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The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

‘Thirty’ Stirs and Disturbs

SONY PICTURES ZERO TO HERO|  Jessica Chastain won a Golden Globe for her role.
SONY PICTURES
ZERO TO HERO| Jessica Chastain won a Golden Globe for her role.

4.5/5 Stars

Given all of the controversy surrounding Zero Dark Thirty, it may be surprising that the film was released in Washington, D.C., just last week. In a December letter to acting CIA Director Michael Morell, Sens. Dianne Feinstein, Carl Levin and John McCain — all leaders of Senate committees on intelligence and armed services — questioned what they saw as a too-close relationship between the agency and the movie’s filmmakers. They also criticized “the film’s clear implication that information obtained during or after the use of the CIA’s coercive interrogation techniques played a critical role” in finding Osama bin Laden. According to Reuters, screenwriter MarkBoal and director Kathryn Bigelow — the pair behind 2009’s The Hurt Locker, the Academy Award winner for Best Picture — are being investigated by a Senate committee for their communication with the agency.
The film does have a complex relationship with torture. On one hand, the torture scenes are extremely unsettling, and there clearly exists some sort of empathy for the terrorist Ammar, who is humiliated by a CIA agent in the first few scenes. On the other, the information gleaned from “coercive interrogation techniques” is used to both create and corroborate an eventually correct thesis on how to find bin Laden.
That the film was made so soon after the murder of bin Laden makes it clear that this movie is meant to serve as the definitive historical account of the events it depicts. The way Boal and Bigelow choose to tell the story, however, occasionally gets in the way of this goal. The decision to have large jumps in time from key event to key event makes things seem as if they go much more quickly than they actually did, which undermines the unending, dogged determination of Maya (Jessica Chastain), the CIA officer whose entire life revolves around the pursuit of bin Laden. This — her defining characteristic — and her ambiguous reaction to her eventual success are made less effective because of the pacing. In addition, the movie revolves as much around Maya as it does around bin Laden, and many have complained that this focus downplays the role of others and assigns more responsibility to her than is historically accurate.
What these decisions do, though, is make Zero Dark Thirty a masterful film. The time jumps may downplay the seeming futility of the search for bin Laden, but truly being able to capture this on film would be nearly impossible. Instead, they increase the tension that Zero Dark Thirty uses to full effect; especially notable is the meeting with a potential mole at a CIA operating base in Afghanistan. While the different scenes are strung along at a rapid pace, the scenes themselves run slowly enough to build a large amount of anticipation. The raid on the Abbottabad compound, for example, lasts for more than a half-hour and is a filmmaking marvel in its masterful pacing and craftsmanship. In a Hollywood rife with over-the-top gunplay and cartoonish action sequences, the cold, brutal efficiency of both Seal Team Six and the filmmaking itself come across as shocking. It is, by my measure, the best scene in any movie in recent memory.
The senators’ criticism of the production of Zero Dark Thirty may be legitimate — it’s impossible to defend the potential leak of national security secrets to Hollywood — but that should not mean that the film itself should be maligned. The politics surrounding the movie are what I and others believe got Bigelow injuriously shut out of an Oscar nomination for best director (effectively, taking her movie out of the race for best picture and handing the award to Lincoln), and this is a shame. Masterfully crafted, Zero Dark Thirty transcends political controversy that would bog down a lesser movie.
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