Zero Dark Thirty

[RegularKarate]

I didn't say that the movie says torture didn't work. I'm saying it doesn't say that torture was necessary. It happened and it worked, but it doesn't say it was necessary. It lets the viewer decide.

It DOESN'T depict that torture was essential to the process. It says that was the method they used and that it worked... it never says that that was the only option.
I'm just curious why people believe that if you see someone succeed one way that that means it's the ONLY way it can be done.

and yes, the main characters didn't stop using torture because of THEIR OWN moral objection, they did because of other people's moral objection. That's how these people saw things... I don't think that movie says they were right or wrong though.

[polkablues]

The issue I have is that the movie showed torture working, while the real life intelligence officials have made it clear that torture did not provide useful information. So the filmmakers proactively decided to show torture being more effective than it actually was.

[RegularKarate]

How do you know that the "real life intelligence officials" are reliable? This movie was based on a lot of research... I'm no journalist... I'm not good at knowing who is right or who is wrong, but the movie depicts events that the filmmakers believe happened based on their research.
Saying that the movie got facts wrong is a different story.

[©brad]

How do you know that the "real life intelligence officials" are reliable? This movie was based on a lot of research... I'm no journalist... I'm not good at knowing who is right or who is wrong, but the movie depicts events that the filmmakers believe happened based on their research.
Saying that the movie got facts wrong is a different story.

Yeah this. From what I read of the torture scenes, the movie was telling us "don't forget, this did happen" as opposed to making an official statement that it was necessary. Remember this was early on in the movie and timeline, when W was still in office. This manhunt spanned several years after this, will many false leads and dead ends. Does the movie clearly connect the dots from that single piece of intel to her figuring out the courier thing? A lot of the investigation minutia was hard to follow, but I don't think the point was without torture they would have never found him.

[socketlevel]

SPOILERS

How do you know that the "real life intelligence officials" are reliable? This movie was based on a lot of research... I'm no journalist... I'm not good at knowing who is right or who is wrong, but the movie depicts events that the filmmakers believe happened based on their research.
Saying that the movie got facts wrong is a different story.

Yeah this. From what I read of the torture scenes, the movie was telling us "don't forget, this did happen" as opposed to making an official statement that it was necessary. Remember this was early on in the movie and timeline, when W was still in office. This manhunt spanned several years after this, will many false leads and dead ends. Does the movie clearly connect the dots from that single piece of intel to her figuring out the courier thing? A lot of the investigation minutia was hard to follow, but I don't think the point was without torture they would have never found him.

Most importantly, the last shot of the film shows her in a state of what it cost. How her obsession took over her ability to have compassion. The film clearly shows her disgusted with torture at the beginning, then later, how she becomes one of them. The line "You can help yourself by telling the truth" is obviously in direct juxtaposition with her disgust in the first scene. At that moment the audience is left wondering, will she help this man? That's how 24 would have handled it, with cliffhangers and contrived plot points where maybe she does help him; or maybe not, but whether she does or doesn't is the drama. It could be argued this scene is poking fun at that, because that's just not reality. Even if hypothetically she was someone to rise against the abuse, she would do so by reporting to her authorities, not by helping that guy escape or some stupid shit. We're not suppose to be on her side in that moment, clearly it is showing the descent into hell that her character is going through.

even at the end, when the mission is complete, Bigelow depicts all the soldiers with a day-at-work kind of energy, rather than any emotional America, the proud, the strong, the free bullshit. Obviously I like her way more, because it's at least attempting to be honest. It reminds me of the david simon show Generation Kill, about the first guys going into Iraq after 9/11. In one scene, a character goes on about how they're warriors for what there doing, but then his CO cuts him down by saying, "we're not warriors. we're machine operators."

This film is about grey areas, and asks questions about the cost of things, both personally and ethically. It's a non-cathartic film with a non-cathartic ending to spark debate. It's the type of debate I'm interested in because it's not cross platform. Liberals and Conservatives, assuming they're self thinking enough, will be on either side. Was catching bin ladin worth what they did? It's easy to saw no, but then again what about the people in the world trade center. It's also easy to say yes, but what about the people tortured that were innocent? Also, we need to think about that saying that torture doesn't work. why do we think that? we think that because movies always tell us that, I've never seen any stats to back it up. have any of you? I'm personally against torture, but not because I don't think it's effective. For all I know it's very effective. A society shouldn't rally against something with a catch phrase or sound bite. It simplifies the issue. Torture is bad because it's inhumane and medieval but saying it doesn't work strives to believe it's a polar issue in regard to information gathering, which is silly.

I think it's ridiculous that so many have been up in arms against this movie, especially people that have been telling stories in this medium for almost half a century. What is being said is less important than how it's being said. Kathryn Bigelow told a stark reality (though probably not 100% accurate in the minutia) version of what happened. She didn't say it was bad, but she also didn't say it was good. Though I bet she's leaning bad if either of the two, simply because the rhetoric of most American film is geared toward heroism, which really is just sexy propaganda, and this stands far outta that norm.



And really back to my original point, it comes down to that last shot. Maya is a destroyed woman of her own undoing.

[MacGuffin]

Michael Moore Weighs In On 'Zero Dark Thirty'
BY THE DEADLINE TEAM

Michael Moore has never had a problem weighing in on controversial, hot-button political issues, and he gave his 2 cents about Zero Dark Thirty to Time magazine  — the mag one that features director Kathryn Bigelow on the cover. An abbreviated version of his take appeared on Time.com, but Moore posted the full piece on his Facebook page:

In Defense of Zero Dark Thirty

There comes a point about two-thirds of the way through 'Zero Dark Thirty' where it is clear something, or someone, on high has changed. The mood at the CIA has shifted, become subdued. It appears that the torture-approving guy who's been president for the past eight years seems to be, well, gone. And, just as a fish rots from the head down, the stench also seems to be gone. Word then comes down that – get this! – we can't torture any more! The CIA agents seem a bit disgruntled and dumbfounded. I mean, torture has worked soooo well these past eight years! Why can't we torture any more???

The answer is provided on a TV screen in the background where you see a black man (who apparently is the new president) and he's saying, in plain English, that America's torturing days are over, done, finished. There's an "aw, shit" look on their faces and then some new boss comes into the meeting room, slams his fist on the table and says, essentially, you've had eight years to find bin Laden – and all you've got to show for it are a bunch of photos of naked Arab men peeing on themselves and wearing dog collars and black hoods. Well, he shouts, those days are over! There's no secret group up on the top floor looking for bin Laden, you're it, and goddammit do your job and find him.

He is there to put the fear of God in them, probably because his boss, the new President, has (as we can presume) on his first day in office, ordered that bin Laden be found and killed. Unlike his frat boy predecessor who had little interest in finding bin Laden (even to the point of joking that "I really just don't spend that much time on him"), this new president was not an imbecile and all about business. Go find bin Laden – and don't use torture. Torture is morally wrong. Torture is the coward's way. C'mon – we're smart, we're the USA, and you're telling me we can't find a six-and-a-half-foot tall Saudi who's got a $25 million bounty on his head? Use your brains (like I do) and, goddammit, get to work!

And then, as the movie shows, the CIA abruptly shifts from torture porn to – are you sitting down? – *detective work.* Like cops do to find killers. Bin Laden was a killer – a mass killer – not a general of an army of soldiers, or the head of a country call Terrorstan. He was a crazed religious fanatic, a multi-millionaire, and a punk who was part of the anti-Soviet mujahideen whom we trained, armed and funded in Afghanistan back in the '80s. But he was a godsend and a very useful tool to the Dick Cheneys and Don Rumsfields of the world. They could hold him up to a frightened American public and scare the bejesus out of everyone – and everyone (well, most everyone) would then get behind the effort to declare war on, um ... well ... Who exactly do we declare war against? Oh, right – Terrorism!

· The War on Terrorism! So skilled were the men from Halliburton, et al. that they convinced the Congress and the public to go to war against a noun. Terrorism. People fell for it, and these rich men and their friends made billions of dollars from "contracting" and armaments and a Burger King on every Iraqi base. Billions more were made creating a massive internal spying apparatus called "Homeland Security." Business was very, very good, and as long as the boogieman (Osama) was alive, the citizenry would not complain one bit.

I think you know what happens next. In the final third of 'Zero Dark Thirty,' the agents switch from torture to detective work – and guess what happens? We find bin Laden! Eight years of torture – no bin Laden. Two years of detective work – boom! Bin Laden!

And that really should be the main takeaway from 'Zero Dark Thirty': That good detective work can bring fruitful results – and that torture is wrong.

Much of the discussion and controversy around the film has centered on the belief that the movie shows, or is trying to say, that torture works. They torture a guy for years and finally, while having a friendly lunch with him one day, they ask him if he would tell them the name of bin Laden's courier. Either that, or go back and be tortured some more. He says he doesn't know the guy but he knows his fake name and he gives them that name. The name turns out to be correct. Torture works!

But then we learn a piece of news: The CIA has had the name of this guy all along! For ten years! And how did they get this name ten years ago? From "a tip." A random tip! No torture involved. But, as was the rule during those years of incompetency and no desire to find bin Laden, the tip was filed away somewhere in some room – and not discovered until 2010. So, instead of torturing hundreds for eight years to find this important morsel of intelligence, they could have found it in their own CIA file cabinet in about eight minutes. Yeah, torture works.

In the movie, after they have the name of the courier, they then believe if they find him, they find bin Laden. So how do they find him? They bribe a Kuwaiti informant with a new car. That's right, they find the number of the courier's family by giving the guy a Lamborghini. And what do they do when they find the courier's mother? Do they kidnap and torture her to find out where her son is? Nope, they just listen in on his weekly call home to Mom, and through that, they trace him to Pakistan and then hire a bunch of undercover Pakistani Joe Fridays to follow this guy's every move – which, then, leads them to the infamous compound in Abbottabad where the Saudi punk has holed up.

Nice police work, boys!

Oh – and girl. 'Zero Dark Thirty' – a movie made by a woman (Kathryn Bigelow), produced by a woman (Megan Ellison), distributed by a woman (Amy Pascal, the co-chairman of Sony Pictures), and starring a woman (Jessica Chastain) is really about how an agency of mostly men are dismissive of a woman who is on the right path to finding bin Laden. Yes, guys, this is a movie about how we don't listen to women, how hard it is for them to have their voice heard even in these enlightened times. You could say this is a 21st century chick flick – and it would do you well to see it.

But back to the controversy and the torture. I guess where I part with most of my friends who are upset at this film is that they are allowing the wrong debate to take place. You should NEVER engage in a debate where the other side defines the terms of the debate – namely, in this case, to debate "whether torture works." You should refuse to participate in that discussion because the real question should be, simply, "is torture wrong?" And, after watching the brutal behavior of CIA agents for the first 45 minutes of the film, I can't believe anyone of conscience would conclude anything other than that this is morally NOT right. You will be repulsed by these torture scenes because, make no mistake about it, this has been done in your name and mine and with our tax dollars. We funded this.

If you allow the question to be "did torture work?" then you'll lose because yes, if you torture someone who actually has the information, they will eventually give it to you. The problem is, the other 99 who don't know anything will also tell you anything to get you to stop torturing – but their information is wrong. How do you know which one of the 100 is the man with the goods? You don't.

But let's grant the other side that maybe, occasionally, torture "works". Here's what else will work: castrating pedophiles. Why don't we do that? Probably because we think it's morally wrong. The death penalty sure works. Put a murderer in a gas chamber and I can guarantee you he'll never murder again. But is it right? Do we accomplish the ends we seek by becoming the murderers ourselves? That should be our only question.

After I saw 'Zero Dark Thirty,' a friend asked me, "During the torture scenes, who did you feel empathy for the most – the American torturer or the Arab suspect?" That was easy to answer. "Oh, God, the poor guy being waterboarded. The torturer was a sadist."

"Yes, that's the answer everyone gives me afterward. The movie actually makes you care for the tortured guys who may have, in fact, been part of 9/11. Like rooting for the Germans on the submarine to make it back to port in 'Das Boot,' that's the sign of some great filmmaking when the writer and director are able to get you to empathize with the person you've been told everywhere else to hate."

'Zero Dark Thirty' is a disturbing, fantastically-made movie. It will make you hate torture. And it will make you happy you voted for a man who stopped all that barbarity – and who asked that the people over at Langley, like him, use their brains.

And that's what worked.

P.S. One final thought. I've heard fellow lefties say that even if the filmmakers didn't intend to endorse torture (Bigelow called torture "reprehensible" on Colbert the other night), the average person watching the movie is going to take it the wrong way. I believe it is the responsibility of the filmmaker attempting to communicate something that they do so clearly and skillfully (and you can decide for yourself if Bigelow and Boal did so. For me, they did.). But I never blame the artist for failing to dumb down their work so that the lesser minds among us "get it." Should Springsteen not have named his album 'Born in the USA' because some took it to be as a salute to patriotism (Reagan wanted to use it in his 1984 reelection campaign but Bruce said no)?

[Gold Trumpet]

Spoiler

Late appearances mean skipping most early reviews, so here goes nothing...

For me and the torture issue, the reprehensible thing is that the film paints torture to be a considerable share of what it took to make the gain in developing intelligence over the course of the years. An excellent conservative magazine, Commentary, made the point the film is ambiguous with torture because what really got the crucial evidence in the end was the chief interrogator being nice and humane to a prisoner. Ehh, misses most of the point. If you took the film as some totality to what the investigation was for years, you would see torture taking up a much greater piece of the pie than probably true. The first ten minutes of the film is a tone establishment to what torture meant for "breaking a person." After years of torturing a prisoner, the final straw was broken when they showed compassion to someone. He didn't talk because of compassion. He talked since the effects of sleep deprivation got him to think he already talked. The investigators made him believe a terrorist plot was foiled when it wasn't but their knowing the details meant he revealed confided information.

If a film was pro torture and false historically, I could still support it if the quality was good. The film isn't horrible, but it's the kid brother to the Hurt Locker in a lot of unfortunate ways. Both films are about characters driven to a soulless existence because they encompass their lives with one passion and lock out meaningful human contact. Bigelow is good enough to know if you dialogue out this theme, it's meaningless, but the method of approaching the theme is to stretch out an investigation story. If the main character's identity gets lost in the process of a bigger story, a single shot can propel a hundred emotions. It can dig at those feelings of  Bigelow wants that moment when Chastain is alone on the aircraft carrier and is exhausted she has seen the single purpose of her entire CIA career come to an end.

The approach is nothing new. Problem for me is the investigation story has to skip over a lot of details and branches of the investigation. It wants to encompass a bigger story it's not going to do justice for and also be about the personal story of someone as well. Better films about an individual losing themselves in a case begin to realize the who did what or didn't or how it all comes about doesn't really matter too much. Circumstances are different here. I doubt I would have minded the last 20 minute sequence which was a detailed look at how the Bin Laden kill went down if I felt the previous scenes were more detailed and a better umbrella. In the Hurt Locker, Bigelow isn't pitting a big story against her personal characterization interest. It's just about the life of a soldier and his dangerous business. The film can make smaller moments feel bigger and explore the environment of the story more. Of course, I thought the character depiction was better.

I know Zero Dark Thirty is based on an actual person and I don't know the circumstances of her story. She may really have been the only cog in the engine searching for Bin Laden. It feels like if that was true, she was doing this more toward the end of the investigation when it needed political push to take a huge risk and it was hard to come by. Her story definitely does not speak for all the earlier years when many organizations were looking into Bin Laden. Still, she is connected to that early history of the investigation. I just can't believe she was instrumental in almost every major development the way the film says. But because the film is obviously detailing someone in the agency who is for torture (I hear it's evenly split), it's taking one story and making it feel like it encompasses much more. Maybe too much.

[pumba]

This was the longest movie ever. It's a triumph that Chastain was so entertaining working with no character. If they changed the bad guy to a fictional character, the novelty would ware off and nobody would give a shit about this. It's so easy to root against Osama, doesn't mean they can get away with a boring protagonist. Better off watching a doc. Savings grace: James Gandolfini has a funny voice. I miss abu nazir.

[©brad]

If they changed the bad guy to a fictional character, the novelty would ware off and nobody would give a shit about this.

Yeah, but they didn't do that because the movie doesn't exist without OBL. I mean I guess if PTA would have cast Kevin James as Daniel Plainview, CWBB would have sucked and nobody would give a shit either. Criticizing filmmakers for not doing something stupid makes no sense to me. I'm not trying to start a bitchfest here as your review is perfectly valid but statements like this always puzzle me.

[pumba]

Hahaha I would die to see the Kevin James version of cwbb... And the Aziz Ansari version. But miscasting and bad acting aside, Plainview would still be an interesting character.

It just felt like they were giving us the facts with a subtle approach to story and character... and I felt it was too subtle to connect with. At that point, why not just make a doc?

But I ono, anyone else find Maya interesting?

[OstrichRidingCowboy]

But I ono, anyone else find Maya interesting?

Maya is interesting if you add a romantic* subtext to her (one-sided) relationship with bin Laden.
(That's how I interpreted that last shot, the one with the crying.)

*I'm not being completely serious with this, but in a way, I am.

[Alexandro]

SPOILERS

How do you know that the "real life intelligence officials" are reliable? This movie was based on a lot of research... I'm no journalist... I'm not good at knowing who is right or who is wrong, but the movie depicts events that the filmmakers believe happened based on their research.
Saying that the movie got facts wrong is a different story.

Yeah this. From what I read of the torture scenes, the movie was telling us "don't forget, this did happen" as opposed to making an official statement that it was necessary. Remember this was early on in the movie and timeline, when W was still in office. This manhunt spanned several years after this, will many false leads and dead ends. Does the movie clearly connect the dots from that single piece of intel to her figuring out the courier thing? A lot of the investigation minutia was hard to follow, but I don't think the point was without torture they would have never found him.

Most importantly, the last shot of the film shows her in a state of what it cost. How her obsession took over her ability to have compassion. The film clearly shows her disgusted with torture at the beginning, then later, how she becomes one of them. The line "You can help yourself by telling the truth" is obviously in direct juxtaposition with her disgust in the first scene. At that moment the audience is left wondering, will she help this man? That's how 24 would have handled it, with cliffhangers and contrived plot points where maybe she does help him; or maybe not, but whether she does or doesn't is the drama. It could be argued this scene is poking fun at that, because that's just not reality. Even if hypothetically she was someone to rise against the abuse, she would do so by reporting to her authorities, not by helping that guy escape or some stupid shit. We're not suppose to be on her side in that moment, clearly it is showing the descent into hell that her character is going through.

even at the end, when the mission is complete, Bigelow depicts all the soldiers with a day-at-work kind of energy, rather than any emotional America, the proud, the strong, the free bullshit. Obviously I like her way more, because it's at least attempting to be honest. It reminds me of the david simon show Generation Kill, about the first guys going into Iraq after 9/11. In one scene, a character goes on about how they're warriors for what there doing, but then his CO cuts him down by saying, "we're not warriors. we're machine operators."

This film is about grey areas, and asks questions about the cost of things, both personally and ethically. It's a non-cathartic film with a non-cathartic ending to spark debate. It's the type of debate I'm interested in because it's not cross platform. Liberals and Conservatives, assuming they're self thinking enough, will be on either side. Was catching bin ladin worth what they did? It's easy to saw no, but then again what about the people in the world trade center. It's also easy to say yes, but what about the people tortured that were innocent? Also, we need to think about that saying that torture doesn't work. why do we think that? we think that because movies always tell us that, I've never seen any stats to back it up. have any of you? I'm personally against torture, but not because I don't think it's effective. For all I know it's very effective. A society shouldn't rally against something with a catch phrase or sound bite. It simplifies the issue. Torture is bad because it's inhumane and medieval but saying it doesn't work strives to believe it's a polar issue in regard to information gathering, which is silly.

I think it's ridiculous that so many have been up in arms against this movie, especially people that have been telling stories in this medium for almost half a century. What is being said is less important than how it's being said. Kathryn Bigelow told a stark reality (though probably not 100% accurate in the minutia) version of what happened. She didn't say it was bad, but she also didn't say it was good. Though I bet she's leaning bad if either of the two, simply because the rhetoric of most American film is geared toward heroism, which really is just sexy propaganda, and this stands far outta that norm.



And really back to my original point, it comes down to that last shot. Maya is a destroyed woman of her own undoing.

I agree with everything you just said.

I found the film to be more interesting because it avoids any easy answers regarding the moral dilemmas the characters and us face during it's running time. By showing how Maya "becomes one of the guys" without ever digging into how she was feeling morally about those issues, we as audiences are the ones forced to fill that gap. Her single mindedness works because the film is subjective to her point of view, and as you watch her get more and more obsessed with it and never being shown anything of her life outside of that, you start to wonder how big the emptiness inside her has become.

I disagree with GT regarding The Hurt Locker. I think this was much more involving. Chastain is the key I guess, because she is such in incredible actress and you believe everything she does from the first frame to the last.

Anyway, much much better than I expected.