NPR. If you're going to make a movie and market it heavy as "realistic," you don't get to hid behind "well it's fiction," when people call you out on inaccuracies.

I really wish people would stop marketing works of fiction as "realistic." No matter how much research you do, you've written a script and you're making a movie and you don't know what actually happened anywhere ever. You're showing events through literal lenses. On the same note - anybody going to the movies to learn something about an actual event needs to re-think how they get their information about real-world events. (Documentaries partially exempted.)

I think its unfair to criticize movies for being inaccurate, but it's equally unfair for filmmakers to claim that their movies are anything but 0% accurate. There's just no guarantee that what you've presented has any true relationship to the real event.

Note: I'm not saying don't base movies on real events. I'm just saying don't pretend movies ever have or ever will be representative of those real events. I love it when fiction employs realism! It's great! But I don't know jack shit about Lincoln 'cause I saw Lincoln (which I didn't.)

EDIT: I think Katheryn Bigelow's movies are generally good and look forward to this movie and ignoring all inferences it makes about the killing of bin laden as occurred in our dimension. I hope she has one more over the top action movie in her - I don't want to see a million "hyper" "realistic" war movies from her. More Near Dark and Point Break please.

Movies, non-fiction and fiction and everything in between, have a unique capacity for conveying authentic impressions of reality in a manner that few genres outside of recent generations of games seem capable of offering in terms of intensity. Generation Kill isn't what actually happened to that Marine unit, but it's allegedly pretty close and it tells you some things that are pretty profound and singularly accessible for a variety of war experiences. Full Metal Jacket, in its own way, has things to offer the viewer about the reality of Vietnam and the military at that time, as does Blackhawk Down. So do Paths of Glory or Battle Of Algiers or All Quiet.* That's similarly true for procedurals or movies about diplomacy and politics and all that other stuff that struggles to remain a clear vision when someone tries to describe them literally but can be used quite evocatively and accurately if the fundamental core of the film is true to its goals.

The accuracy of details is a tangential question that only comes up as supporting evidence when describing the limits of a movie. It's a good entry point and a valuable potential indicator of the overall quality of an effort, but it's not the point of the conversation any more than internal logic of the science in sci-fi is the point, at least in movies that pretend to have more than spectacle to offer.

The problem with Bigelow is that she markets and directs her films as if they pivot around authenticity, and then uses serious issues like PTSD and torture to provide a basis for psychological intimacy with the viewer. It is my contention that in the former that intimacy that many felt was both inappropriate and unearned by the actual core of the work, which was precisely the kind of non-Oscar bait action movie you seem to crave. I think that's a dirty trick and that there's value in calling it out.

tl;dr-If Lincoln is half as good as people who know about the topic say it is, then I'm betting you know a lot of interesting things about the time and place and people after seeing that movie. Sure, you have to snip the Spielberg here and the dramatic flow there, but the essence of it is sound and valuable. Zero Dark Lockers do not have the same goals in mind, and yet they are continually "mistaken" as such, to the degree that people feel betrayed when told otherwise even over the relatively trivial details.

* Which isn't even to get started on the meta-issue of where these movies situate the public/domestic gaze on those events in the time they were made. Which is in many ways just as valuable, and yet another place where Hurt Locker Darks will fall short in my estimation.

Well, I've seen this. It's ok. A decent thriller with well above-average acting and a number of actors I loved seeing (Jessica Chastain! Chris Pratt! John Barrowman!), a good-enough script, and competent direction. The raid itself is a good action sequence like you've probably heard it is. It doesn't really have any deep insights to offer and I have no doubt that it's super far from reality, but confusion on those points is really a problem with peoples' reactions to the movie, not the movie itself.

As to the question of whether or not it's pro-torture: HAW HAW HAW. It couldn't be any more pro-torture. It's basically a condensed and better-acted version of the fourth season of 24. Whether or not that's a serious problem for the film depends on how you look at it. The mitigating factor is, of course, that it's just an action movie, and just like with 24 you can roll your eyes at that stuff and enjoy it for what it is. The inverse is that some people--a lot of people, judging from the critical response--are inclined to take this movie seriously, whereas the only people who took 24 seriously were right-wing morons who already thought torture was the best anyway. And I'm honestly not comfortable with that, because if this movie manages to influence public opinion at all it could potentially go beyond the normal "it sure is dumb that people let a big Hollywood movie influence their politics" irritation and do some real damage.

And even then, I'm not sure who's to blame for that. Bigelow, for making a popcorn movie that people took too seriously? The critics who are taking it seriously and encouraging audiences to do the same? The organizations who are inevitably going to dump a pile of dumb awards on it? The people who will see it and be unsavvy enough to let themselves be swayed? All of the above? I'm not exactly sure, but it makes me uneasy about recommending it even though I did like it on balance when considered apart from all external factors (including the marketing and the real-life events on which it is supposedly based), which I guess is ultimately the fairest way to evaluate a movie.

Well, if there were a mirror universe version of a place like this, populated with games enthusiasts like us but probably with goatees and/or berets, you might find people who are taking this movie pretty seriously. (emphasis mine)

/facepalm

To the second quote, yes, it doesn't show torture as literally perfect, but it's damned close. Only getting almost all of the intelligence is not actually what the limitation of torture is irl.

Once again, popcorn movie and serious movie coexist to justify each others' flaws. Shocked, I am.

I'm not sure what will ever start an intelligent public conversation about torture (meaning one informed by the already quite serviceable academic understanding of it and why it's wrong, not one informed by Bigelow or Dershowitz or some other infotainers).

Plainly torture scandals involving detainees didn't suffice; there was a reaction, but very little working out of the basic moral and political problems of it for benefit of the not-immediately-revolted, a crucially large plurality. Perhaps if Americans/westerners were tortured for intelligence purposes on a significant enough scale or there were some very successful accounts published by victims some important points would be driven home. But the former is geopolitcally improbable, and even if either happened I'm not sure there's actually a real appetite in the public discourse for serious contemplation on this issue.

It isn't like the late 1940s and 1950s were full of public conversations about wartime torture, or as though western governments themselves weren't using it at that time in colonial contexts.

Torture as an instrument of policy is international lynching. People with power and things to lose don't usually give it up without a stronger power forcing them to while at the same time sweetening the deal with alternate methods of brutalizing their preferred other. I don't think it's going anywhere, and I don't object to this movie on the grounds that I think it's going to substantively change things for the worse. In fact, I don't object to movies being "made" or anything like that, as a general rule, I just think it's important to deal with them as a whole cultural artifact when they cross into important themes.

I just don't want another movie on the long list of Shit People Talk About To Seem Like They Have A Sophisticated, "Real" Grasp Of Hard Issues. Thus, I would prefer it if Bigelow marketed her films accordingly and critics practiced due diligence in constraining the love letters they write it.

Interesting post(s), LK. Once I realized you were too infuriated to even spell the screenwriters name correctly, I knew it was going to get ugly! :)

-Bahimiron

Well if you'd like the absurd counterpoint to those, here's a lady comparing Kathryn Bigelow to Leni Riefenstahl.

Well, if I was ever going to start a Music and Film Journalism Fart Sound thread, that would definitely be in the running for the starting article.

I'm at the point where I unconsciously start grinding my teeth whenever I hear about movies like Thirty Skirt Locker.

Man, I bet this movie is gonna be awesome! Can't wait to see it!

Loud and clear. I more meant it as a general whine in response to the the nth hundred occasion in which torture has allegedly been front of mind but the public discourse, specifically middlebrow-and-higher commentators who could do better, have failed to spend a few hours researching torture and writing intelligent articles thereupon.

Instead it's just the thousandth rerun of the "BUT DOES IT WORK - BUT WAIT EVIL - BUT WAIT HARD CHOICES IN HARD TIMES" pantomime. No real comment on the movie itself which I hadn't planned to catch.

She had me at the first sentence:

Also now I know that Katy Perry has a video where she apparently re-invades Normandy with the Marines for women's liberation or something.
But let's cut to the chase:

She's wrong about the US. The only reason Riefenstahl is primarily notorious above all other things is because the Nazis lost. Without seeing the movie it's hard to say what else about the comparison is accurate*, but mostly it's a solid point relying on documented evidence outside of the film that would radically alter its image of torture, delivered via Godwin grenade. The biggest problem is that she's trying to speak to a mass audience with a very specific sort of comparison that is either going to affirm preexisting beliefs for a minority or troll the shit out of most people just by pushing that button. Or, worse yet, easy fodder for the Tom Chicks of the world to cluck at.

Then again, while I think her sturm und drang about being called unpatriotic is annoying in the Katy Perry article she links, that also seems like a valuable critique. Did I miss something?


*In part because it's really hard to get a sense of the impact of Riefenstahl in her own time versus how she has been rewritten into post WWII-generated memories of black and white differences between teams.

I saw this quote being shared on another forum in a fairly heated thread about the film.

"Depiction is not endorsement, and if it was, no artist could ever portray inhumane practices; no author could ever write about them; and no filmmaker could ever delve into the knotty subjects of our time.”

I then went to see if it was an actual quote, if it was being correctly attributed/quoted/timed/etc, and found that it is being truncated from the following:

"I thankfully want to say that I'm standing in a room of people who understand that depiction is not endorsement, and if it was, no artist could ever portray inhumane practices; no author could ever write about them, and no filmmaker could ever delve into the knotty subjects of our time."

Those two quotes are not the same thing. They are, in fact, two incredibly different things. Especially when she is quoted as saying the latter to the New York Film Critics Circle while accepting an award for Best Director. The latter is a tldr:fuck you to everyone who dares criticize her film from what she deems an uncritical lens. People with intimate knowledge of torture and its actual affect on intelligence? Fuck you. People who have been tortured for intelligence? Fuck you. Senators? Fuck you. Representatives? Fuck you. The CIA? Fuck you. The White House? Fuck you. The average movie-goer who has even the slightest bit of a moral compass who finds the way parts of the film is presented objectionable but might find the film overall enjoyable? Fuck you, you're not enjoying my film properly.

What a pretentious fool.

Maybe, I'm missing some context, but I don't see how the two quotes are different. They both seem to be saying "neither I nor the movie necessarily endorse torture." She's truly the Ice-T of a new generation (actually, probably the same generation, but one that didn't care for Ice-T when they were younger).

The edited one is a generic statement that, while wrong by my reckoning, is not particularly smug or annoying. The unedited one includes the high five to the visionaries that understand just how deep her truths really are, and loops back around to a judgment on how rejecting the quality or content of her work is in fact the act of a philistine, regardless of how it's expressed or where it's coming from. Which is, in the end, what she has mastered far beyond any improvement in her filmmaking.

Yeah, the second one is smugger, but they don't seem to be saying incredibly different things to me.

I don't know what else to tell you except one is the sort of fortune cookie wisdom that fills these conversations without much of a ripple beyond affirming slightly whatever position it's used on, and the other is Bigelow condescending to her critics in service of sucking up to her audience. They seem like pretty different forms of expression to me. But I feel like I'm repeating myself here, and it's not a question of not understanding so much as a difference of opinion.

Yeah, this clearly isn't going anywhere useful, but to me if you see the first one and know that Bigelow said it, it seems pretty easy to guess that the context was some kind of defense or self-praise about her movie.

The edited one is a statement on artistic vision, and a poor one at that. The unedited one, her actual quote, is of dual-purpose: it is a self-serving, self-congratulatory celebration of what she has achieved as a commercial film-maker (in stark contrast to what she didn't achieve as an independent film-maker: widespread critical acclaim and commercial success) while refuting anyone who criticizes her film and she does it by claiming that a bunch of intellectuals who know what artistic vision is "get it" and "get the difference" between "reality" and "artistry" more than a "bunch of boors" like, I don't know, the type of people who are about to launch large-scale efforts aimed at important stuff like gun control and drone wars. You know, the type of people who should be concerned with what a fictional depiction of torture's influence on "based on a true story" events comes off as. Taking it a step further, she's touching on the fact that normal people are too stupid to have an opinion on the subject, and should just appreciate the film for being big dumb popcorn entertainment. Don't look too hard, it's just a movie. But, then, if it's just a movie, are the torture scenes there to serve as a talking point? Oh.

I gave you all the context you need to form an informed opinion off of. If you can't form one then I can't help you. Suffice to say, there is a difference. Language is important. So is artistic vision, but that's not what she was speaking about, at all.

Ooh, condescension. I'm sure I somehow deserved that.

You didn't give any context for how the modified quote was being used.

I don't think Hanacker was having a problem forming an informed opinion. It just seems like he had it formed off the initial quote as a result of his prior knowledge, so the complete quote added little for him. I was just really confused by the Ice T reference which is why I focused on explaining it while I figured out what the hell he was talking about. Then I gave up because I realized we weren't disagreeing so much as parking at different spots.

Knowing literally nothing about this movie but the name until very recently, I assumed it was somehow related to Perfect Dark Zero. I guess that would probably also constitute torture.

Oh, for fuck's sake. She received a reward and made some vaguely complimentary remarks about the people who gave it to her - isn't that generally how these things work? Graciousness and all of that? And are we really vilifying a film maker for liking, defending and trying to publicise the film that she made?