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Cold Bishop wrote:

matrixschmatrix wrote:he actually does liken the film to Zodiac (though more in the sense of following a lengthy investigation than in the sense of being an ultimately frustrating one, of course.)

Perhaps, but one wonders if some of the residue is left over from the film's first incarnation, prior to the Bin Laden raid, which was precisely about a failed attempt to bring him to justice.

Specifically, this one. The three books I've read that recount the failure at Tora Bora (First In, Jawbreaker and Kill Bin Laden) lay the blame squarely at the cold, cowardly feet of Rumsfeld and Tommy Franks, who had on-scene Delta Force and CIA paramilitary commanders calling on their sat phones, begging for a couple hundred Rangers to provide back-up and to help cover the mountain escape routes. Believe it or not, by all accounts it's because they simply didn't want to risk so many men so early in the conflict. Errol Morris is making a film about Rumsfeld and I hope he grills him on this too, not just the debacle of Iraq.

Marc Ambinder weighs in. Though I'm not convinced that Boal's access was as all-encompassing as Ambinder implies. For instance, the character whose elevator gossip impresses him is credited in the picture only as "CIA director" and not "Leon Panetta," on whom he's obviously modeled though perhaps not intended to be literally portraying. Some of this strikes me more as thoughtful writerly invention than second-hand eavesdropping.

I've seen the film now too, but it's going to take a while to work up a response that will weather this thread and one that includes all the annotations and questions I can muster from my years of being obsessed with this stuff and everything I've read in open sources. Bottom lines: Is it a good film? Yes. Does it have issues with the way it portrays torture? Yes. Is it the simplistic pro-torture propaganda that some have suggested? No.

I've seen the film now as well but, think it's wise to sleep on it before going into detail. Briefly I'll say that I'm not sure it's possible to take a bottom line approach with any of the categories Warren mentioned. Mostly because in many ways it's a very simple film dealing with very difficult, nuanced topics. Frankly, I kind of got the vibe that the film was rushed or dumbed down. Yes, the film is good but, far from anything special. Politics aside I'm appalled as a cinephile that it's gotten the great reviews it has, won so many awards and looks to be a shoo in for many more. Then again it wouldn't be the first time that's happened. As for the politics of it, I had much deeper issues with for lack of a better word 'orientalist' views the film expressed, 'Muslims don't like cake', wtf????, than I did with the torture.

On a lighter note, from the first time he showed up on screen to his final scene, James Gandolfini as Leon Panetta brought out the laughs from the packed house. Never really witnessed anything like that before in a theater, what a terrible casting choice. The final thing for now is that I was surprised at the turnout for a 6:30 midweek show a week before Christmas, there wasn't a seat to be had.

The official CIA statement on the film.

Tough to take anything the CIA has to say seriously when Bigelow/Boal were all but, embedded within the agency and especially since the film very much plays as pro CIA. I'd go as far as to say that a strong case can be made that the film is an outright defense/promotion of the CIA far more than anything else and furthermore find it hard to believe that Boal's screenplay in return for access didn't go through the CIA, receiving its proverbial stamp of approval. Morell's statement reads to me as very much damage control in the face of some angry senators.

In any event, I'll attempt to separate my thoughts into two parts, on the film and the brouhaha surrounding it.

The film was good, entertaining, but certainly not the landmark film many critics have been suggesting. It's pretty much your standard good guy, bad guy, chase suspense thriller. Very well executed to be sure, however Chastain's character left me cold. She's your usual one track mind, blowing off authority obsessive that you find in these films, but I didn't feel there was any depth as to who she was, what her motivations were and so forth. You get plenty of your usual brilliance, nose thumbing at authority one liners but not much more than that.

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Until you reach the end of the film when she is finally humanized when I didn't feel anything prior to that would have led to such a profound breakdown. Although I did very much like how she was by herself on the plane. That was a refreshing position for a non comic book hero to be in after saving the day. Then again she was portrayed as very much a loner so perhaps it was fitting and I, for whatever reason, wasn't buying it. One thing I did notice was that they made a point of showing a picture of her desk where there was a picture of her and another woman, I'm assuming her sister? I wonder what that was about or if there were scenes cut from the film expounding more on Maya's civilian life.

All the procedural stuff was interesting, well done and probably not worth expounding on as it's self evident once you see the movie. The strongest point of the film was the weaving in and out of what felt like endless characters, all with a purpose of being there. Not a line, action or gesture was wasted by anybody all while keeping the audience thoroughly engaged which is an incredibly difficult thing to do.

Downside of having so many characters, despite them being necessary, is that there's only so much time you have on screen, and thus you feel disconnected. When your one lead character is cold there's a problem. The counter to that I would presume would be to say that the event itself is an emotional investment providing enough of a rooting interest that it's not necessary for it to come from the characters. Personally, I don't subscribe to that. A problem with the cast as I referenced earlier was James Gandolfini. A film like Zero Dark Thirty shouldn't be saddled with five minutes of unintentional comedy thanks to terrible casting.

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Just to follow up on the unintentional comedy bit, the calling out as if he were a cat 'Usama, Usama' bit at the end had the audience, myself included, rolling in the aisles. How absurd. The climax of the film and you have the audience laughing because you can't let things just be? Come on. Yet somehow this film is being lauded as some sort of masterpiece. Mind boggling.

The third act was also way too long. When you already know what's going to happen, there are no stakes, there is no tension, so I could have lived without all the histrionics of door busting (every single one), room searching (every single one), neigbour negotiating and all that, but hey look Bigelow shot it in nightvision, cool! Realistic!

In conclusion Zero Dark Thirty is a good procedural, chase, action, suspense film, but far from anything great or deserving of going down in the annals of cinematic history. Frankly, if it wasn't attached to Bin Laden it would be released in January, develop a good niche following and be forgotten by February.

Had enough writing for now so I'll post my take on political context of the film later.

Black Hat wrote:The film was good, entertaining but, certainly not the landmark film many critics have been suggesting. It's pretty much your standard good guy, bad guy, chase suspense thriller. Very well executed to be sure but, Chastain's character left me cold. She's your usual one track mind, blowing off authority obsessive that you find in these films but, I didn't feel there was any depth as to who she was, what her motivations were and so forth.

Wildly off-topic, but you don't need a comma after any of those buts (before, maybe, but that's more a personal style thing). I enjoyed reading your thoughts on the film, but every time I came across one of those commas it sounded like you had the hiccups.

zedz wrote:Wildly off-topic, but you don't need a comma after any of those buts (before, maybe, but that's more a personal style thing).

To clarify, "but" follows the same rule as "and." If what comes before and what comes after the conjunction are both independent clauses, then a comma goes before the conjuction. But you're crazy right about the comma after the "but" making the sentences hard to read.

That's funny. I always thought the comma came after the 'but'. Could have sworn that's what I was taught too but who knows what I remember accurately at this point. Fixed it up.

If you would've told me when watching Tree of Life that Jessica Chastain would be my 2012 Cinematic Badass of the Year, I would not have believed you.

Needless to say, Zero Dark Thirty is a great film. One might be safe in the assumption that Chastain's Maya is the most autobiographical of Bigelow's character's to date. She's a confident woman in a world ruled by men, but by being meticulous in her craft and assured in her skills, she achieves her objectives. Her maturity hardens her without ever losing her sense of self. And despite my flippant description as a badass, Chastain retains all the humanity in this character.

The character, much like in The Hurt Locker, not only serves the required narrative arc but also works as a stand-in for the American character. It's to Boal's credit as a scribe that he can create these intensely detailed worlds of realism, yet with a slight tip of the hand at the end of both films, he manages to craft something much more timeless and allegorical.

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Renner, as America, rejoining war due to its adrenaline-fueled addictive properties, proves the thesis at the beginning of that film. And Chastain, as America, left alone, having accomplished her single-minded goal with efficiency, ferocity, and ambiguity, is simply asked where she wants to go.

Maya is not left with triumph, rather catharsis and relief, that she has finally extinguished her foe. It posits an interesting life for Maya when bin Laden is the most important man in her life, and the film clearly asks America what we do next after our break-up with the infamous terrorist.

The editing is tight as a drum. Each sequence flows seamlessly into the next, crossing national boundaries and years of time. Bigelow also imbues the film with the feeling of haunt. By making bin Laden conspicuously absent throughout the running time (no videos even), she gives his presence a contradictory quality of being both never-real and ever-present.

The film is probably most successful in how much credit it gives to the audience. When the CIA mentions to the CIA director (presumably Panetta; played by Gandolfini) that the Abbottabad compound was near the ISI's version of West Point, Bigelow just assumes that the audience will make a connection with how big a deal that is. Gandolfini only has to give a non-verbal reaction shot of "You've gotta be fuckin' kidding me..." to sell the moment perfectly.

The SEALS sequence, a masterpiece of choreography, rivals Michael Mann in its admiration of people just doing their job, without ever shying away from the problematic elements of the raid. There's a moment during the raid where it feels almost too easy for them, the enemy almost too pathetic, but the screenplay makes the case that the action wasn't the most difficult part of this manhunt. The hardest parts are the answers, those that Maya helped to solve and those that are still to come.



On torture:

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My one statement on torture is that the film is ambiguous in its efficacy. The truth is that the US committed torture in its interrogations. There are conflicting reports regarding whether or not actionable intelligence was obtained through these methods.

The easy answer is that torture is wrong, so we must automatically believe that it wasn't useful. I'm not entirely sold on that. Personally, I always doubt answers that seem too easy. I will probably never know the truth, and I doubt any member of CriterionForum.org who claims to know how much or how little information about bin Laden's courier was obtained by torture. Have the argument if you want, but I don't think it serves discussion about the film.

Grand Illusion wrote:On torture:

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My one statement on torture is that the film is ambiguous in its efficacy. The truth is that the US committed torture in its interrogations. There are conflicting reports regarding whether or not actionable intelligence was obtained through these methods.

The easy answer is that torture is wrong, so we must automatically believe that it wasn't useful. I'm not entirely sold on that. Personally, I always doubt answers that seem too easy. I will probably never know the truth, and I doubt any member of CriterionForum.org who claims to know how much or how little information about bin Laden's courier was obtained by torture. Have the argument if you want, but I don't think it serves discussion about the film.

I assume that torture was not useful here because torture, as a tool, does not gather actionable intelligence. That's not an easy answer, it's something that's been almost universally agreed upon by more or less everyone competent for decades- as the Army Training Manual says, "it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear." This faux 'well how can we know what's real, man, there are no simple answers' stance is as disingenuous as the 'I'm just asking questions' obfuscations on global warming or creationism- it's a settled question, and treating it as though it is not one is in of itself deceptive, particularly when the incident in question is fabricated.

I'm willing to believe that the movie itself isn't trying to forge that connection, or at least that the possibility is open, without having seen it. But this 'how can anyone know what causes what' is just magical thinking, and it's the kind of magical thinking that lets people justify the commission of heinous acts.

People are just tickled that bin Laden got offed. The old 'ends justifies the means' excuse, never mind that there's no evidence torture was either used or effective in finding the man. That sentiment comes through loud and clear in the defenses of the film.

We got the bad man. Rah rah, Obama. Rah rah, USA.

My eyeballs just fell out from rolling too hard

Donald Brown wrote:Rah rah, Obama.

Is your avatar a straw man?

matrixschmatrix wrote:

Grand Illusion wrote:On torture:

Spoiler

My one statement on torture is that the film is ambiguous in its efficacy. The truth is that the US committed torture in its interrogations. There are conflicting reports regarding whether or not actionable intelligence was obtained through these methods.

The easy answer is that torture is wrong, so we must automatically believe that it wasn't useful. I'm not entirely sold on that. Personally, I always doubt answers that seem too easy. I will probably never know the truth, and I doubt any member of CriterionForum.org who claims to know how much or how little information about bin Laden's courier was obtained by torture. Have the argument if you want, but I don't think it serves discussion about the film.

I assume that torture was not useful here because torture, as a tool, does not gather actionable intelligence. That's not an easy answer, it's something that's been almost universally agreed upon by more or less everyone competent for decades- as the Army Training Manual says, "it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear." This faux 'well how can we know what's real, man, there are no simple answers' stance is as disingenuous as the 'I'm just asking questions' obfuscations on global warming or creationism- it's a settled question, and treating it as though it is not one is in of itself deceptive, particularly when the incident in question is fabricated.

I'm willing to believe that the movie itself isn't trying to forge that connection, or at least that the possibility is open, without having seen it. But this 'how can anyone know what causes what' is just magical thinking, and it's the kind of magical thinking that lets people justify the commission of heinous acts.

As I said, I am in a position of doubt. Doubt is not a condition of magical thinking. There are conflicting reports whether or not torturing provided intelligence in this instance, regardless of the general stance of the Army Training Manual.

Doubt is magical thinking where one side is 'thing a does not imply thing b, as demonstrated by reports, statistics, actual experts in the field, and basic logic' and the other side is 'you can't prove a negative'. The act of torture results in, as the Army Manual suggests, dehumanized individuals who will say precisely what they believe the torturers want them to say. There's no logical connection between that and real intelligence: thus, magical thinking.

matrixschmatrix wrote:Doubt is magical thinking where one side is 'thing a does not imply thing b, as demonstrated by reports, statistics, actual experts in the field, and basic logic' and the other side is 'you can't prove a negative'. The act of torture results in, as the Army Manual suggests, dehumanized individuals who will say precisely what they believe the torturers want them to say. There's no logical connection between that and real intelligence: thus, magical thinking.

Leon Panetta went on the record in this specific case to say that torture was key to helping find bin Laden. I have no evidence that he's read the general warning against torture by the Army Manual, but I would consider him an expert. But I'm sure you were in the room, so you can believe whatever helps you sleep at night.

Have you actually been reading the thread? Because in a letter to McCain, that was posted and discussed in this very thread, Panetta said

In the end, no detainee in CIA custody revealed the facilitator/courier’s full true name or specific whereabouts. This information was discovered through other intelligence means.

It didn't fucking happen.

(I should also point out that I'm broadly of the belief that whatever Panetta says is more reflective of what he thinks will best achieve the policy goals he sees as important and not what he believes to be true, because he's in the CIA and that's kind of their job. But there is absolutely no reason to believe that torture was 'key' to helping find bin Laden in his account, nor any other, both because there's no evidence to support it in this case and no evidence to support the concept that it does anything but render those interrogated useless or uncooperative in general. If Leon Panetta said magical pixies helped find bin Laden, I would doubt that too, because it doesn't reflect 'reality'. Even if I wasn't in the room!)

matrixschmatrix wrote:Have you actually been reading the thread? Because in a letter to McCain, that was posted and discussed in this very thread, Panetta said

In the end, no detainee in CIA custody revealed the facilitator/courier’s full true name or specific whereabouts. This information was discovered through other intelligence means.

It didn't fucking happen.

He said that in a letter, yes, but he's mentioning two very specific things (full name and location). He stated elsewhere that torture helped obtain information that helped lead to bin Laden's killing. Those two aren't mutually exclusive.

Again, I don't know. You, with certainty, can continue on with your righteous crusade. By the way, the movie is good.

You specified 'key', and the daisy chain of logic necessary to support the torture->killing bin Laden (as described here if anyone is following) is pretty fucking far from 'key', nor is there any reason to believe that torture was at any point necessary or helpful to obtaining what information was derived. The strongest possible case- and the strongest statement Panetta has made- is that there was some information derived from individuals who were tortured that eventually proved relevant to tracking bin Laden down. That's not an expert opinion on the efficacy of torture, and it's not evidence that torture was key to fuck all here (as again, what information is actually available indicates that those individuals would have been of far more help had they not been tortured).

Your pretense to ambivalence here is disingenuous, because it's not a question of two equally probably possibilities but a question of 'did this thing that never works work just this one time, hooray' or 'did reality continue to work as it does in reality.'

Grand Illusion I've seen this fawning over Chastain/Maya by other reviewers and feel like I watched a different movie. Can you point to where in the film she established a sense of self to lose? And where was this battle for maturity? She was never a wallflower who was hardened over time, she was ready to go from the start. Whatever squeamishness she had was minimal and the film certainly never showed her trying to reconcile her feelings about it. I also certainly didn't see any conflict with regard to her being a woman in a man's world. She was accepted and respected by everyone almost immediately. The few times where there was any doubt of that had far more to do with her age and relentless enthusiasm than being woman.

Suggesting that Maya was in any way a stand in for America is really grasping at straws. There was never any conflict for her. There was one straight line from the moment she was assigned to the case to the moment he was killed. The film's most remarkable trait was in how simple it was, to suggest that there was symbolism of this deep and fundamentally important a level I see more as projecting personal feelings than really what was happening on screen. Again where on earth was the case made that the hardest part is finding answers to questions that are here and yet to come? The film dubiously goes out of its way to avoid bringing up the questions let alone providing answers.

On a personal note I'm befuddled at what you thought of The Master's characters, rightly so might I add, but then are able to take all this from the Maya character who is far more 'trite' and 'one note' than Freddie or Dodd ever was.

Grand Illusion wrote:The film is probably most successful in how much credit it gives to the audience. When the CIA mentions to the CIA director (presumably Panetta; played by Gandolfini) that the Abbottabad compound was near the ISI's version of West Point, Bigelow just assumes that the audience will make a connection with how big a deal that is. Gandolfini only has to give a non-verbal reaction shot of "You've gotta be fuckin' kidding me..." to sell the moment perfectly.

I saw Warren mentioned this too about the nameless characters. I'd be careful here, they are likely not mentioned for legal reasons both within the CIA and otherwise than anything else.

I felt the film's approach to the audience was remedial and simplistic. Man, I really feel like we watched two different films.

Black Hat wrote:Grand Illusion I've seen this fawning over Chastain/Maya by other reviewers and feel like I watched a different movie. Can you point to where in the film she established a sense of self to lose? And where was this battle for maturity? She was never a wallflower who was hardened over time, she was ready to go from the start. Whatever squeamishness she had was minimal and the film certainly never showed her trying to reconcile her feelings about it. I also certainly didn't see any conflict with regard to her being a woman in a man's world. She was accepted and respected by everyone almost immediately. The few times where there was any doubt of that had far more to do with her age and relentless enthusiasm than being woman.

Suggesting that Maya was in any way a stand in for America is really grasping at straws. There was never any conflict for her. There was one straight line from the moment she was assigned to the case to the moment he was killed. The film's most remarkable trait was in how simple it was, to suggest that there was symbolism of this deep and fundamentally important a level I see more as projecting personal feelings than really what was happening on screen. Again where on earth was the case made that the hardest part is finding answers to questions that are here and yet to come? The film dubiously goes out of its way to avoid bringing up the questions let alone providing answers.

On a personal note I'm befuddled at what you thought of The Master's characters, rightly so might I add, but then are able to take all this from the Maya character who is far more 'trite' and 'one note' than Freddie or Dodd ever was.

I saw Warren mentioned this too about the nameless characters. I'd be careful here, they are likely not mentioned for legal reasons both within the CIA and otherwise than anything else.

I felt the film's approach to the audience was remedial and simplistic. Man, I really feel like we watched two different films.

I don't mean to mistakenly present my interpretation of the film as some sort of character study. It's not. And were it to be structured without such a solid backbone of a plot (like, say, The Master), then the character of Maya could probably not sustain the entire film. That said, for what the film does and is, I feel like Maya is a perfect embodiment of the plot.

Averting her eyes during the torture scenes is subtle and often in the background, but they do make me feel a sense of her ambivalence. Sure, she agrees to go into the interrogation room when asked if she'd like to look at the monitor, but the fact that she needed to be asked in the first place says something. I feel she grows into the role where she, in an interrogation scene, simply taps her male partner to smack the person being questioned in the face. There's some hardening here. Even if it's just in simple reactions to personal loss ("I'm going to smoke everyone involved in this op. And then I'm gonna kill bin Laden.")

At the beginning of the film, I don't see her as someone that walks into the CIA director's office and tells him that she's "the motherfucker who found this place" (in eminently quotable form). And that she does this later, it goes to show some growth. Now, you're right that earlier it is overheard that "The CIA says she's a killer." But I don't think we really see this until the plot develops. Maybe you're right that it's less a personal hardening than it is an unveiling of the layers of her character. Either way, I see development.

As for being a woman in a man's world, I never said that she received opposition from that. I'm just surmising that it might be analogous to Kathryn Bigelow's own story, as the badass confident woman in a realm typically run by men.

Insofar as being a stand-in for America, Chastain in this film and Renner in The Hurt Locker are so defined by their professions and by the plot, that Bigelow and Boal are asking how we and they got to such defined places. "War is a drug" makes a perfect jumping off point to figuring out from a cultural (but also biological) perspective how we relapsed into going to war with the same country. Here, we're left with a single-minded mission, and how we actually feel about it, then and now. Vengeful? Relieved? Like it hasn't even ended? Zero Dark Thirty examines those questions throughout, but most obviously (like The Hurt Locker) in its final scenes.

Fair enough GI. I see where you're coming from for the most part with the exception of the film examining the how do we feel, where do we go from here bit. Personally I think that take away is a reach as the film was very much a one way train. Maya's breakdown I saw as purely personal. Symptomatic of anyone, in any walk of life, whose had their obsession finally resolved. Reading her ending as something broader, as somehow symbolic for America is attaching deep philosophical questions to a film that went out of its way to avoid posing any during the chase. For it to hold resonance it would need to be consistent in that regard along the way.

OK, Kathryn Bigelow officially cannot make a movie I can totally enjoy and like (and I've seen them all except for "The Hurt Locker," of which this one seems a spiritual sequel to). "Zero Dark Thirty" is as good and well put-together a military docudrama (with the usual shortcuts-for-dramatic-intent you associate with factual stories turned into Hollywood movies) as I've seen. The 2nd half of the movie, right after the 'we are failing' speech prominently featured in the trailer/commercials, is a pretty tense (!) and atmospheric re-enactment of the well-known details of a news story that isn't even two years old. This is where I felt I got my money's worth for seeing "ZDT," since outside of NBC News CG re-enactments of the mission nobody else but Hollywood will put up the millions to immortalize for posterity the highlight of a years-long mission to avenge the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Wish the movie had come out later to add more historical perspective but the only reason we're even seeing it now is that the project was already in development when OBL getting nailed happened.

The clinical, detached and impersonal way this story is told though

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(except for the very final shot, which I guess was meant to make us feel for the now-rudderless Maya, but feels holow given our only exposure to Maya's personal life was a seconds-long picture on a computer)

can't deviate much from the 'computer terminals/satellite surveillance/intersected communications' template that's been done to death already on many previous movies (the "Bourne" series, "Body of Lies," "Safe House," "Cleanskin," etc.), TV shows ("Homeland") and even videogames (the "Call of Duty" series in particular). I guess my backhanded-complement to Bigelow is that she makes something that's been done to death already seem fairly easy, which it isn't because this is a more nuanced attempt to do a realistic military thriller that doesn't lower itself to "Act of Valor" or "Rambo" histrionics. The torture scenes troubled me and made the first half-hour of "ZDT" tough to watch, but they were necessary to at least set the tone for the type of movie this was aiming for, i.e. Jessica Chastain is going to kill Osama bin Laden and use all the resources of the U.S. government at her disposal to do so.

And holy shit, in a movie cast with mostly unknowns (to great effect), why would you cast Tony Soprano in a bad wig as "C.I.A. Director"? No wonder Leon Panetta bad-mouthed the movie, Gandolfini plays Panetta (though technically he's not playing Leon, just a generic movie "C.I.A. Director") like an "intelligent" man that is taken by Maya's strength and determination (you can tell the only scene where he and Maya meet one-on-one is cut too early, I want to see more of it). And, between this and "Argo," Kyle Chandler is already pigeonholing himself as the go-to 'midlevel-security government stooge' for movies, which is kind-of smart because Hollywood will always be in need of those types of roles. Jessica Chastain is OK (my favorite moment with her character is when

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Maya sees in satellite surveillance footage some no-name bad guy being blown away in an explosion and doesn't react at all, a neat contrast to the way she feels disoriented afterwards when something similar happens to Jennifer Ehle and her party)

but, clearly by design and probably to emulate the little known facts about the real-life "Jen", she's the most impersonal and cipher-like lead in a Hollywood movie to come down in some time. That might actually mirror reality (not accurately represent it though, since no such thing is ever true in a major motion picture) but also make for an overrated and OK-at-best Best Picture nominee.