Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

One of the boldest moments in Zero Dark Thirty comes before the audience even sees the first shot, and it has the potential to completely wreck the movie for a large portion of the audience. For what seems like 20 minutes (it’s probably more like one) we are shown nothing but a black screen, and—for a brief second—a subtitle reading “September 11, 2001.” There is no footage; just the sounds of horrific real-life recordings that are meant to take the audience right back to that day without actually showing them what happened. The final clip is a 911 call from a woman trapped in one of the towers of the World Trade Center, and it is truly sickening to listen to. For some it will seem exploitative, and it probably is, but within moments of the film actually starting it becomes very clear why director Kathryn Bigelow decided to start the movie off in such a dark place. It has no intention of getting any lighter.

In fact, the very first setting of the film is a CIA "torture chamber," for lack of a better term. The better part of the first 30 minutes of Zero Dark Thirty is spent here, as a skinny, unassuming Muslim man named Ammar (Reda Kateb) is put through a variety of horrors such as waterboarding, beatings, and general humiliation. (At one point a dog collar is involved.) The audience doesn’t know what he did at first—it turns out he has strong connections with al-Qaeda—but we do know that American intelligence has deemed it necessary to harm this man for the protection of the homeland. Like everything else in the movie to come, it is presented so matter-of-factly that 100 viewers could watch this scene and come up with 100 different interpretations. I do not mean that this film is as dense and puzzling as, say, The Master. Rather, I mean that Bigelow and her screenwriter Mark Boal (who is also a journalist) have presented their story in such a way that each viewer can come to their own conclusions as to what the film is saying. If it's saying anything at all.

This blurriness has led to a great deal of (ridiculous) controversy over the course of the last month, as various political and movie bloggers have taken to the Internet either condemning or praising Zero Dark Thirty’s portrayal of torture. For some, it is an attempt at justifying the “enhanced interrogation” that was seen in the aftermath of 9/11. After all, this film is all about the capture of Osama bin Laden; the ghost that has haunted America’s sense of security ever since that fateful day just over a decade ago. Surely it must be arguing that bin Laden could never have been captured without these methods! However, others argue that the film condemns torture, and implies that it did much more harm than good. The fact that both of these arguments can feasibly be made only proves that Zero Dark Thirty accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do. If the film was about the virtues of torture, Bigelow and Boal would have gone out of their way to vilify Ammar. If the film was actively going the other direction, they probably would have leaned on the tragedy of the whole ordeal a bit longer.

The most harmful thing this absurd debate has done is that it has taken the attention away from just how brilliant a film Zero Dark Thirty usually is. It takes the CIA’s protracted investigation into Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts and turns it into a gripping drama about America (and the world) in the years following 9/11. At the forefront of the entire ordeal is Maya (Jessica Chastain), a determined, lone wolf of a woman who has made it her mission in life to find and kill Osama bin Laden. She is a useful creation in that she helps take a series of events that unfolded over 10 years and turns it into a very neat, relatively straightforward narrative package. She provides a through line when in reality there very well may not have been one. She also works as a representation of a particularly vengeful portion of the American psyche. Yes, there may be more pressing matters than bin Laden’s location when it comes to national security, but as long as he lives there can be not true catharsis. Not for Maya, nor for her country.

That catharsis she seeks may in fact be unattainable, but like the torture sequences it is up to the viewer to decide just how positively the film views the entire ordeal that is this manhunt. This is a 157 minute movie, and very few of them are optimistic about the world being portrayed. If it was only interested in the righteous hunt for an infamous terrorist, it could have gotten to that point much quicker than it does. In the first two thirds of the film, genuine successes are few and far between. Really, it seems like the only events being shown are setbacks—an unexpected bombing here, a failure of communication there. It’s quite clear that bin Laden spent the decade after 9/11 doing everything he could do avoid capture, and based on most of Zero Dark Thirty he was doing one heck of a job. This was a losing battle for the Americans, pure and simple.

Then, in the final hour, things change. The CIA comes across a compound they believe to be bin Laden’s. There is no proof or anything resembling hard evidence. It is simply a guess. They ultimately conduct a raid on said compound, and (SPOILER ALERT) bin Laden is killed. But Bigelow and Boal do not film this raid as a triumph. Like everything else, it is a slow, deadly undertaking that results in quite a bit of collateral damage. The ultimate goal is accomplished, and Maya’s lifelong desire to see bin Laden dead has finally come true. But what is accomplished? It is quite clear on her face that this conclusion may not have been quite as satisfying as she was hoping. The death of Osama bin Laden was a victory for America, and Zero Dark Thirty does not pretend to argue otherwise. However, it is also careful to not overstate anything. Just like the torture scenes and all the other horrors that came before, Bigelow and Boal leave it up to viewers to get exactly what they want out of the film. It is a recounting of what happened based on the information they gathered, and they present it as such. It is not a film completely without a point of view, but it also leaves the audience to come up with their own conclusions. Whenever that happens, you’re usually dealing with a pretty darn good movie.

As fascinating as the narrative side is to behold, it would never work at the level it does if Bigelow was not the genius director that she is. As was the case with The Hurt Locker—and her past work, for that matter—she is a filmmaker that is in absolute control of every moment. Even though everyone knows how the final raid is going to end, she turns it into a masterful clinic on how to sustain tension. Zero Dark Thirty is not in a rush. It is a methodical film that shows just how far Maya and her country had to go in order to pull off this one very important mission. It was a bloody road, to be sure, and the question everyone’s left with at the end is whether it was all worth it. As the last shot seems to indicate, even Maya may not be completely sure.

Grade: A

P.S. – I focused so much on the direction and meaning above that I fear I didn’t stress enough just how freaking awesome Chastain is in this movie. So, uh, yeah. She’s freaking awesome.