I had an anomalous and unique experience while driving home after seeing this film. Throughout the movie I experienced rushes of horror and disbelief, but on the whole I did not feel in the same way I feel during other dramas. I watched the story unfold with a critical eye, was dumbfounded by what I was seeing, and I left. I did not cry which I have a tendency to do when I get overwhelmed. Upon leaving the theater and on my drive home, however, thoughts began buzzing around in my head about the implications of the actions depicted in "Zero Dark Thirty" and what those efforts meant to me. Suddenly, I had an upswell of emotions followed by nausea. I pulled over to the side of the road because I started retching. I did not vomit, but the tears finally came. What happened is beyond me, but I do know that I have been profoundly moved by this movie, the very best film of 2012.
This is the story of the largest manhunt in human history, the search for Osama bin Laden as told through the lens of a CIA agent named Maya (Jessica Chastain), a girl recruited out of high school and brought to the Middle East to engage in the hunt. We are taken through a decade of time, from September 11 through the eventual capture and killing of the number one most wanted man in the Western world. It is a complex, seemingly endless story of the this woman's obsession with his capture, and although I cannot be sure how much we can accept that bin Laden's ultimate fate was decided by Maya alone, the movie definitely makes the case that most, if not all praise, can be given to her tireless efforts.
There is a lot of controversy surrounding the making of this film. Kathryn Bigelow (the Oscar-winning director of "The Hurt Locker") placed a statement at the beginning of the movie explaining that it was based off of first-hand accounts, though it does not specify from whom or for what purpose. There are people within the government who would try to get you to disregard this film based on the inaccuracies of certain events (which I will detail), but there are two reasons why I would say that that is all the more reason to trust Bigelow: 1) I do not disbelieve that the accounts given were intended to harm or mislead the public, and although we do not know who gave the statements on which this film is based, the film is too painstakingly detailed for us not to believe them. 2) The United States government, when asked about the film, stated that it was inaccurate in numerous ways. Normally when they are asked about how their actions have been portrayed on screen they respond with a brief and solid "No comment". Their interest must have been piqued and the unusualness of their response lends me to believe that if anything, what we are seeing is too accurate.
This mentioned, let's talk about the film.
Chastain is brilliant as Maya, a beautiful, whip-smart young woman who learns the ropes fast and seemingly has nerves equivalent to any uniformed man conducting "enhanced interrogation". I would say she has nerves of steel, but Chastain's glower could melt metal, and then some. Her superior calls her crazy after ten years of hunting, and perhaps she is mad, but Chastain's performance delivers something that keeps her in a realm where we not only sympathize with her, but we hate others for not attacking her lead with the same amount of vigor.
This seemingly unimportant lead--a brief mention of a courier by a detainee--sparks Maya's decade-long quest which gets several members of her unit killed, including a bomb in which six CIA members died, the largest single attack in their history. Through her setbacks and the increasing lack of interest from other agents whose sights turned to more pressing matters at the home front, Maya kept on with this one untried link, which eventually led her to discovering the compound in Pakistan where bin Laden had been in hiding.
Bigelow's direction is astonishing. For two and a half hours the film is an unrelenting masterpiece of tension. Much of the story's action, particularly in the second act, takes place in a CIA outpost where Maya conducts her research, pouring over photographs, files, videotapes and relentlessly working to keep her colleagues on board with her work. But never once does this become dull. In fact, never once does this become unsuspenseful. We know the end of the saga, but I have never been so interested in watching a woman read papers, not knowing what she is looking for.
The film begins and ends with two of the best directed scenes of any movie this year. The latter is the one we know--the payoff, as it were. In almost real time, the audience follows the Navy S.E.A.L. Team 6 onto the compound, where it is raided, room by room, without music and often through the eyes of the soldiers. It is a monument to Bigelow's skills and twenty minutes where I could not have torn my eyes away from the screen had the room been on fire.
The former is arguably the reason why Bigelow blew her chances at the Oscars this year. We seen very graphically depictions of what I labeled above as "enhanced interrogation". I hope you can extrapolate that this is a cruel euphemism for "torture". Maya is brought into a tent in the middle of the desert with a fellow CIA agent named Dan (a terrific and terrifying Jason Clarke). In the middle of this tent, suspended by rope is a Taliban member whom we will meet at varying times through the first hour of the film, being subjected to waterboarding, music torture (I'm not sure what else one would call it), sleep and food deprivation, and eventually being placed in a box the size of a small suitcase. Dan says "Everybody breaks, bro. It's biology." Dan isn't our friend and we know it, yet he is hypnotic. I must say that now that I have seen a dramatization of waterboarding I sincerely wish I hadn't. I can imagine many forms of enhanced interrogation, but that is nothing short of torture.
These depictions are what the government has been so angry and dismissive about, so I have little doubt that they are accurate. I am not sure what Bigelow and writer Mark Boal imagined what would happen when they made this film, but perhaps getting their attention was enough. If nothing else, it certainly got mine.
"Zero Dark Thirty" is an incendiary, breathtaking work that demands your immediate focus from the start. It is a movie that begs to be seen, thought about and discussed, though unfortunately I think it will largely go unnoticed by the masses. Bigelow has surpassed herself, probably making the movie of her career--several careers for that matter. The film is enraging, but made me feel oddly patriotic, which I normally am not. I think now that perhaps I felt ill after watching this movie because I was torn between the pleasure of seeing a man killed, known for an event I can barely remember, and the fact that I was seeing any man killed, plotted and planned for by my government for a decade. I felt something new after watching this movie, and something very strong. Perhaps it was the relief of seeing tens years of news reports, xenophobia, airport security checks, and Westboro funeral demonstrations finally reaching some sort of tangible conclusion. All was not for naught. But then again, maybe it was.
Pontificating aside, if you see only one film this year, make it this one.
4/4
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