Zero Dark Thirty: Smart and Gripping
I watched Zero Dark Thirty with trepidation. Ordering Osama bin Laden’s death and playing golf are probably the only actions that Barack Obama has taken these last four years that haven’t made this country less free and less prosperous. I was worried the Oscar-winning team of director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal would use the story of the hunt for bin Laden to hagiographize this mediocre and reactionary president. I was worried that that was why the picture was getting such good reviews.
But Bigelow and Boal turn out to be bigger than that and better. The two and a half hour film does contain one scene in which a White House official says, in effect, “The president is a thoughtful, analytical man who won’t pull the trigger quickly because he doesn’t want to make the same mistake George W. Bush made with the WMD in Iraq.” That’s the sort of political reading we expect from Hollywood, and Bigelow and Boal make sure to get it in.
But the rest of the movie is a deadpan tribute to the intelligence agents and Navy Seals who slow by slow tracked this bad man down and sent him to meet a Maker very unlike the one he was expecting. Indeed, some could see the overall film as a reprimand to a president who took so much credit for what was clearly the work of men and women laboring through two administrations. Plus the movie graphically depicts how that work involved interrogation techniques that Obama ultimately prohibited — a prohibition which clearly hobbled the search.
But hey, this isn’t the New York Times, which gives good reviews to films it agrees with politically and bad reviews to films it disagrees with. This is me, who tries to treat them fairly no matter which side they’re on. And Zero Dark Thirty is gripping for its entire running time, exciting during the final mission, well-constructed and well-directed throughout. The performances are uniformly excellent with standout work from Jason Clarke and the always superb Jennifer Ehle (and yes, that is the curly-haired darling who starred in the best-ever adaptation of Pride and Prejudice).
So all in all: one of the better movies of the year. A powerful depiction of an important event.
One more political note. Some politicians are griping because the film tells the truth about the fact that important information was gained through “enhanced interrogation techniques.” These politicians are not only liars themselves but wish to be the source of lies in others. There’s clearly a lot of ficitonalization in this story, but that’s not part of it. The idea that enhanced interrogation didn’t work is more fictional than anything in the film — or in any film. That doesn’t make such techniques morally right, of course, but let’s at least have the debate honestly. Oh wait, sorry, I was talking about politicians. Forget I mentioned that honesty stuff. What was I thinking?
“You’re going to let the Russian ambassador see the Big Board? The Big Board, Mr. President???”
The problem is that the information wasn’t gained through “enhanced” interrogation. It also glosses over any debate internally about the use of enhanced interrogation. It builds up Maya as some protegee intelligence wiz kid recruited from High School who was active in the enhanced interrogations that didn’t take place. The real analyst was against a raid and for a B-2 strike. So the movie, while it may be a great piece of action, is not the story of the raid on Bin Laden’s compound.
OK, wot’s a zero dark thirty?
Zero Dark Thirty is US military slang for the small hours of the night.
I recall it spoken as: “Oh-Dark-Thirty”.
Yes, it is “Oh-dark thirty”.
This is a reference to the wee hours of the morning, normally termed like “oh-two hundred” or “oh-three thirty”
Some good stuff in your post. The torture issue for example I would encourage you to discuss some more. As for killing Osama bin Laden being an important event, you are a bit off base. Ignoring the interminably long time it took to accomplish and the many squandered opportunities to capture or kill him; it’s enough to say that killing that guy doesn’t mean much at all. Not really. Anyone taking credit for such a meaningless exercise needs help from Sister Mary Elephant. Nothing has changed, terrorists are on the ascendant and the U.S. is still losing all of those fun, never ending, idiotic wars on the dark side of the moon. You know, where the morlocks live. Morlocks are kinda like that honey badger, they just don’t give a sh-t. Why we continue to care how they live, if you call it living, still mystifies me. Leave them to their tribal warfare, dirt worshiping, sodomizing bad selves and let us get back to making bacon. But, that’s just my opinion.
Of course
ObamaOsama is seen as a hero in the Muslim world. It will be interesting to see if there is any reaction to a film which spikes the football on his assassination. I doubt the film makers are the heroic types who made it out of Churchillian solidarity with the likes of Theo van Gogh.This is an awful lot of crowing and chest thumping over what was a simple armed intrusion and murder. I don’t see any glory for anyone involved in it and the loss of the stealth helicopter really is embarrassing. I don’t see how this operation was more than a ‘hit’ using uniformed executioners. It really should not have been publicized at all. Decent men would not glorify in it.
You’re right, and that’s what makes it a drama.
First he had to be found, and that turned out to be something of a challenge, though one could quibble about that.
And then there is the constant paradox that we *did* treat it like an individual aberration calling for an individual solution, non-judicial murder, when the proper solution would be to drop a large nuke on his head pretty much WHEREVER it happened to be.
From such things, drama is made.
It wasn’t murder, it was a fully sanctioned retaliatory act by our military against a foe whose stated aim in life was the destruction of the United States and it’s Mideast allies. Conducting the planning of and slamming airliners into buildings is murder.
As for the chopper…shit happens…
Mr. Klavan, your views on The Culture aside (I admit I haven’t yet seen the movie), could you please provide evidence, citations, your arguments or at least an anecdote or two to back up your assertion that,
and especially that it is,
(I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt regarding the “in any film” comment
).
Numerous commenter, both inside The Beltway and inside agency have testified to the fact that, in the case of the hunt for OBL, this sort of torture was not instrumental, let alone elemental in providing information necessary to complete the task, and that the filmmakers fudged a bit in presenting it as if it did. (here’s a good, even-handed summary discussion, via Chris Hayes and guests http://nbcnews.to/RqhKCw and also, Glenn Greenwald’s article http://bit.ly/Vuq41i).
Do you have information the rest of America doesn’t, regarding the efficacy of torture?, because short of Dick Cheney, Jose Rodriguez and a few others involved in approving and conducting the torture itself, few are claiming that it is used for serious and fruitful information gathering by intelligence agencies. More often this “enhanced interrogation” is simply a crude and painful tool for behavior modification or revenge. We water boarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times! (http://bit.ly/KSMwiki). I guess we showed him–um…I mean, we must have gotten some very good, actionable intelligence out of him!
Well the first to mention the Courier, re Bowden, was Ould Slahi, then Quahtani,
both were subject to escalating level of interrogations, when all the ‘right people insisted they were neglible figures, they were both close enough to the nexus, that they knew Al Kuwaiti, without that name, one couldn’t really identify
where Bin Laden was, through the kind of intercepts, that Risen also decried,
I have not seen the film. I recall that the loss of that stealthed helicopter bothered me. And to blow it up struck me as stupid. Better to bring in a Skycrane, with armed escort and physically haul it away in one piece.