Posts
December 16, 2012Log in / Register
Text SizeHOMEEar to the GroundLarry's ListPolitics TodayAll Ear to the groundColumnsBill BoyarskyJuan ColeMarcia Alesan DawkinsAmy GoodmanChris HedgesRobert ScheerRichard SchickelCol. Ann WrightTruthdigger of the WeekMoreCartoonsMr. Fish CartoonsAll CartoonsArts & CultureAuthor InterviewBook ExcerptsBook ReviewsEssaysFilm ReviewsTheater ReviewsDigsShopTruthdig MerchandiseTruthdig BooksAuthor BooksRobert Scheer BooksChris Hedges BooksMr. Fish T-shirtsMr. Fish PrintsMultimediaA/V BoothTruthdig RadioPhoto EssaysPodcastsQ&A: Live ChatsAdvertiseDonateAboutdiv#src_container {width: 175px;background: #b59d91;height: 24px;padding: 5px;display: block;float: right;margin-top: 6px;z-index: 2;}#src_container input {width: 137px;height: 23px;border: 1px solid #5b5b5b;padding: 5px;}input#src_btn_raquo {width: 30px;height: 24px;background-color: #6f4434;color: #fff;border: none;}>" id="src_btn_raquo">Trending: bradley manning chris hedges education israel jon stewart
The Shameful Exploitation of Bradley ManningTruthdigger of the Week: Dean Baker
Hollywood's Raid on Convention
NASA Announces World Won't End Dec. 21, 2012
Mike Huckabee Blames Connecticut Shooting on Separation of Church and State
The Answer Is Blowing in the WindTruthdigger of the Week: Dean Baker
Hollywood’s Raid on Convention
Shooting
HSBC Bank
Truthdigger of the Week: Dean BakerBy Alexander Reed Kelly The Shameful Exploitation of Bradley Manning
By Robert Scheer Wonderland on a Cliff
By Eugene Robinson Homeownership Support Shouldn’t Be a Mansion Subsidy
By David Sirota
Red States Surrender Health Care Oversight to Federal Government Insurance Industry Is Taking Climate Change Seriously Weaker Social Networks a Cause of Black Unemployment, Study Finds Dream of a Global Climate Deal Is Over, Experts Say U.N. Conference Produces No Internet Treaty 20 Children Shot Dead at Elementary School in Connecticut
‘Left, Right & Center:’ School Shooting, Susan Rice Withdraws, and More Mike Huckabee Blames Connecticut Shooting on Separation of Church and State Economist Baker Echoes Paul Krugman: There Is No Fiscal Cliff NASA Announces World Won’t End Dec. 21, 2012
Hollywood’s Raid on ConventionBy Richard Schickel Understanding Economics in Plain English
By Thomas Hedges, Center for Study of Responsive Law Regulate Dissent in Hong Kong, Jackie Chan Says
Fighting Manifest Destiny
By Jonathan Yardley
The Questions Education Reformers Aren’t AskingDig led by Mike Rose Gore Vidal: His Life and Legacy
Dig led by Truthdig Staff
advertisement-->
A Prayer for AmericaBy Dennis Kucinich
$11.95
advertisement
-->
Live from Golgotha: The Gospel According to Gore VidalBy Gore Vidal
$17.00
advertisement
-->
Jr. Baby Doll T-Shirt$22
Film Review Hollywood’s Raid on Convention 
Email 
Print 
ShareTweet
Posted on Dec 15, 2012 
AP/Sony - Columbia Pictures By Richard Schickel
“Zero Dark Thirty” has suddenly emerged as one of the films to beat in this year’s awards competitions. It is an account, seemingly as truthful as a movie can be, of the pursuit (to the death, as we all know) of Osama bin Laden. The film was directed by the gifted Kathryn Bigelow and written by Mark Boal, both of whom scored a deserved success with 2009’s “The Hurt Locker,” which won best picture, best director and best original screenplay Oscars among many other prizes. So far, I have not seen any negative reviews of “Zero Dark Thirty,” and it is with some reluctance that I’m about to write one.
Basically, I think the critics are reviewing the importance of its topic, rather than inherent quality of the work itself. Some noncritical dubiety has been registered about the very lengthy torture sequence with which the film opens—we’ll get to that a little later—but, for the moment, let’s just confine ourselves to the movie as it is presented.
It focuses on a CIA analyst named Maya, who is played by Jessica Chastain. We meet her in the opening, endless sequence in which an al-Qaida operative is being tortured for information about bin Laden’s whereabouts, among other things. She’s new to this stuff, so she winces a little bit at the very rough (and humiliating) treatment. But not for long. She gets with the program in a hurry. Throughout, Chastain plays this character with an icy chill. This, obviously, is a conscious choice on her part, and, of course, Bigelow’s. It’s daring, certainly, but, it seems to me, disastrously distancing. Maya, god knows, doesn’t have to be a babe, but she doesn’t have to be an automaton, either. This may be reality, but it’s not dramatic.
After the torture sequence, the film settles down to a kind of pattern. We see a master shot of some exotic locale. We move down to street level, where people exchange bits of information that we are led to believe bring us marginally closer to discovering bin Laden’s location (the movie covers roughly a decade in what feels like real time). Every so often a bomb is detonated, in violation of Alfred Hitchcock’s basic rule about explosives. The old master held that a bomb is just a rude shock, a meaningless surprise, unless the audience knows it’s there and the characters in the film do not—so we have rooting interest, helpless for us to achieve, as we want to warn the movie’s people of the impending disaster.
Well, OK, “Zero Dark Thirty” is not an exercise in Hitchcockian suspense, but still I think his basic rule applies no matter what the genre. More significantly, you have to wonder what this movie means to be. Spy story? Adventure epic? Or a rather glum account of how bureaucratic turtles sometimes win certain races. To me, it is a plodding story of people stumbling around, looking for elusive clues that finally lead them—yes, of course—to that deadly raid on bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, which takes up the last half hour of this two-and-a-half-hour film. It is a well-managed sequence as is most of the movie.
That is to say, the carefully detailed raid expertly matches everything we already know about it and adds to our knowledge many details we may have missed in the extensive press coverage of the event. The excitement of filmmaking, as we watch it unfold, carries us past the inconvenient fact that we already know how this foray ends—as an unabated triumph for American arms. And it gives “Zero Dark Thirty” a legitimately cinematic rationale for its existence.
But still I wonder. This film is, no less than “Lincoln” for convenient example, historicism at play. In a broad sense, we know how any movie (or book or play) dealing with historical circumstances, recent or long ago, “comes out.” But the fact is that a distance of, say, almost 150 years lends a certain enchantment to a subject. If a film is made with care, which mostly means with attention to detail, it is bound to give us information we did not have—if only in the tone of a voice, the drape of a costume, the odd, telling anecdote—or Tommy Lee Jones shredding the scenery. Thereby, it pleases our curiosity. We emerge from it with the feeling that our time has not been wasted, that we have learned something at least moderately interesting about the past, something that we can, if you will, “use” when our thoughts stray toward the history, which is always mysterious, never really settled. (If it could be, there would be no need for historians to keep rewriting, “reinterpreting” it.)
1 2 NEXT PAGE >>>
More Below the AdAdvertisement
TAGS: abbottabad al qaida cia jessica chastain kathryn bigelow mark boal osama bin laden pakistan torture zero dark thirty Related Entries
The Shameful Exploitation of Bradley Manning_120_83.jpg)
Court: CIA Tortured Wrongly Detained Terror Suspect
The Trials of Bradley Manning
Do Americans Deserve to See These Secret Documents? 
Email to a friend Get truth delivered to
your inbox every week.
Previous item: Understanding Economics in Plain EnglishNew and Improved Comments
If you have trouble leaving a comment, review this help page. Still having problems? Let us know. If you find yourself moderated, take a moment to review our comment policy.
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.
Get Truthdig in your inbox
Newsletter
Become a Fan
Follow Us
Subscribe
#donation_div {display:none;}.popup {background:#FFF; border:1px solid #333; padding:1px;}.popup-header {height:65px; padding: 30px 40px 10px 50px;}.popup-header h2 {margin:0; padding:0; font-size:18px; float:left;}.popup-header .close-link {float:right; font-size:11px;}.popup-body {padding: 20px 70px 20px 50px;}a {color: #990000;}CloseGive the gift of independent journalism.
Support Truthdig by making a donation of at least $25 in someone's name, and we'll send him or her a signed letter of appreciation from our publisher.
With your support, we've been able to pay writers such as Chris Hedges, Col. Ann Wright, Mr. Fish and Nomi Prins.
We've sent reporters around the world, from Afghanistan to Cairo to Cuba.
Thanks to you, our mission to find and publish a range of insightful opinion and analysis from a progressive point of view continues.
Support Truthdig
HOME|Digs|Reports|Arts & Culture|Uncovered|Ear to the Ground|A/V Booth|CartoonsTags|Bazaar|Podcast|About Us|Contact Us|User Agreement|Privacy Policy|FAQ: Comments and Moderation | Google+ Google+
A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.© 2012 Truthdig, LLC. All rights reserved. Web site development by Hop Studios
View the Original article
0 comments:
Post a Comment