Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty

I don't know about the marketing, but the movie itself opens with title card asserting it is based on first hand accounts of actual events and then plays real 911 calls from 9/11. That's something the film doesn't reveal, but has been revealed in the discussion about the film.

I can't imagine marketing making stronger claims to realism than what's explicitly and implicitly communicated with those two choices.

Perhaps a controversial-and-maybe-overrated-military-actiony-movie doublefeature is in order this weekend. Probably still shorter than The Hobbit!

I recall Argo starting with a very similar title card. Beyond that, I'll have to reserve judgment until I see the bloody thing.

You might have a good point. I just dismissed Argo as lighter fare based on the criticism it received being focused almost entirely on the alleged artfulness of the moviemaking, characterization, and dialog (and had little interest in seeing it for a variety of other reasons), but it's possible it's just skating on being further back in time.

It probably also skates by on the fact that, while an interesting story, it's obviously in need of some jazzing up in order to make an entertaining (or at least exciting) movie. Seems like Zero Dark Thirty probably wouldn't need to take a lot of liberties to end up being exciting, so it makes sense to look a bit more skeptically at its choices. But that's largely a separate issue from whether and to what extent the accuracy was oversold.

I enjoyed the movie well enough as an action thriller. Wait... what?

He wasn't waterboarded and beaten?!?!?!?! Well that fucking changes everything. Fuck that lying Bigelow asshole.

Bah, I didn't even notice that one was funnyjunk.

Argo's placard reads "Based on a true story" versus Zero Dark Thirty's "first hand accounts of actual events."

I wouldn't call Argo much lighter than ZDT. There's comedy, but it's sparse. However, Argo is a much more conventional film and it does leave out the failed military rescue of the embassy personnel that didn't escape. My personal problem with ZDT is the way it tricks people with its cinematic techniques into thinking the film is more real or representative of reality than it really is. See the QT3 thread for people being hoodwinked by that and not taking into account that what it doesn't show you is as important as what (and how) it does.

I think some of it has to do with how far back in history things happened. Nobody is taking Lincoln to task either, and it's often assumed that movies based on historical events take some liberties. But the Bin Laden thing happened within the past few years, so it's really fresh in people's minds.

What are these cinematic techniques that trick people into thinking it's more representative of reality than it really is?

Some quick examples are the hand held cam (shaky cam) and the diegetic only audio. Maybe trick is too strong of a word, but it deliberately minimizes cinematic embellishments--which intended or not--lends it a false authenticity.

And maybe it's just the way I hear or read about the film, a common comment I've come across is that it just presents what happens without judging it. Tom used the word dispassionate on the podcast, iirc, and someone in the thread actually referred to "facts it depicts."

Personally, I think the film is anything but neutral about the topics involved.

Unless people are believing it to be actual footage (and I really doubt anyone thinks that) then whatever they do to try and make it appear more authentic is entirely intended to enhance the experience of the film. Also Bigelow used many of the same techniques in The Hurt Locker which is entirely fiction. Attempting to make a film feel authentic isn't an attempt at deception. It's a film based on real events and yes liberties were taken, I wouldn't expect anything else from a work intended for entertainment.

Because the movie is pretty much just like watching the actual raid, right? It's just entertainment and totally isn't cashing in on people's emotions and sense of guilt, right?

I saw this opening night in Charlotte. I never go see anything at night, but without the 3-year-old it was a chance for the wife, my teenage son and me to take in a flick together. I'm not going to get into the "realism debate" because usually in a film like this some characters are aggregates of a number of other people. I figure that's the case here. But overall the film is fantastic. It moves along at its own pace - quite slowly at times - but it does a great job of telling a gripping story. The acting in it is top-notch and there are a few moments that make you jump.

When it came time for the climatic scene, I looked around the theater. It was pretty full, but you could have heard a pin drop. I've rarely seen an audience that riveted.

Awesome flick. I winced a lot watching Hurt Locker and Renner's in the field behavior, as well as the ridiculous sniper battle. However, I still dug it as an exploration of Renner's character arc.

ZDT is a much more even, well realized film. I definitely don't see anything pro-torture. It's there. What if any useful results were obtained from it (and the benefits are murky even in the film) don't offer insight as to whether we should accept it. I certainly don't/didn't, but I expect your feelings about it will be dictated by what you bring in to the film.

I'm not going to get into much of a debate either, but I will say I'm sick of people worrying about what other (implicitly less sophisticated) people are going to think. It seems there's a lot of hand-wringing over marketing and ' mass' perception. Make up your own mind. People are as smart, or dumb, as they're gonna be.

It would help if you cite specific examples so it doesn't read like a "fire and forget'' fuck you to people who've posted above. I'm just interested in what makes dumb action movies like Hurt Locker into critical successes, and I don't think it has much to do with the sort of concern trolling exhibited by McCain et al as they try to cover their own real-world failures to address torture by blaming Hollywood.

No offense or FU's intended to anyone. LK, your own reaction to Hurt Locker certainly contributed to my thoughts on the film. much to its diminishment. I still certainly wouldn't call HL a dumb action film. A film with some dumb action is more reasonable. I don't think it takes much to figure out why it was successful. It was overall a smart, well written piece that was able to draw folks into caring about the characters. Whether a lot of folks stumbled out thinking it was a picture perfect snapshot of the Iraq conflict is kind of on their own head. I've always had conflict over my disdain for its depiction of Iraq and its development of its characters, but that's pretty much OK. No doubt if I'd been there, I'd react more strongly negative.

As for ZDT, I have no personal concept of its accuracy. It was a remarkable, unsentimental, procedural-driven march over the last 10+ years. It left me restless in my seat during the finale, despite knowing exactly what would happen.

The Hurt Locker had a low key score (included outside music). Argo starts with storyboards morphing into footage, while a narrator tells you a story. Both are clear signals they are movies. ZDT starts with real 9/11 calls while asserting a much stronger (imo) position with regard to the facts. No one's going in thinking it's actual footage, but it does position itself in its stylistic choice and assertions as being more than just a movie.

The film isn't pro-torture in the sense that there's a roaring heroic chorus when it's happening, but the film is definitely built on a pre-9/11 world and post 9/11 world ideological framework and in doing so makes the pragmatist argument for torture through the character of Maya (including all the distortions necessary to make it work).

The film isn't ambiguous about the effect of torture. All human intelligence** Nearly all human intelligence gotten in the film is either under the threat of torture or the through the lens of the CIA detainee program as she reviews video of previous sessions. It is either mentioned by the detainee themselves,"Ask me anything because I do not want to be tortured again," by the interrogator, or the films leave it ambiguous if this particular detainee had been tortured are not. Often (possibly always), the live discussions happen at places labeled as "Black Sites" which implies torture takes place. And the CIA is always able to ascertain when people are answering truthfully (according to them) or holding back.

Then the film leaves out key pieces of information, like how it literally sent them on wild goose chases. Or how about the CIA brought in (and back) FBI interrogators because CIA methods were failing to produce results. And that's not even getting into the innocent people getting scooped up into these programs. The film actually had an opportunity to show that non-coercive interrogations are actually based in a methodology and not just asking someone, "Please, tell me what I want to know?" over and over again. It chose not to.

The only debate about human intelligence methodology by the principles in the film--actually the only clear difference in that methodology shown in the film too**--is between Maya and another employee, Jessica. Maya is the post 9/11 thinker and the pre-9/11 thinker, Jessica, gets herself and others blown up.

The fact that Maya is disturbed by what she's doing doesn't undermine torture, since she continues to use it, but rather it makes her and thereby the techniques sympathetic. She doesn't want to do it, it repulses her, but she has to, for the cause. It's the same lazy argument people make about the collateral damage of our wars or our drone program. Well, we feel bad about our innocent casualties and somehow that combined with the righteousness of the cause, that makes it ok.

And near the end, the film tells us Maya--the film's ostensible hero--has only done one thing, hunt Osama Bin Laden. That's analogous to the final piece of the pragmatist argument. These are tools, like Maya, only to be used for limited purposes.

So we get in the film,

1. There's a pre 9/11 world and a post 9/11 world.
2. Torture provides necessary and key information unable to be gotten otherwise.
3. We feel bad about it, so we're still good guys.
4. We only use it on the bad guys.
5. We only use it for narrow purposes.

Each piece of the argument is embodied in the film's hero, who ultimately is proven right. That's a pro-torture argument.

**Correction: There is one scene where they give a guy a car for information later in the film.

A movie with some promising aspects of character development and the experience of psychological trauma that was seriously undercut by its overwhelming reliance on stupid, gimmicky action cliches that were tonally indistinguishable from its deeper efforts. Why that matters is mostly because the prominence of dumb action, especially when so many comparatively plausible or interesting scenarios were easily available, damages the overall quality of the film.Me having been to Iraq certainly feeds into the strength of my reaction, but primarily because people connected my experience to the film for me; the main place my experience is relevant there is that it might suggest that have as much credibility as far as its truth value as all of the misleading things Bigelow/Boal said about the film or, god forbid, the moron they hired as their military consultant, which of course was a feature of the film that many people accepted implicitly even if they didn't consider it exactly true.

Rather than "picture perfect snapshots", I'd say the marketing aspect of the movie became important because it was presented by critics, the director, writer, and the media echo chamber (as well as by film fans in casual conversation) as an authentic impression of the truth. That's why it's not just something like the 3:10 to Yuma remake where people can disagree but it has no strong hold on memory, and that works both ways for the film. On the upside, Bigelow is, as of Hurt Locker, someone who makes "smart, well-written" movies about important things as opposed to an occasionally talented purveyor of middlebrow action with some cult appeal. So I'd say even factoring in the downside of having me crop up periodically as the Ghost of Shitty Movies past she's doing ok.

I'm hoping, if nothing else, that it's a better film. It may be that the gap will be no less wide in terms of the taste-based points of assessment than it was with HL. I wish the local theater that sells booze had it so I'd be more eager to make an evening of it. Unfortunately, it is currently afflicted with Anna Karenina, which come to think of it could also probably use a couple drinks to ease it down.

It's a movie, you know this because you're sitting in a movie theater watching it. It's not a report about the CIA operation, if it were it'd likely be days long and boring as shit. It's entertainment and it's not required to present any or all of the facts associated with the events it's depicting. Get over it.

Should a filmmaker have zero liability for getting facts right when they're making a movie based on actual people and events? Do you expect audiences to completely ignore the fact that the film was based on an actual event?

And The Passion of the Christ grossed $600 million dollars because it was stellar entertainment and people just really like watching a dude get tortured and beaten for a couple hours straight. It's pretty much the same as Hostel, right?

To put it another way, don't the reasons behind artistic choices matter? If the artistic choice is "I need torture to work like this for my film" then at the very least there should be clear discussion outside of the film about how it's different from the facts or why those choices were made. All of the angst about her not being able to just do her own thing as an artist seems pretty disingenuous when held against her deliberate insertion of reality into other parts of her film in order to anchor it in real life. Why re-write it to have Bin Laden caught at the end as opposed to the original script she was going with? Doesn't the situation change when you have different outcomes?

Again, McCain is wrong, but because McCain is always the wrong man for any job. If his point is accidentally true, he'll surely be an outright hypocrite in how he supports it or fuck up some crucial aspect of the argument around it. But that doesn't mean all criticism of the film's presentation falls under his flag.

In discussions elsewhere someone pointed out, it was scored. Several key transition sequences use music, and low volume music underscores important scenes. It's pretty lightly used like the Hurt Locker, so it's a fair comparison stylistically. I apologize for the error, so you can knock that off the list.

I'm open to being corrected in what the film portrays like above, so those that have seen it, please feel free. I'm still pretty confident in my characterization of the narrative structure and its use, but who knows. Maybe I got it wildly wrong.

I don't know if that was linked earlier, but here is a characterization of the Washington Post of the director and writer talking about the film.

I hope no one minds me offering some very scattered thoughts on the subject. I'm not a US citizen and don't live in the US. My military experience is limited to a year of national military service back in the late eighties. However, I have friends, one or two very close ones, who was with the USMC (and later other organizations) in Iraq (and later in other armpits of the world). What always strikes me when I engage in conversation with them these days is how completely different they view the world and their place in it now, compared to 15-20 years ago when they still lived in Sweden. As a general rule we've decided to "not mention the war" and talk about other things instead. Because to me, I feel better NOT knowing where they've been and what they've done. Probably not for the reasons you or they think, I am not a very squeamish man, but that hardly matters.

I really can appreciate people becoming upset with Hollywood trying to shove a Truth down their throat, especially those with real knowledge on the subject. The thing is, I still get uncomfortable when I'm watching an NFL game and the announcer goes "America - the greatest nation in the history of the world" while bombers fly over the stadium and then that's followed by a commercial where the voice of Captain Anderson from Mass Effect tells me that the US Navy is "a global force for Good." "A Force For Good?" Really? Is this an Avengers comic book? To me, and I suppose a lot of other people, that's crazy talk. That's like watching that commercial from Robocop. So I guess that in THAT world, that's where you believe that a Hollywood movie can say something about the state of the world. That a movie by the director of Near Dark is brilliant because it does not promote nor does it condemn the use of torture by government officials. Oh hell, I probably shouldn't post this mess since I'm way too tired to make sense but what the hell.

Taibbi on Zero Dark Thirty. It's long, but a good overview of many legitimate objections to the movie.

In response to Bigelow's "depiction is not endorsement" argument...

And of course he gets the routine the movie is"objective" counter arguments.

This isn't the objective of the movie and shows the author of this is focusing his distaste of the actions of the US on the film itself. Misguided at best...and certainly not a "legitimate" objection to the movie.

What is the objective of the movie?

To entertain audiences and make the producers money.

He's right about everything except the most important thing, which is the thing TheTrunkDr is right about: Zero Dark Thirty isn't a think piece or an important political document or anything else with any real weight. It's just an action thriller. And that's what I think all this confusion over "depiction is not endorsement" is secretly about. That's an important point that is missed when people are offended by a lot of important art, but in the case of Zero Dark Thirty, I think it's a lot simpler: Bigelow isn't endorsing torture even though torture is pretty awesome according to this movie because she's not endorsing anything, because she's making a popcorn movie and really you shouldn't be worrying to much about what happens in it. That's probably not what she meant by it, mind you, but I think it applies.

So ultimately Taibbi is contributing to the real problem here, which is not anything that's actually in the movie but rather that some people feel compelled to take the movie as a serious thing with something serious and real to say about the war on terror. He opens with this:

Sounds like he loved it, because that's what level the film is on.

Also: compare this to some all-time classics, why don't you? The Long Goodbye is a masterpiece that does have a lot to say about a number of real-world issues, but that doesn't mean everything has to to just be passable. If I compared every entertainment experience to reading The Long Goodbye, I wouldn't like very many things. I guess what I'm really trying to say is: Matt Taibbi recognizes that Raymond Chandler is awesome, and that's what really matters. What were we talking about?

Mark McGwire:Young Bart here is right. We are spying on you, pretty much around the clock.
Bart: But why, Mr. McGwire?
Mark McGwire: Do you want to know the terrifying truth, or do you want to see me sock a few dingers?
Crowd: Dingers! Dingers!

It's not up to Bigelow to justify or condemn the war on terror. She's telling a very specific story and trying to broaden it into some overarching morality tale would defeat the purpose of the film.

Wrong.

Also wrong.

You two are thinking about this without the context. For us, Lincoln's context is a done deal. Man saved the Union, freed the slaves, etc. The moral judgment is done, over with, and everything afterwards either agrees with Lincoln as the savior or is a deliberate counter-narrative. That little bit of history is a touchstone as well as a dividing line; there is no other position to take on it (and yes, I'm speaking in terms of mass-market media. I'm well aware there are lots of scholarly articles with all sorts of nuanced critiques). The point remains that we, as a society, have decided where to draw the lines with regard to Lincoln and slavery.

That line has already been drawn in terms of extraordinary rendition and torture. Any depiction of it chooses a side. There is literally no way to be objective about this; either you include the farcical backstory involving kidnapped and clueless Afghani peasants being chained by their balls to a radiator, or you don't, and either way, you end up taking a stand. Bigelow's taking shit for it because she makes lies of omission. You want to see torture in a movie without any real weight? Go watch The Men Who Stare At Goats again, and come tell me what you think the difference is between that and ZD30.

The difference between this and Lincoln is that one of them is history. The torture debate isn't done yet.

Except she didn't make a movie about the torture debate. She made a movie about the killing of OBL, in which intelligence from torture is a minor part. If you want to watch a movie about the morals of torture, this isn't it. Any depiction doesn't necessarily choose a side. Stating something from what it was/is doesn't necessarily endorse or condemn that thing. This movie certainly didn't. Torture was presented for what it was - a method of getting intelligence (the value of which was mentioned as dubious).

Sorry the movie didn't spell out "torture = bad" for you, but that wasn't the intent of the movie, nor was it necessary. Frankly, if someone needs a movie to tell them that, then they have more moralistic problems than any movie will fix.

FYI, opinions aren't wrong just because you disagree with them.

FYI, when you state things that are based on faulty assumptions, I'm going to call you out on them. You can have whatever opinion about torture you like; that's a separate discussion. But there is literally no way to "not choose a side." In your post you mention a distinct opinion about torture, that it was dubious, and then tell me that's not an opinion? Or is it, you've lost me. Let's also be frank about the facts: She's not simply "stating" what torture is. She's giving you what her conception of the process was, and on this very page are significant omissions from what was a fucking farce of tragic proportions. You don't get to say she's being evenhanded, because by the very nature of telling a story you pick a side by determining what details you reveal. She made her choice on where she stands.

Let's also be clear about something else: I don't think it would have been particularly effective for her to hammer on the TORTURE IS BAD MMMKAY stuff, either. Protesting that movies play no role in our moral outlook or development silly; we respond to it like any other form of media, and if she was so hamhanded as to make a movie about how the CIA eats babies and shits kittens she would be laughed out of the cinema, because it would be so over-the-top no one could take it seriously. And yet, as LK has pointed out, people do take her movies seriously, regardless of how much you protest they shouldn't, and she does manage to make a movie that has more nuance than the Light side and the Dark side of the force, which she means her movie is smart enough to be considered "seriously." My contention is that despite these moderating factors that force her into a moderate stand on torture, the needle still swings further into the darker side of the gray scale than I frankly feel is right for a movie that should be taken seriously.

Tl;Dr. It's a sophomoric and unhelpful take on an important issue gussied up by cinematic "seriousness."

That sure sounds like, "it's just a popcorn movie, LOL!"

I agree with a lot of the things you are saying but for probably obvious and irrelevant reasons I don't agree that Lincoln is addressing material about "a done deal", although I'm pretty sure Spielberg does or he wouldn't have touched it. I don't mean it in the absolutist sense that nothing is settled but just that the specific work it is sourced on is well-regarded but very specific in the interpretations of Lincoln it works on, of which only one of its pillars is connected to the modern sense that slavery is a settled matter in terms of morality. Which is, of course, just a sense rather than an expression of certainty; that is, slavery as an abstract concept and as a particular moment of slavery frozen in time is obviously bad, but the extent of bad and the specific responsibilities and the shifting roles in the equation are messy.

/meandering aside.