PROPERTIES OF PROPAGANDA: a review of "Zero Dark Thirty"

"ZERO DARK THIRTY"
Screenplay Written by Mark Boal
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow
** (two stars)

Kathryn Bigelow's "Zero Dark Thirty" is a propulsive and ruthlessly effective piece of filmmaking that takes our nation's search for Osama bin Ladin and depicts a cinematic hybrid of the political thriller, action film, and detective drama with supreme confidence and craftsmanship. It is also, however, a highly over-rated and disingenuous experience to such a large degree that the film becomes an irresponsible one.

Now, despite my feelings, "Zero Dark Thirty" is not a film that I would discourage you from seeing. On the contrary, it is a film that I would encourage you to see, for if the collective "we" are to have a conversation surrounding this film, then to be part of said conversation, the film must be seen, like Steven Spielberg's "Lincoln" and especially Quentin Tarantino's explosively controversial "Django Unchained." In fact, I am actually more than thrilled that the cinematic year of 2012 gave audiences so many movies to mentally chew upon and yes, "Zero Dark Thirty" is indeed a must see film as it is designed to inspire debate about our current political process while also engaging us with an intensely delivered action film framework. But, "Zero Dark Thirty" left a considerable bad taste in my mouth. Not exactly for the brutal and lengthy sequences of torture which front load the film but in the fact that Kathryn Bigelow has apparently chosen within subsequent interviews to completely sidestep the issue rather than firmly engage us with it. A daring, very confusing and frankly, downright cowardly choice coming from a filmmaker who has presented us a film honoring the collective courage of so very many who placed their lives upon the line for the benefit of our nation.

Now dear readers, I do not want for you to gather the impression that I am reviewing the person rather than what is on the screen. not at all. But I do believe that the art and the artist should work together in tandem to the point of being inseparable  for if the artist does not believe in the art they have created, it reduces everything to being irrelevant. I have written time and again on Savage Cinema about filmmakers being fearless when it comes to their work. With "Zero Dark Thirty," Kathryn Bigelow essentially tosses a bomb into the room and runs away instead of withstanding the blast and the shock waves. That very decision completely undercuts her already troubling film in its entirety.

Utilizing an episodic structure, "Zero Dark Thirty" is a fictionalized dramatization "based on first hand accounts" (as the film states right from the start) about the pursuit of Osama bin Ladin, beginning with the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, concluding with bin Ladin's execution on May 2, 2011 and with false leads, blind alleys, continued terrorist attacks, a significant change within the U.S. Presidential administration and devastating dead ends all in between. At the center of this epic manhunt is Maya (Jessica Chastain), a CIA officer recruited out of high school who spends her entire career, from 2003 to 2011, completely consumed in the pursuit.

In a movie year that has given us several sharp politically themed films, Kathryn Bigelow's "Zero Dark Thirty" almost seems to function as the polar opposite of Ben Affleck's "Argo" in regards to how the United States handles international conflicts. Where Affleck presented a time when the government utilized brains and creative thinking over bombs and bullets to navigate dangerous international waters, Bigelow's extremely brawny film depicts a government ready, willing and more than able to utilize any means necessary, no matter how brutal or unethical or immoral they just may be in order to bring the man responsible for the deaths of 3000 Americans to justice.

Just as she displayed with an often masterful hand in her previous and Oscar Best Picture winning feature "The Hurt Locker" (2008), Bigelow again shows why she is one of our very best action film directors as she is able to weave suspense, incredible tension, and near whiplash inducing shocks and surprises with muscular aplomb and complete attention and devotion to her story and agenda. Bigelow has crafted a film that completely honors all of the people who serve our country, especially during a time of war. Most importantly, Bigelow sheds a much needed spotlight on the very people who never get the attention, notoriety or credit for their efforts. The people behind the scenes as well as the people who are behind the scenes of the ones behind the scenes.

With the character of Maya, we get to follow the evolution of a deeply behind the scenes investigator from novice to seasoned and increasingly feverish veteran almost as if we were a fly on the wall of her cubicle. There is a slight moral murkiness at work in "Zero Dark Thirty" that is initially presented with Maya's trepidaciousness during the film early torture sequences but as the film continues, her thirst for blood and punishment is definitely palpable. At the start, she is a tad skittish but by the end, and due to the complete commitment to her work and duty, Maya's journey becomes especially painful as she is the one who always remains behind when the boys go out to battle. She performs the mental and investigative heavy lifting yet she will never reap the rewards or the satisfaction of killing bin Ladin herself. And by film's end, after spending every moment of eight years of her life in pursuit, once it is all over, what now? The odyssey of "Zero Dark Thirty" is essentially Maya's Heart Of Darkness, with Osama bin Ladin as her personal Colonel Kurtz and her soul completely transformed from the experience. And I have to say that I loved her choice words in her first meeting with CIA Leon Panetta (played by James Gandolfini).

Through the character of Maya, Kathryn Bigelow also very cleverly explores sexual politics within her story  and quite possibly her own personal hurtles and battles that she has had to overcome within the film industry. "Zero Dark Thirty" is a film with a heroic woman driving the story and in complete command of her abilities but even after bin Ladin is executed and the body has been identified by Maya, she is still dismissively referred to by colleagues as "the girl." As for Bigelow herself, it is a complete shame that in 2013, she, a filmmaking veteran, still has to be confronted with an industry that treats her as a novelty: a female who directs action films, political war films and even after she won the Oscar for Best Director four years ago. This film is filled with a righteous indignation against those who second guess or ignore solely on the basis of gender and I do applaud Bigelow for adding this element into the cinematic mix so seamlessly.

And yet, any enthusiasm I have towards the film is weak at best. As I stated at the outset of this review, Bigelow's "Zero Dark Thirty" is indeed an extremely effective film. Now, "effective" does not necessarily mean that it was "good." While not a "bad" film by any stretch, it did represent the the very type of "right wing fantasy film" that I have an immediate knee-jerk reaction against. The very kind presented in films like Director John Millius' "Red Dawn" (1984) and especially Rambo's return to Vietnam in "Rambo: First Blood Part II" (1985). Both of those film are ones that glorify violent jingoistic fantasies created to imaginatively correct some historical or political injustice. "Zero Dark Thirty" is not a pulpy experience like those films. It is an "A list" production but it does indeed have a crystal clear agenda which at times borders on tastelessness.

Bigelow establishes her tone and intent in the film's very first moments. On a black screen, we are given a sensationalistic audio collage of phone messages from people in dire peril on September 11, 2001. This is a most effective tactic to take the audience back to that horrific day and re-insert a sense of fear, moral outrage and a hunger for retribution that is voluminously delivered within the film's first thirty minutes or so, as we are then subjected to various lengthy sequences of torture, most of which feature Dan (Jason Clarke), an officer at the U.S. embassy in Pakistan and Ammar (Reda Kateb), a detainee with ties to several Saudi terrorists. The extreme problem I had with this effective tactic was that the opening moments of the film felt to be unnecessary. For a filmmaker as skilled as Bigelow, I found it difficult to believe that she could think of no other way to establish the exact same tone because what was presented and what I saw was exploitative. I guess to use the real world voices of those who died on September 11th to launch your supposedly fictional yet based on first hand accounts story line to surreptitiously ignite a moral outrage that already exists felt to be tasteless and honestly beneath the talents of someone like Bigelow, who should most certainly know better.

But then there are the torture sequences to deal with. Those scenes were disturbing to me, not entirely for what was being presented visually but mostly for what they function as conceptually, for in Bigelow's cinematic universe, it was through the acts of torture and only torture that produced any and all viable information that was needed to discover the whereabouts of Osama bin Ladin. Now, dear readers, I am not going to take this time to try and debate the film on those counts or spend copious time recounting each and every report that has emerged over the years that has expressed the exact opposite of Bigelow's film: that torture, while certainly immoral, is also in fact completely ineffective. Truth be told, I would not be surprised in any conceivable fashion that our government has utilized the acts of torture in the past as well as the present. That is not the issue to me, especially when we will most likely NEVER ever know all of the details regarding the hunt for Osama bin Ladin.

What has disturbed me has been Kathryn Bigelow's surprising reluctance and feigned indignity in regards to acknowledging the film that she has made openly and honestly. You cannot tell me that she could not have possibly thought that she would make a film like this one, have it released and not be asked any questions about what she has placed into her film and the agenda she has behind it.

Whenever she has been questioned, Bigelow has elicited inoffensive MOR answers like the following for PBS: "Everybody's entitled to their opinion. And there's certainly a moral complexity to that 10-year hunt. But what I'm most proud of is that the film sheds light on the individuals, the professionals in the intelligence community that spent -- in 10 years, gave their -- dedicated their lives, some who sacrificed their lives, to this very successful operation."

Or how about this one, as she accepted an award for Best Director from the New York Film Critics Circle on January 7, 2013: "I thankfully want to say that I'm standing in a room of people who understand that depiction is not endorsement, and if it was, no artist could ever portray inhumane practices; no author could ever write about them; and no film-maker could ever delve into the knotty subjects of our time."

"Depiction is not endorsement." Think about that dear readers. "Depiction is not endorsement."

Of course, the depiction of torture is not the full endorsement of torture. I do understand that. Hell, I believe that anyone who watches movies understands that! But, what needs to be fully understood as well is that Kathryn Bigelow has created a film where she has included torture sequences of waterboarding, beatings, sleep deprivation, being forced to stand and maintain stressed positions for extended periods of time, being aurally assaulted by heavy metal music, being deprived of food and water, sexual humiliation, being walked around while chained to a dog collar and even being physically placed into a small box. While not presented in a gratuitous fashion, this is indeed much of the film's first thirty minutes. What's more is that Bigelow shows that it was entirely through those acts of torture towards detainees, that any and all valuable information to find and ultimately execute bin Ladin was gathered. I honestly have no idea of how anyone watching "Zero Dark Thirty" could not arrive at the same conclusion because this is indeed what she shows.

Remember, Kathryn Bigelow did not make a documentary, a film where she could remove herself and just present the hard cold facts. She has made a pulsating docudrama, a film that blurs the line between fiction and reality so (here's that word again) effectively that "Zero Dark Thirty" becomes a work of propaganda. This is a film which proclaims that the United States government not only should have utilized any means necessary, including torture, to find Osama bin Ladin but furthermore, to show that the methods of torture actually worked thus implicitly validating President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney's ideological stance while also implicitly painting President Barack Obama (who is shown in one interview segment which is scoffed at by one character) as a liar and one who piggybacked upon the work of others for ultimate success.

If that is what Kathryn Bigelow indeed believes, then that is fine and she should make her film based upon her beliefs regardless of whether I or others disagree with her politically or morally. That said, then she needs to have the GIANT SIZED BRASS BALLS to stand by her film unequivocally.To me, what is happening here is that Bigelow is not standing 100% by the film she has clearly made by giving non-answers that will offend absolutely no one, especially as Awards season has arrived and box office dollars need to be counted. But frankly, if this is the film she has made then, to hell with the awards and the money and just stand by your own art, consequences be damned! How can she possibly make this film that depicts the fearlessness of this CIA investigator and then cower when people have questions about the intent and purpose of her work? Does Bigelow believe in what she had made? If so, then take your slings and arrows and stand by it! If not, then it begs the obvious question: Why did you make this film at all? And if you can't answer why you made your film honestly, then why does "Zero Dark Thirty" exist?

The bravery that comes with being an artist cannot be underestimated. To be in a position where you have something inside of you that you just have to express and then combine that with the opportunity and willingness to share your innermost creations with the world, never knowing whether it will be accepted or rejected must contain a hefty amount of simultaneous excitement and terror. But, once the release happens, it is time to also have the bravery to stand by what you have created absolutely completely regardless of the response. Of course, mistakes and missteps will occur along the way. Of course, some of the art may not turn out as one may have wished or intended. But if you have the bravery to create and then present your work to the world, then you have to have the bravery to to live and die by your art.

Just look at the beating Oliver Stone endured for "JFK" (1993). Or what Michael Moore or Spike Lee have endured over the years as well. Just look at what Quentin Tarantino is dealing with right now with "Django Unchained," and you can see that he is not giving an inch to any criticism or detractors. And neither did Stone, Moore or Lee for any of their past efforts. With "Zero Dark Thirty," Kathryn Bigelow obviously meant to stir the moral outrage and fear the entire nation felt on September 11, 2001 and let it boil to a punishing deliverance of righteous bloodshed. But to cave into canned answers whenever she has been rightfully questioned about her intents and purposes is to disrespect her material and relegate it to irrelevancy.

I have absolutely nothing against Kathryn Bigelow. I have been a fan of her work for over twenty years and I feel that "Strange Days" (1999), her dark, dystopian collaboration with James Cameron is a career high point. She has handled a wide variety of genres with style, force and complexity for so many years that I cannot believe for a second that she had no idea of what she was doing in regards to "Zero Dark Thirty." Look, it is a film made with supreme skill. The performances are all of high quality although I do think that Jessica Chastain's work, while solid, is not nearly as strong or as riveting as what Claire Danes has delivered in the similarly themed Showtime series "Homeland."

But, it was the entire one-sidedness of "Zero Dark Thirty" that troubled me. That an experience so complicated could be watered down into a black and white, wild west world making the film not much more than an extended episode of "24," which is indeed an insult to that series when it worked at its very best. Sure, it would be nice if there were a Jack Bauer figure out there to single handedly save the world but there isn't one. The fantasy of that character is what made the series so much fun for a spell. But the events of our very recent history cannot be boiled down into fantasy and nor should it be. It's a disservice to all of us and an insult to the memory of those 3000 people who died at the hands of Osama bin Ladin and his terrorist organization and allies.

I certainly do not wish to sound hyperbolic but "Zero Dark Thirty" just felt to be so wrong and even moreso that Kathryn Bigelow cannot even defend or, at least, honesty engage with us what she has placed into the world. Honestly, if you are going to have the audacity to open your movie with the voices of the dead, don't you think that you should deliver a motion picture that completely honors the multi-faceted, profoundly dense moral complexities of the lives in which we all lead...and that some of us have lost?