Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow, 2012)

[swo17]

Sonmi451's posts reek of propaganda condoning Sonmi451's illegal invasion of this thread.

[mfunk9786]

Man, I can't wait for Niale's eventual meltdown/ban... it's taking too long

[Mr Sausage]

Man, I can't wait for Niale's eventual meltdown/ban... it's taking too long

No worries. If past experience should've taught you anything, it's that relentlessly trolling him until he snaps should speed things up.

[Black Hat]

Will reserve judgment until I see but, considering the access Glenn Greenwald reported the administration gave Bigelow I find it hard to believe that this is nothing more than a very well done kill, kill, kill, cheer, cheer, cheer film.

[tavernier]

Happy to hear that you will reserve judgment because the movie goes out of its way to avoid "glamorizing" Obama's role in the raid....in fact, the one time he is shown in the film is in a TV interview where he is saying that the US does not torture and he as president will not condone torture. The Chastain character is watching this, knowing that torture helped--even a little bit--in getting valuable intel about Bin Laden.

Much of the movie takes place before Obama is president, in any case.

[Niale]

Man, I can't wait for Niale's eventual meltdown/ban... it's taking too long

Me too!

[Black Hat]

Happy to hear that you will reserve judgment because the movie goes out of its way to avoid "glamorizing" Obama's role in the raid....in fact, the one time he is shown in the film is in a TV interview where he is saying that the US does not torture and he as president will not condone torture. The Chastain character is watching this, knowing that torture helped--even a little bit--in getting valuable intel about Bin Laden.

Much of the movie takes place before Obama is president, in any case.

Well it's not only the glorification of Obama that would turn me off but, the glorifying of the military/intelligence/surveillance state etc. Showing a clip of the President saying neither him or the United States condones torture is troubling (possibly damning depending on the context) when it's fundamentally untrue as Gitmo and numerous secret prisons remain open, which is to say nothing of him making all the policies Democrats used to scream about when Bush the younger was in office now part of the establishment, while adding assassinating US citizens to that list.

[Yojimbo]

While I'm fairly confident it won't cross over into unwatchably horrendous Green Zone territory, I don't see Bigelow ever returning to the level that produced the (near-)masterpieces she did from The Loveless to Strange Days

I've been a Bigelow fan from the get-go, but I think 'The Hurt Locker' is her best film and a creditable addition to the pantheon of great war films
(I passed on 'The Widowmaker', though)

[warren oates]

While I'm fairly confident it won't cross over into unwatchably horrendous Green Zone territory, I don't see Bigelow ever returning to the level that produced the (near-)masterpieces she did from The Loveless to Strange Days

I've been a Bigelow fan from the get-go, but I think 'The Hurt Locker' is her best film and a creditable addition to the pantheon of great war films
(I passed on 'The Widowmaker', though)

It's worth a look if you can get past the idea that Harrison Ford is a Russian sub commander. There are some pretty harrowing scenes. One in particular that makes the whole film worth it. I have a family friend who served on American nuclear subs, including one portrayed in the Clancy book/film, and he says Bigelow's sub film is his favorite.

[Yojimbo]

While I'm fairly confident it won't cross over into unwatchably horrendous Green Zone territory, I don't see Bigelow ever returning to the level that produced the (near-)masterpieces she did from The Loveless to Strange Days

I've been a Bigelow fan from the get-go, but I think 'The Hurt Locker' is her best film and a creditable addition to the pantheon of great war films
(I passed on 'The Widowmaker', though)

It's worth a look if you can get past the idea that Harrison Ford is a Russian sub commander. There are some pretty harrowing scenes. One in particular that makes the whole film worth it. I have a family friend who served on American nuclear subs, including one portrayed in the Clancy book/film, and he says Bigelow's sub film is his favorite.

It may have been something to do with me not being a Harrison Ford fan: I might give it a shot, someday,though, if the price drops enough, although even allowing for 'Hurt Locker's' quality, I can't see 'Widowmaker' topping 'Das Boot'

As for 'Zero Dark Thirty': this is a rare 21st Century Hollywood 'blockbuster' that I'll be checking out on its original release
(after missing out on 'THL'). I don't care whether she is expressing a political view, implicitly or explicitly. She was always a quality action/'B' movie director; with 'THL' she made that leap, without undue compromise.

[Sonmi451]

The film I saw drips with testosterone and machismo.

It would be a totally inaccurate portrayal of the army if it didn't.

You're not interested in historical or political reality. You're interested in propaganda for your own side. Indeed, your criticisms here are not really about the movie. They are social signaling. You're using this opportunity to let everyone know what side you're on. That is the real meaning behind your posts, and it's too bad you feel like using this movie to do so.

Our heroes are portrayed as flawed, yes, but they are also put on an altar to be fetishized.

The longer the movie goes on the more you're meant to worry about 'our heroes' mental health. I don't see how you could've been reading the movie properly and not feel that this is so. This is a movie in which heroism and recklessness become indistinguishable, and in which the main character's actions become more and more worrisome. This is not a movie in which the lead's risk-taking behaviour is glorified. The opposite: we start to worry about him. And, indeed, his attempt at vengeance in the third act is troubling and turns out to've been delusional, and his final 'heroic act' in the narrative is a failure, leaving him with a feeling of impotence and inability. Yet despite all of this, despite his increasingly loss of control, his loss of stability, he just can't wait to get back in there and do it all over again, wife and child be damned.

Hence: war is a drug.

Please don't presume to know my motives for posting, or my understanding of historical/political reality. If you'd like to have a discussion regarding the latter, I'd be more than happy to accommodate you, though this is obviously not the place. It's quite interesting how it seems the posters who are the biggest supporters of Bigelow's recent work are also coming off as the most combative and confrontational. And if by "my side" you mean the side opposed to illegal invasions of sovereign states and massive crimes against humanity, then yes, you would be correct. Technically all writing can be considered propaganda, as is anything that carries inherent presumptions of value.

I have no ulterior motives for posting here, I simply thought it would be interesting to start a discussion of Bigelow's recent work in a political context. I will admit I hold war films to a different standard, and I judge them by a pretty basic rubric. I simply ask if the film had anything critical to say about war in general, or a certain war in particular. It's no great insight that THL - starting with the Hedges quote, and finishing with the impotence and loss of control that you mentioned - was portraying war as an addiction, with all its pitfalls. My basic problem with it was simply that it treated Iraq as a backdrop to tell its story of wounded, flawed American heroes, while ignoring the context of why they are there; and continuing the portrayal of Iraqis as the "other", and something to be either feared, at worst, or discounted, at best. I can't say that it is not a well-made Hollywood thriller; I'd even go so far as to call it a good film. But it is not an anti-war film.

[matrixschmatrix]

Please don't presume to know my motives for posting, or my understanding of historical/political reality. If you'd like to have a discussion regarding the latter, I'd be more than happy to accommodate you, though this is obviously not the place. It's quite interesting how it seems the posters who are the biggest supporters of Bigelow's recent work are also coming off as the most combative and confrontational.

Oh, come on, now- I'm broadly on your side but that's just a terrible way to have an argument. Yes, obviously the people with whom you most strongly disagree are the ones who are coming off as disagreeable.

[Sonmi451]

Please don't presume to know my motives for posting, or my understanding of historical/political reality. If you'd like to have a discussion regarding the latter, I'd be more than happy to accommodate you, though this is obviously not the place. It's quite interesting how it seems the posters who are the biggest supporters of Bigelow's recent work are also coming off as the most combative and confrontational.

Oh, come on, now- I'm broadly on your side but that's just a terrible way to have an argument. Yes, obviously the people with whom you most strongly disagree are the ones who are coming off as disagreeable.

I only meant that it is ok to have a disagreement without resorting to personal afronts, or questioning a poster's motives and/or intelligence.

[warren oates]

I'd like to see a synopsis of a Sonmi451 "honesty" pass on The Hurt Locker. Broad strokes and as much specific detail as it would take to rewrite the film as a true "anti-war" film in your eyes. Unless it's not possible, in your view, to tell an honest war story from the point of view of soldiers fighting it (unless they are outspokenly against the war, or, say, deserters)? In which case why start a "discussion" at all when, as Sausage also implies above, you seem to already have the only answers that will satisfy you? How about a list of the war films you consider worthy?

Once again, it's really coming off like your demands on The Hurt Locker and other films have way more to do with your existing political views than the content of the feature films themselves. You say it's all about accountability for specific injustices, but when it comes down to it, you still would hold each individual character in every fiction you're considering personally responsible for the big general decisions of his/her commander in chief. And you still haven't explained why that's a valid special standard for war films but not all other stories that touch on the crimes of major institutions.

[matrixschmatrix]

It seems fairly clear why there is a specific political context for any movie set during the American occupation of Iraq that isn't going to apply to every institution ever, Oates- a cop, or a WWII soldier, or a doctor at a mental institution doesn't need to confront the the issue that undermines everything they do and try to accomplish, viz. that they probably shouldn't be there in the first place. Any movie set in the British Raj, or a Chocolat set amongst white people in Colonial Africa, needs to have that question in mind, or it's going to feel like Sanders of the River- propaganda that supports the state that the protagonists are a part of.

Again, I can't say whether Bigelow's films answer that question, but it's absurd to say that thinking that question needs to be built into the film is like thinking that any movie about a heroic Catholic needs to answer for the Inquisition. The invasion and occupation of Iraq's not some abstract historical crime, it is a specific and direct act that brought the people we're watching to be where they are and to be asked to do what they do.

[Cocus]

This is my first post on this forum. I am total agreement with somni451. I live in Ireland. It would be inconceivable for someone from Europe to deny the context of ZDT and to claim that it is just a film about a non-political event. Only an American could see The Hurt Locker and ZDT as non-political. The soldiers in The Foot Locker -- a film that I liked very much, as a guilty pleasure -- are employed in the pursuit of the American dream of hegemony. Is this in doubt? The subtext of The Hurt Locker is that soldiers in Irag are risking their lives for Shell oil. It is naive to think otherwise.

Soldiers are employed in the service of powers that they don't understand. We feel the same sympathy for young German soldiers in the Second World War. They are uneducated and naive. Their suffering underscores the horror of war. But portrayal of their suffering does glorify that suffering. We are asked to sympathise with them. But while we sympathize with the soldier we have to remain fiercely critical of the government that has brainwashed him.

Are U.S. soldiers just following orders? Is this really an excuse? Can we also excuse the young Nazi soldier at the front? Excuse the Nazi guard at a concentration camp? Whether or not we approve of the message in a film, and whether or not we like the film, it is as hard to see any war film as apolitical as it is to separate out Wagner's anti-semitism from his music.

[Jeff]

The soldiers in The Foot Locker

Never Forget

[Yojimbo]

Personally I couldn't care less what political ideology Kathryn Bigelow, and/or her scriptwriters/source novelists, purportedly espouse in this film.
Eisenstein's 'October' and Riefenstahl's 'Triumph of the Will' are two of the greatest films I've ever seen and I continue to derive 'enjoyment' from watching them. It doesn't mean that I side with the director's 'point of view', or, even, that I'll convince myself that the director isn't taking sides.
Some years back Julio Medem made a documentary film about the struggle for Basque independence which tripped over itself to present a balanced view: I found it tedious.

If you don't like 'Zero Dark Thirty' there's a high probability that it will be because of what you perceive to be a one-sided point of view that it presents

[Mr Sausage]

Please don't presume to know my motives for posting, or my understanding of historical/political reality. If you'd like to have a discussion regarding the latter, I'd be more than happy to accommodate you, though this is obviously not the place. It's quite interesting how it seems the posters who are the biggest supporters of Bigelow's recent work are also coming off as the most combative and confrontational.

Oh, come on, now- I'm broadly on your side but that's just a terrible way to have an argument. Yes, obviously the people with whom you most strongly disagree are the ones who are coming off as disagreeable.

To be fair, this is me he's talking about.

Anyway, he is plainly mistaken about some key things: I never mentioned motives, but meaning; and I never mentioned his understanding, but his interest. I was careful to do so since I am aware of the limits of what I can claim to know. But his post is primarily social signalling, whether he's aware of it or not; and he is caricaturing the movie and making inaccurate readings in order to further signal what side he has given his allegiance to. No one could mistake his readings for disinterested ones.

[solaris72]

Are U.S. soldiers just following orders? Is this really an excuse? Can we also excuse the young Nazi soldier at the front? Excuse the Nazi guard at a concentration camp? Whether or not we approve of the message in a film, and whether or not we like the film, it is as hard to see any war film as apolitical as it is to separate out Wagner's anti-semitism from his music.

Aaaaaand we're done here.

[Alan Smithee]

It really is astounding how true Godwin's law is. Every time.

[Cocus]

Not quite over. As has been said, Godwin's law itself can be abused as a distraction, diversion or even as censorship, fallaciously miscasting an opponent's argument as hyperbole when the comparisons made by the argument are actually appropriate.
Americans are by and large ignorant of the USA's unsavory past foreign relations: supporting 3rd. World dictators, enabling private companies to virtually enslave indigenous peoples, toppling democratically elected governments, interfering in civil wars selling weapons to bad guys, thwarting movements of national independence. Those who are aware of all this tend to avoid looking at it or factoring it into the review of a film. And who can blame them for doing so? It is painful to become aware of how much we are at the mercy of corporate media.

[Shrew]

Americans aren't quite that ignorant of our ugly history, though I would agree most choose not to think about it too much concerning our present foreign policy. But present American political thrillers are all pretty upfront about the moral treachery of the United States espionage system; Argo, to cite one example previously mentioned, opens with a prologue which clearly explains how the CIA came to Iran, overthrew a legitimate regime, set up the Shah to take advantage of the oil reserves, and then directly inspired all the hatred, distrust, and violence that leads to the hostage situation. While the CIA agents still get to be the heroes and the tactics used by Iran are pretty terrible, the film also makes clear that the mess is a result of America's own policies.

As for the Hurt Locker, I would buy that Bigelow was trying to make an apolitical film, but also that she failed and ended up with a political film by sheer virtue of its setting. However, what I think pisses off people is that her political questions are broad rather than specific: it's a film that questions not "Why are we in Iraq?" but "Why do we wage war, of which Iraq is only the latest example?" Thus, I think the film does end up asking questions about the push for hegemony and dominance in American foreign policy, but doesn't do so through the economic (oil, military-industrial complex) reasons that many blame for causing the Iraq war.

Instead, the film devastatingly undercuts the proposed purpose of the American military, which is to "Protect our freedoms and our families". Renner's character finds no real enjoyment in these things he's ostensibly protecting, and would much rather be fighting a war, sort of like a former war-mongering administration. So I think the film is highly political and addresses the questions Cocus and Somini raise, because even as it tries to walk the line on "Is the Iraq war right or wrong?" it ends up questioning whether the entire American war apparatus is actually defending us, or just looking for a new set of kicks to test itself.

[matrixschmatrix]

That's a pretty great post, Shrew, thanks.

[warren oates]

That's a pretty great post, Shrew, thanks.

I agree. In a much more articulate way you've said some of the things I've been struggling to say. Especially this:

...what I think pisses off people is that her political questions are broad rather than specific: it's a film that questions not "Why are we in Iraq?" but "Why do we wage war, of which Iraq is only the latest example?" Thus, I think the film does end up asking questions about the push for hegemony and dominance in American foreign policy, but doesn't do so through the economic (oil, military-industrial complex) reasons that many blame for causing the Iraq war.

And the real question then to Cocus and Sonmi and others remains: Is this enough? To indict war in general by focusing on the personal/psychological/existential toll on individual foot soldiers? And if it's not, then you'd kind of have to be against other films that have taken similar approaches with politically incorrect sides of older wars, like Cross of Iron and Letters From Iwo Jima.