Zero Dark Thirty Is a Despicable Movie, Even if Bigelow and Boal Didn’t Intend It That Way
Preliminary Note: Concerning Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty (ZDT), a film we have criticized numerous times (just do a search of our database and you’ll easily find a bunch of splendid articles on the topic) we are happy to see that, at last, a growing number of influential critics in the mainstream media—like Daniel Froomkin (see below)—is denouncing this film for the artistic travesty it is. Their main objection stems from ZDT’s sneaky endorsement of torture, the old “necessary evil” argument, and we couldn’t agree more. ZDT, fireworks and (plentiful) conceits aside, is a dishonest movie. It deserves to receive fire. That said, we regret to see that none of these critics pays much attention to ZDT (and ARGO) as representatives of a new type of cinematic propaganda, the kind of propaganda suited to a late-stage capitalism, where the manipulation of the audience’s emotions has reached an incredibly sophisticated (and equivocal) level. We think this angle deserves more exploration. At some point perhaps it will come. Meantime, will these negative reviews make a difference where it matters, in the language Hollywood moguls understand? We don’t know. Maybe yes, more probably not. ARGO and ZDT are being hailed as masterpieces by most critics. (Argo already won Critics’ Choice Awards, Globe Award, etc.). Still such films deserve to be excoriated, if only to piss in the parade of sycophants and film illiterates already elevating these vehicles to the stature of great cinema, which most certainly they are not.
Incidentally, while we’re hardly in the business of tooting our own horn, we can’t resist noting that it was The Greanville Post that published the first reviews blasting ZDT (back on Dec. 3), and ARGO (Oct. 9, 2012), for flying well below the moral radar. Both pieces were penned by TGP’s editor in chief Patrice Greanville. In both cases Greanville also recommended a box-office boycott, a position I find reasonable and consistent with the vileness at the core of these films. Referring to ARGO, he argued, “There are films that simply should not be made, and this is clearly one of them. The historical context in which a work of mass communication is created and distributed should be taken into account by morally responsible artists. It rarely is…Argo is bad because it is a toxic social product. By raising still higher the probability of a horrendous war in the Gulf, by glorifying what Western intelligence agencies actually do in our name, Affleck and Clooney are not doing us any favors, and no amount of entertainment can justify such undertakings.” In his similarly scathing critique of ZDT he called director Kathryn Bigelow America’s own “Leni Riefenstahl.” He may have been a tad too generous. In any case, see what you think. You can read the reviews below. —Sean Lenihan, Assoc. Editor
ZERO DARK THIRTY—More “Patriotic” Offal from Hollywood: Bigelow Strikes Again
ARGO: Ben Affleck’s latest film may whitewash CIA history_
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Zero Dark Thirty Is a Despicable Movie, Even if Bigelow and Boal Didn’t Intend It That Way
Daniel Froomkin
I finally saw Zero Dark Thirty last night, which according to my film critic friends means that only now am I actually allowed to opine on it. (I don’t agree, having Tweeted up a storm about its evidently pro-torture ethos already.)
Since a lot has been said by now, here are just a few observations:
Torture is much more central to the movie even than I had been led to believe. Not only does the very first scene depict torture, but it does so partly in the name of character development for our gorgeous red-headed hero, showing how tough she is. Literally her first words in the movie are “I’m fine,” which “Maya” says after watching a thug agent savagely beat (and ultimately waterboard) an injured, starved and trussed-up detainee. “I’m fine”? Think about that.
Furthermore, in the movie, absolutely every bit of evidence that leads Maya to the courier who leads her to bin Laden is elicited through, after, and under threat of more torture. She tells the SEAL team near the end of the movie that she is sure of her information because it comes from “detainee reports.” Other agents repeatedly either demand better information from detainees or, later, mope about the loss of what they clearly consider the only effective technique to elicit information. You cannot take this movie at its word and conclude anything other than that torture was an essential step toward tracking bin Laden down. Which it wasn’t.
I asked myself as I watched the movie: So why, then, did director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal decide to make torture such a key element of the plot? There’s been much speculation, including that they were basically punked by the CIA, which still can’t come to terms with the horror of what it did. Some of us have accused them of essentially being pro-torture. Having now seen the movie and pondered it, I doubt Bigelow and Boal set out to make a pro-torture movie. I don’t think they even necessarily think they made a pro-torture movie. I think what happened was, in turning this story into a Hollywood movie, they had to change some facts around to make things work — in particular, to make the audience see its hero as an actual hero. For instance, Maya is obviously a composite: a totally understandable device to make the movie work better.
Here is what I suspect happened regarding torture: The filmmakers recognized that it was an important element of the 10+ year hunt for bin Laden, and that ignoring it completely wasn’t a good option. In reality, torture was a horribly depraved and failed element of that hunt, but once the filmmakers decided it needed to be in the movie — and therefore part of their hero’s adventures — they were in a bind. Could they portray it as not having worked? As just having been an exercise in unjustified and worthless brutality? Then the hero wouldn’t have been so sympathetic; the audience might even be turned off. Could they portray her as having been disgusted by it and protesting it? FBI agents did, in real life, but not CIA, and it would have complicated things. So they had to portray torture as working, just as a plot device. Hollywood heroes can be flawed, but they can’t be war-criminal flawed. So they made a totally pragmatic choice, not a moral one — at least in their mind.
Another question that puzzled me: Why did the filmmakers so clearly depart from reality in their depiction of waterboarding? In the movie, the de facto drowning of the detainee was brutal, but it was also almost spontaneous and improvised. In real life, waterboarding was clinical and methodical. Memos from Cheney’s lawyers described how many ounces per “pour.” They were measured and counted. (That’s how we know KSM got 183 pours.) The detainees were strapped into medical gurneys. There was medical staff in attendance. It was totally regimented and micromanaged by Washington. So why change that? Would that have made our hero even more culpable, going along with something so clearly premeditated and inhumane, rather than just brutal?
It’s a very long movie. A very, very long movie. A very much too long movie. And by the end, torture seems far away. By the third hour, the drama revolves around the tracking down of an unspeakably evil man, and I strongly suspect most members of the audience once they finally leave the theater will be left with the impression that torture was at most a regrettable part of an ultimately successful operation. There is no comeuppance for any of the torturers (that part is true to life). In fact, nobody in the movie even once expresses any doubt about torture or its efficacy.
Another disappointment about the negligent treatment of torture by the filmmakers is that it has created a missed opportunity to discuss the other disturbing elements of the movie — these depicted with great honesty. For instance, the filmmakers accurately recreate a raid that seemed aimed purely to kill, not capture, bin Laden. Similarly, it shows soldiers shooting unarmed wounded men to make sure they are dead, and shooting women and leaving them to die. Those are war crimes. Why wasn’t capture even an option? Daniel Klaidman’s very good and underappreciated book Kill or Capture tried to raise those issues, and this movie should have, as well.
All this “it’s just a movie” bullshit really sticks in my craw. (Former senator now movie-industry whore shill Chris Dodd was hitting this note repeatedly last night.) The film declares itself as based on first-hand accounts, and more to the point, uses the horror over the real 9/11 attacks and the satisfaction over the real killing of bin Laden to heighten its emotional impact. It is clearly trying to exploit and build on personal feelings about things that really happened, so when it departs from reality, that is significant.
It’s true that there are signs that the filmmakers were trying to be at least a bit ambiguous about the whole enterprise. The movie doesn’t end as celebratorily as I had feared. Most notably, there is only one SEAL whooping. And the final image shows Maya in tears. But how the viewers interpret the cause of those tears is significant. I didn’t see Maya as disgusted or remorseful; I saw her as exhausted, relieved, directionless and alone. And still very much a hero.
At last night’s DC premiere, Bigelow spoke briefly before the movie, and Boal answered some questions from Martha Raddatz afterwards. But I don’t remember hearing either Bigelow or Boal use the word “torture” themselves, in the context of the acts they depicted. Maybe I am wrong, but I do know that Boal at one point spoke about “brutal” interrogations. A quick Google search doesn’t find them using the word to describe what they show in their movie. Not calling obvious, objective torture by its real name is the sign of someone who can’t face what really happened. Waterboarding, most obviously, is an archetypal form of torture. If in fact they are shrinking from calling the obvious torture they depict “torture” then they’ve got a lot of goddamn gall trying to appear like they’re not taking sides.
Do yourself a favor, and don’t go see this movie. Don’t encourage film-making that at best offers ambiguity about torture, and at worst endorses it. Spend the two and a half hours and the $10 on something more valuable, and moral.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Froomkin is also deputy editor of Nieman Watchdog: Questions the press should ask, a blog hosted by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University that, according to his account of it, “seeks to encourage more informed reporting by soliciting probing questions from experts.”[7]