"Zero Dark Thirty:" Perception, reality, perception again, and "the art defense"

"Tastes great!" "Less filling!" Kyle Chandler and Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty

I have made some remarks in social media concerning my critical objections to some writing by Glenn Greenwald concerning the movie Zero Dark Thirty. Much of the response to these sideline snipings has been along the lines of “put up or shut up.” My official review for MSN Movies has yet to be posted, and I would prefer to launch my arguments pertaining to Greenwald’s observations using that review as a platform, but it seems the die is cast. I cannot stress this enough: I have no expectation of changing Greenwald’s mind, earning his respect, or persuading his most loyal readers, what have you. But I have said that I think he’s lied about the movie. So what I’m going to address here, eventually, is why I think that. I ask any reader’s indulgence, as things are apt to get a little potentially laborious. It helps if you’ve already seen the film, is another thing I can’t stress enough.

Let me lay out how I look at Zero Dark Thirty. First of all, I see it entirely as a fiction. The great journalist Jane Mayer, in her New Yorker blog post objecting to the movie, cites its title card that says the story is “based on first-hand accounts of actual events.” She goes on to argue, “If there is an expectation of accuracy, it is set up by the filmmakers themselves.” Leaving aside for the moment the extent to which Zero Dark Thirty depicts events accurately (and even here it is arguable that the accounts of events from which Boal and Bigelow took off are entirely different from any number of official or unofficial constructions of the bin Laden pursuit narrative), when I’m watching a film in which actors are performing scripted actions in front of a very deliberately set-up camera, my takeaway from a title card such as the one Mayer cites is centered on “based on.” I am looking at a fiction, period. And it is from experiencing the work as a fiction that I draw my conclusions. (To tell you the truth, I personally never had much invested in the idea of bringing bin Laden to “justice” or not. Which is not to say that I did not take the 9/11 attacks somewhat personally, but I just never believed that bin Laden’s capture or death could do much to repair the damage of the attacks. Looked at another way, I didn’t believe that either bin Laden’s capture or death would have the effect of having made him “pay” for the 9/11 attacks.) So when a pundit tells me “Don’t Trust Zero Dark Thirty,” my response is, “Don’t worry, I don’t; at least not in the way that you are so kindly concerned about.” I’m not forming my impression of history around it, no. I deal with it as a discrete story and, when forming a critique of it, try to look at the way it’s told. 

Second, when I’m looking at, and trying to figure out, a movie, that’s what I look at: the movie. Not interviews with the filmmakers. “It’s the singer, not the song,” the Rolling Stones once opined, and while in a specific way they might have been right what is missed is that the singer makes the song. Trust the tale, not the teller is a pretty hard and fast rule for me, and if Zero Dark Thirty cannot achieve its coherence and /or comprehensibility as a work entirely on its own, then it’s probably not even worth discussing. It would be disingenuous of me to claim that Greenwald and Mayer are playing “gotcha” in their citations of Boal and Bigelow and the varied inconsistencies that have emerged in their accounts of their methods and intentions. Those inconsistencies are there. But I didn’t go into the screening of the film carrying those with me.

And what I saw when I watched to movie was a very well-constructed narrative that, to my mind, was concerned with knowing and with the action taken as a result of knowing, or “knowing.” I saw a movie that subverted a lot of expectations concerning viewer identification and empathy, including the use of a lead character who in a conventional good-guy-versus-bad-guy scenario would raise objections to torture but who instead, a few queasy looks and pauses aside, rolls with it as an information gathering policy. In 1976 Robert Christgau wrote this about the first Ramones record: “I love this record--love it--even though I know these boys flirt with images of brutality (Nazi especially) in much the same way ‘Midnight Rambler’ flirts with rape. You couldn't say they condone any nasties, natch--they merely suggest that the power of their music has some fairly ominous sources and tap those sources even as they offer the suggestion. This makes me uneasy. But my theory has always been that good rock and roll should damn well make you uneasy.” I agree with Bob in all these particulars, and even more so if you substitute  “good art” for “good rock and roll.” Zero Dark Thirty made me uneasy. Greenwald’s evocations of amorality are not entirely inapt. There’s a sense in which the film at least skirts outright amorality by refusing to assign any definite values to the various Xes and Ys in the equation that makes up its narrative. Its perspective, from where I sit, is sometimes flat to the point of affectlessness. There is an almost cynical mordancy in its depiction of events, and this to me is entirely clear from the film’s visual grammar (not to mention the entirely deliberate lack of ostensible multi-dimensionality in some of its characters, which moves Greenwald to make an unfavorable comparison of Jessica Chastain’s Maya to Claire Danes’ “let-me-show-you-my-tic-collection” Carrie on Homeland, which is pretty funny). But Greenwald sees none of this, and insists: “There is zero doubt, as so many reviewers have said, that the standard viewer will get the message loud and clear: that we found and killed bin Laden because we tortured The Terrorists."

I have neither the inclination or the mental space to expound on the sheer undifferentiated condescending shittiness behind the phrase “standard viewer.” What I would like to do, then, is make my own direct defense of what Greenwald dismisses as “the art excuse.” But I don’t think I can make a truly persuasive one, or at least not one that will persuade Greenwald or his most sympathetic readers, because it comes down to a fundamental disagreement on what Greenwald and myself actually saw in the movie. That is, he believes the movie ought to be held accountable for “political implications” (he calls them “implications” after devoting a considerable amount of verbiage on the insistence that the movie’s pro torture, C.I.A.-lionizing message is spelled out in neon). I believe that those implications as he describes them are not there. Sometimes they are not there as he describes them. (As one point, as an aside, he shows maybe more of his hand than is entirely prudent, writing, “Nobody is ever heard talking about the civilian-destroying violence brought to the world by the U.S.” The why-isn’t-this-movie-behaving-as-I-would-like-it-to whinge is the most reliable of philistine giveaways, but it has an extra dimension here.) And sometimes they are not there at all.

It’s tough to make this argument, or at least make it persuasively, without access to actual images from the film, or at least without my having made detailed notes on certain images, although having the images to display might be really useful. Then again, maybe not, because in his descriptions of the movie Greenwald does tend to shy away from specifics with respect to film grammar. Perhaps he’s doing visually literate people a favor, given how he handles other descriptions. I don’t consider him all that hot in terms of specifics regarding characterization. For instance, he writes, “Almost every Muslim and Arab in the film is a villainous, one-dimensional cartoon figure: dark, seedy, violent, shadowy, menacing, and part of a Terrorist network.” According to my notes and memory, there are not very many Muslim/Arab characters in the film, and almost all of them are detainees. Are they dark? Well, they are darkly complected. Are they seedy? They don’t look so great, but that’s because they’re locked in huts and cages and not given a lot of amenities. (There’s one guy who’s bribed with a Lamborghini, but I’d say he’s more tacky than seedy. You call something “seedy” and I think Akim Tamiroff in Alphaville.)  Are they violent? As Greenwald actually points out elsewhere, mostly they have violence inflicted upon them, and it is not pleasant to watch. I myself thought the first detainee depicted to be a pretty sympathetic figure. Not necessarily admirable, but more human, or “human” than Jason Clarke’s swaggering, torturing character in that scene. Again, maybe it’s just me. Mayer cites a scene in the film in which “an elderly detainee explains that he wants to cooperate with the U.S. because he ‘doesn’t want to be tortured again.’” I am sorry that I do not have the name of the actor who played this character at hand, because I found him rather poignant.

I would be remiss though if I did not mention the notes of Stuart Klawans, film critic for The Nation, which Greenwald cites. Writing of the torture scenes Klawans says “the movie juices the audience on the adrenaline generated by these physical confrontations,” an assertion that’s arguable at best; then he goes on to state “and offers vicariously the sense of power enjoyed by the person holding the leash.” And I say that part is just plain wrong, and it’s here particularly that it would be useful to be able to do a shot-by-shot breakdown of the torture scenes. The first sequence begins with a shot from the back of the room, with the detainee hanging there by ropes. A door opens, three people, presumably men, enter noisily, and all wearing masks save the bearded one. The film grammar is such that the viewer flinches on entry; the sight of the detainee hanging there alone establishes his helplessness, the entry of the figures establishes threat. The torture scenes continue in this fashion and never ONCE do they invite the viewer to enjoy either holding or pulling the leash. I cannot speak to how Klawans, a seasoned and perceptive viewer, came to these conclusions, but I insist they are incorrect.

Whether or not the instances of torture actually happened, which for the purpose of assessing this fictional film does not concern me, or whether they “worked” and that their efficacy makes them right (a rather knottier question that I think the movie does want us to consider, but not with respect to forming a policy theory) I share my friend Tom Carson’s view about the function of the torture scenes: that rather than endorsing the barbarity, the picture makes the viewer in a sense complicit with it. A whole other can of worms. Where Jane Mayer complains that she “had trouble enjoying the movie,” I respectfully submit that perhaps the movie’s agenda is not entirely about enjoyment. “Maybe I care too much about all of this to enjoy it with popcorn,” she writes later. Implying that admirers of the film probably do not care enough. I submit, sadly, that if you think the only thing movies are useful for is enjoyable visual distraction while eating popcorn, maybe we don’t have too much to say to each other. But it’s easier to run this particular agenda if you only see Zero Dark Thirty as a product of “the entertainment industry.” 

This ties in to the way that Greenwald lies about the movie. Here’s how. After laying out what he believes to be “the art excuse” and then laying out why it is wanting, which has something to do with his having gone on record as defended Homeland. He insists that any argument that the movie should not be “held accountable” for its politics is “pretentious, pseudo-intellectual, and ultimately amoral.” Give the man credit; he covers his bases, even if he declines to detail just how the movie ought to be “held accountable.”

Greenwald then, finally, avers that the art excuse doesn’t apply anyway because “to demand that this movie be treated as ‘art’ is to expand that term beyond any real recognition.” I give Greenwald credit: he stacks his rhetorical deck even more thickly than Bill O’Reilly does. (I was once on O’Reilly’s show, and he was laying in to Parker and Stone [this was before they came out as libertarians I guess] on account of them being “bad for the kids,” and he said to me “Come on, all these guys care about is making money, right?” which, you know, how are you supposed to answer that? You can’t say they’re NOT interested in making money, but once you step into that pile of shit that Bill’s placed in front of you there’s no way you’re going to get to any other, and actually salient, points.) I mean, start with the word “demand” which opens up a whole can of worms with respect to taking offensive action on the film’s behalf, and that as such is an affront to the obviously manifestly right-thinking Greenwald perspective. Well, as Robin Wood once said, a film is either a work of art or it is worthless. I don’t “demand” that the movie be treated as art; I just treat it as art, my own self. (I treat the first Ramones record as art, too.) I’m gonna leave the rest of that straw-man trap alone. Anyway, I’m really not concerned with what Glenn Greenwald thinks is art.

Greenwald continues: “This film is Hollywood schlock.” Again: not much to say to that, beyond “No it’s not,” and then, of course, and again, you’re already dead. Like, if I said “Glenn Greenwald’s writing isn’t ‘activist journalism,’ it’s whey-faced self-aggrandizing puling self-righteousness that holds everything and everybody save Greenwald and his claque to an impossible moral standard,” what could Greenwald propose in response, save “Says you, you moral monster?”  Am I right?

But wait. Greenwald continues: “The brave crusaders slay the Evil Villains, and everyone cheers.” (I’m surprised he didn’t capitalize the “c” in “Crusaders:” his complaint goes back a LONG way.) And that is the lie. Of course his rhetoric is such that some may argue that I stretch in calling it a lie, but a lie is what I call it. The movie moment that his slaying-evil-villain-and-audience-cheering assertion conjures up for the “standard” viewer would be something like Hans Gruber’s fall from the near-top of Nakatomi Plaza in Die Hard, or Aziz being blown up by his own missile at the climax of True Lies or Terry Molloy getting the shit kicked out of him at the end of On The Waterfront oh wait…scratch that last one. You get the idea. Now, those who have not seen the film may want to just stop reading around here if they’d like, but… I don’t believe that it represents a “spoiler” to reveal that the raid on the place where bin Laden is living, that is, the movie’s climax, represents anything even resembling a “evil villains slain” cinematic crescendo. Save for Alexander Desplat’s musical score, which is moody and ominous and very low-key rather than building-to-the-triumphalist moment, this is the scene in which the movie affects to purport its most “realistic” perspective. Much of it is depicted in forbiddingly lowlight, there’s a lot of stuff through night-vision goggles. The dominant sense is of organized activity that creates chaos that is then reigned in, so to speak, via slaughter. With the exception of one or two armed resisters, the “Evil Villains” who get shot down don’t even have a chance. Unless the viewer himself has a higher than average understanding of the details of how the raid unfolded, the viewer doesn’t even know which of the men shot down was bin Laden until the SEALS reconvene on the ground floor of the compound and put two and two together and fetch the body bag. In the meantime the viewer has been treated to depictions of fearful women and cowering children being herded about by shouting Americans. Where anyone can pull “everyone cheers” out of this mess is beyond me, but maybe if I see it with a paying audience I will find out. (I do not know what kind of audience Greenwald watched it with.)

So yes, I insist that in this specific instance Greenwald’s characterization of the movie is a lie. It is a purposeful lie, designed to get his reader to believe that people defending Zero Dark Thirty on artistic grounds are, at best, tired fools (“Perhaps film critics are forced to watch so many shoddy Hollywood films that their expectations are very low and they are easily pleased,” he muses with exemplary disinterest, before pulling the now standard “I’ve got a friend who works in the film industry who says I’m totally right” trick) and at worst, moral monsters. I suppose then that I can be forgiven for taking his puling whey-faced jibes a little personally. As for his incredibly ignorant and misleading summation of the critical controversy concerning Leni Riefenstahl, all I can say is that life is too short.

UPDATE: My review for MSN Movies, which I filed before even Frank Bruni's column appeared, is now up. I stand by it. Manohla Dargis makes some salient points beautifully, as she always does, in her NYT review. The great Larry Gross has some provocative perceptions at Film Comment's site. And Devin Faraci shows me more grace and kindness than I've ever shown him in commending my work in a piece about the film for Badass Digest, and I am grateful for his giving me a necessary lesson in humility, but more important, I think his perceptions on the film and his detailed descriptions combine for a wholly admirable piece of criticism. I thank him.  Scott Tobias' AV Club review is valuable. Also, I am reminded that David Poland, commendably, got the ball rolling from our end with this piece. 

UPDATE 2: Ignatiy Vishnevetsky's piece at MUBI's Notebook is remarkable. 

Comments

[Walter]

The only difference b/w the show 24 and the movie ZDT is that many, if not most, of my students will say the latter is a "true" story. But, hey, both the show and movie have protagonists that are "troubled" by torture. So that makes both brave and insightful and complex. Such utter bullshit.

[Walter]

Let's see: Taxi Driver: Fiction. Catcher in the Rye: Fiction. The Bible: maybe the most overrated work of fiction in the history of man. Again, if MH can't see the difference b/w them and a movie that claims to be journalism, a new kind of film based on the most in-depth research, then I suggest he/she stick with Michael Bay.

Finally, I can't seriously take any argument that proclaims Hurt Locker wasn't praised for being accurate. Just read any glowing review. Again, what color is the sky in your world?

[Julian]

I was aware of this debate before walking into the theater tonight to watch the film, and I kept that awareness during my viewing. This is what actually happens in the film:

The first dramatized scene in the film is the brutal torture/interrogation of a prisoner.

A few scenes later, but still in the first act, the key info that sets off the chain of narrative events that lead directly to the eventual success of the mission at hand is attained from this same prisoner. This takes place over a nice lunch. Before this lunch it's made clear that the prisoner has been excessively sleep deprived and will be vulnerable to concession. Also during this lunch, and before the info is attained, more torture is threatened.

Period. Those are the events as they occur in the beginning of the film. I think what I find most frustrating about this debate is that some have construed that the film doesn't posit torture as being the key tool in the attainment of the key lead. The threat of torture that occurs in that scene and the sleep deprivation torture that occurred right before that scene are effectively just the good cop section of an interrogation process built around torture. That is a literal event in the plot substantiated by multiple lines of dialogue and screen action, and in my eyes isn't up for debate. It just is what it is: The film clearly paints torture as being a key component to the cause and effect of the eventual success of the mission. From there I think Mayer and Greenwald's arguments have a foundation to build on that is valid.

I have other opinions about the unavoidable intersection of cultural thoughts derived from both art and politics and the aesthetic/formal just-a-piece-of-art value of this film in particular (not much), but most of all it just seems insane to me for anyone to say ZERO DARK THIRTY isn't clearly positing torture as a (if not THE) key component in the eventual success of the goal of the characters. From there, argue as you may.

[Zach]

Re. the Updates - thoughts on Brody's piece? It's kind of a doozy, but a good doozy, for Brody, I thought. He doesn't mention Greenwald or Mayer, but he does confirm some aspects of their critiques.

[Glenn Kenny]

Here's the link to Richard's piece: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2012/12/richard-brody-on-the-deceptive-emptiness-of-zero-dark-thirty.html

[partisan]

Klawans' review is now available on line: http://www.thenation.com/article/171594/glamour-suits

David Thomson's review can be found here, for the time being at least: http://www.tnr.com/articles/film

[Michael Webster]

I'm late getting back to this. One of the better internet arguments I've seen. Many good points made rationally and with respect to others with different viewpoints. It's not a movie that I ever would have desired to see, but this debate is interesting, so I have read a lot of reviews. Here I sin, having not seen the movie, but the reviews are diverse enough to suggest that the film presents significantly more complexity than cartoonish propaganda. Apparently it's such that different people see different things in it. Perhaps not, and I won't be judging for myself. Still, the arguments surrounding it are fascinating and give insight to larger issues.

Take Comrade Walter's comments. Sure, it's not nice to label someone like that, but he's earned the moniker and it's an effective shorthand rebuttal to his, and Greenwald's arguments which are as old as they are elitist. The purpose of art should be the socio-political enlightenment of regular people. Art is bad if it's constructed in such a way that regular people might take the wrong message from it. From there it's a short intellectual step to the concept of a vanguard.

Sorry if I'm missing the context or intent of this sentence I'm about to quote from CW. My take on this conversation doesn't depend on it, but if it is as straight forward as it seems, it bolsters my point:

"Pseudo-artists can't have it both ways: Either "art" is incredibly powerful or it is just a pleasant pastime."

That's the kind of Manichean thinking that is such a staple of the totalitarian mindset. There is no either/or. Art can be incredibly powerful. It can be a pleasant passtime. What it can be is only limited by your imagination. And one of the things that sucks most about humanity is that those with the most limited imaginations all too often want to impose their limits on the rest of us. Seems like it would be against some law of the universe, but it's true that those who travel as far as it is possible to go either to the left or right end up in essentially the same place. And when they get far enough along, art is always seen as a threat from which regular people need to be protected.

[Rob]

Hey, Zach: If you're still reading this, since you claim Greenwald has mentioned his support of Bush's wars on his blog, please point out a single example on any of them: Unclaimed Territory, Salon or the Guardian. I'll save you the Google search and tell you you can't. If he had, he would have already launched broadsides (with links, of course) against the people who've reported this fact. But the only rebuttal he offered was that we wrote about in the preface of his first book. And if you don't want to take Glenn's word for it, or mine, knock yourself out. and come back with the proof.

[MDL]

ZDT does not propose that torture directly resulted in the capture of bin Laden. However, torture is alluded to having happened in such a way to terror suspects that it remains enough of a threat that the suspects decide it is best to give info so they won't be tortured again. Therefore the message is that torture can work. Bad message in my view. Especially if it did not work in real life.

Here's the thing. We pretty much know torture was used at black sites by the CIA. What we are told by the CIA is that torture was not used in getting info leading to the capture of bin Laden. The movie plays it many ways trying to cover all [narrative and historical] bases with regards to what may have happened, which may be a mistake and may be incorrect. Bigelow is very smart about movies but maybe not so smart about the affect her message may have on people. I will say I wish the movie had explicitly told us that is was fictionalizing real events. [And by that I mean the story it tells - not just the actors in front of a camera part]. The movie is in no way 'pro torture' but the message it conveys might be historically incorrect. The movie takes itself seriously and therefore I do think the filmmakers owe it to the audience to try and get it right.

[Michael Webster]

Well, the CIA says they didn't use torture to get information. You'd have to be crazy not to believe everything the CIA says, especially when it's about something that could possibly embarrass them, or show them guilty of crimes against humanity.

I had always admired Greenwald before I started paying attention to this issue. The way he obsessively retweets anyone that agrees with him while totally ignoring, if not viciously attacking, any counterargument is bad enough, but he's supposed to be some kind of uber-government watchdog yet his entire argument rests on the assumption that the CIA, yes the CI fucking A, is telling the truth about something that would get them in trouble if true. In this matter at least, Greenwald has made a total ass out of himself and I find it very disheartening that such an egomaniacal retard has been one of the better spokesmen for doing what' s right in the world. I bet someday he pulls a Hitchens and can't lick enough sweat off the balls of some future Dick Cheney, albeit with significantly less than half the élan.

Saw Django Unchained today, btw. Found your revue insightful, but the movie was enjoyable enough. I was never bored for long and it had a few laughs. Far from great art, though I was truly knocked out by Samuel L. Jackson's performance which may actually have been great art. Can't recall hardly ever seeing SLJ play a character other than SLJ, but he sure as hell did it in that movie.

[Yann]

Erin Brockovich for Fascists

I'm unable to judge the film as a whole - it's not out over here - but this trailer supports my worst suspicions of it being a big steaming pile of machorevengepropagandadreck :

"Can I be honest with you? I am baaad news. I'm not your friend, I'm not gonna help you. I'm gonna break you! Any questions?"

"10 years - 2 wars - 1 target"

"Nothing else matters."

I mean, come on, please ...

[Yann]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-kelly/erin-brockovich-for-fasci_b_2334324.html

Link messed up above

[Yann]

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/zero_dark_thirty/trailers/

Link to trailer, sorry

[Glenn Kenny]

I am reminded of a line from "Ted:" "Great story, man, I felt like I was there."

[Jelperman]

I can't wait for Kathryn Bigelow's next movie: "Penn State 30" -a film about how the Nittany Lions won won the Sugar Bowl because Jerry Sandusky raped little boys.

If I want to watch torture porn I'll stick to the "Saw" movies. Chris Kelly was right: Zero Dark Thirty is Erin Brockovich for fascists.

[poseidonian]

Bravo. Just that: bravo.

[Andy]

The link is incorrect (it links to MSN) for the NYT review in the sentence: "Manohla Dargis makes some salient points beautifully, as she always does, in her NYT review."

[Glenn Kenny]

Link now fixed (hopefully). Thanks Andy.

[Karl Miller]

Goodness, okay: Greenwald is a liar. But listen to yourself: it takes far more effort to prove he's lying about the nature of the film than it does to prove the film lies about recent history. Would that you applied that rigor to the story, not your favorite still frame. You can talk about the tones and moods of the film all you like, but its point-by-point plot and story are simply wrong -- and not artfully so. If someone made a film in which, say, Al Gore orchestrated 9/11 ... but they tempered it with affecting tones and moods and scores, you wouldn't be outraged at someone else's outrage over that film's ridiculous lies. Bieglow has plenty of admirable craft, but not art here. And she asks us to pretend past a lot of horseshit along the way. The story is too important for that. It's a bad movie.

Torture is part of the bin Laden story. And so is bureaucratic resistence. But not the way Bigelow structures it. What we get is another maniacal heroine and the absurd moral that one can only stop psychotic behavior with ... more psychotic behavior. None of that is factually, artistically, or emotionally true -- at least not for anyone who actually had to live through this awful decade.

If you're saying that the film's overweening affectlessness and indifference to basic fact is itself some kind of statement about our soul-less prosecution of the war on terror ... knock yourself out. But you must also accept the artistic and historical lies necessary to create such an abject worldview. I don't think the film makes that statement; it think the film is itself a symptom and a product of the numbness to which we've been driven over the years. Who needs it? Especially when there are better stories to tell about bin Laden, torture and Terror?

[Glenn Kenny]

I understand that at this point in the virtual conversation, which is restarting with a boost from Andrew Sullivan, who I hereby thank, much of the commentary is going to new readers getting in their points rather than anything resembling a back-and-forth in which some persuasion or other is possible. But, and I say this not so much in the spirit of provocation so much as a further declaration of principles, if your argument is "the story is too important" for whatever aspect of the treatment you're objecting to, that's where I check out, because honestly, it's like we're not even sharing the same planet any more. The one conviction I share with Kingsley Amis when it comes to art is "Important isn't important."

[Karl Miller]

Okay, Glenn, so the story isn't "important." 9/11, torture, the bin Laden hunt ... away with all that. I would love some back-and-forth on ... everything else. I confess I didn't make it through every page of reader comments, but I wanted to at least reply to your original post.

For what it's worth, I'm not trying to defend Greenwald's aesthetics, such as they are; I just think he's too easy a target and you've tackled the man and not the ball here.

My hunch is Bigelow wanted to include torture in her story but didn't know how, except to imply it's as regrettable as it was necessary. I guess compared to mainstream torture porn in Hollywood, that's an accomplishment, but what a standard! That doesn't add up to tragedy or art in my book; it's too cynical. It also happens to rewrite history along the way, so it's falsehood in service of cynicism. Most defenses and praises of the film I've heard usually say something like, "yes, it's false, but at least it's cynical!" Well, what kind of accomplishment is that?

Bigelow knows how to establish mood and tone, yes, but are plot mechanics off limits here? Plot choices are even more explicit than framing, subtext, scorning, etc. I maintain that the film drapes itself in amorality, but that it does have a moral: psychotic behavior a la bin Laden could only be stopped by psychotic behavior a la Maya. I don't think that's very artful or even interesting. It also happens to be false history. I grant Greenwald's an ugly spokesperson for this argument, but I would still love to be persuaded otherwise.

[Glenn Kenny]

Well, Karl, thanks for being a good sport, and sorry to be so snippy. I'm going to be brief as my day as it's progressed so far isn't going to allow me much time to engage (I know, that's pretty Jonah-Goldberg-lame of me) but I also think if we get down to brass tacks maybe our differences are gonna boil down to taste. What initially impressed me about "Zero Dark Thirty," putting aside for the moment its representations of history, is the deft way it upends a lot of expectations concerning espionage thrillers and their ethics. As I mentioned in my review, it initially introduces Maya as an audience surrogate and then portrays her going along with the thing that the conventions of the ostensibly socially-responsible espionage thriller (as in the "Bourne" series) would have its hero/audience surrogate reject, that is, torture. This threw me off, and eventually it made me feel that the movie was as much about playing off of our expectations not just pertaining to ethics in life but to ethics within this representation. I agree to a certain extent with you about the movie's "cynicism" but I see it more as a mordant irony, which also comes through in Maya's "I believe I was spared" spiel, which has uncomfortable relative resonances of Bush's rhetoric throughout his Presidency and the war he initiated. So I'm not, as you see, on board with quite as much of a tit-for-tat reading of its cynicism w/r/t "psychotic behavior;" I think the movie's playing with a whole lot more, and pretty deftly so.

[Karl Miller]

Many thanks, Glenn. And I'm sure Jonah would be dodging a whole other tack entirely!

You make an interesting point about audience expectations. I haven't seen the Bourne films, but hasn't spy fare like "24" shaped expectations just as much? I would love to have my expectations subverted on that one.

Also, the film relies on something more than expectation when it comes to 9/11; it relies on our outright experience. It's a moment we only hear. We are trusted with our own memory on that one. But then our memory of what followed is rewritten ... and I'm still not sure why. It's hard for me to be asked to rely on my own experience and then shove that experience aside in the next moment. Yeah, you could say my expectation was subverted, but to what end?

I can see how one man's cynicism is another man's deft irony with a wide enough lens, perhaps. As a critic, you've seen way more spy movies than I ever will. Maybe it's a matter of taste, as you say, and maybe it's just a matter of professsion. I was in DC for 9/11. I remember with great shame and rage the Abu Ghraib scandal and Cheney's torture ambitions. And I remember that dull, overdue pang of relief on May Day 2011. ZDT strings those events together in an utterly bleak and bonkers way to me, and along the way it ennobles torture. What can I say? I'd love to know why it does these things or what makes that good film-making.

As an ironic departure from certain genre conventions, maybe it's interesting? But what besides filmic or genre convention (or, again, the factual record) is being subverted and why?

That's a lot to ask and you're busy. Maybe one of the other commentors can help with that one. In any case, thank you for keeping the thread alive and open.

[Brian Dauth]

Finally saw ZDT; some thoughts about it and the conversation that has ensued:

1. First, it struck me as a film divided against itself. I noticed right off the affectless aspect that Glenn noted, but immediately afterward I got the sense of a tightly scripted/crafted narrative. As Glenn said, Maya is introduced as an audience surrogate, but then the film seems to lose sight of her, then she pops up again, but each subsequent appearance felt more and more forced, as if the movie wanted to get away from her, but Screenwriting 101 forbade it. ZDT suffers from Chinatown Syndrome: "Maya is the surrogate; Maya is not the surrogate." Maya writing the numbers on the glass wall is Norma Rae holding up the sign “Union”; the rivalry of the two women is out of OLD ACQUAINTANCE; and the final shot of Maya is a (negativized) lift from the end of STELLA DALLAS.

2. Does the film endorse torture merely because it shows it? No. No work of art endorses anything simply by depiction/representation. The film does, however, show torture to have been part of the chain of events that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden. From the statement in the beginning about "first-hand accounts" to the use of actual 911 calls, the film presents itself as representing events that did occur -- dramatic license in depicting these events may have been employed, but wholesale invention, i.e., adding never-happened scenes to the chain of events, did not occur.

As for the attitude of the film toward torture, these are my speculations on how the film wished to present itself: torture played a role in bringing about the desired end. I do not think the film wanted to raise the question about whether or not torture is wrong within the film itself, but rather to allow the viewer to raise the question within herself as a result of her engagement with the movie. ZDT set out to simply state that torture occurred and was useful in obtaining a specific result. Again, these are my speculations about the intended goal of the film.

I think the film sabotaged its own intentions by giving Maya the hint of a narrative arc (and sometimes more than a hint). That arc messes with the neutral approach the film wants to take. ZDT never finds a way to be affectless and narrativized at the same time as, for example, the Dardennes brothers’ films can be. Maya’s having an arc (and a conventional one at that when all is said and done) imparts a sense that the film does have an attitude toward what it portrays since the main character changes over the course of the work. Maya’s arc poisons the film's attempt to be neutral.

Also, the film’s mise en scene displays Bigelow’s training at the San Francisco Art Institute – the shots have an “attitude” (so to speak) to what they depict visually, which can lead a viewer to look for the “attitude” the film has toward its content as well.

Brian Dauth

[george]

Thank God for Bigelow and Tarantino. Without them, what would we have to talk about?

[Chris L.]

An interesting musing on this morning's news in the "Best" Director category:

http://scottalanmendelson.blogspot.com/2013/01/why-kathryn-bigelows-oscar-snub-is.html

[Petey]

Pretty good damning of ZDT from the political angle by Steve Coll. The first half of the piece is the meat of the objection with which I most heartily concur.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/feb/07/disturbing-misleading-zero-dark-thirty/?pagination=false

[F.G.]

All that outrage from greenwald and not a word about, say, Malala Yousafzai?

I guess now that Al Jazerra owns Current he can get his own movie review show where he can review movies BEFORE seeing them and rate them as to how much they promote American Imperialism on a scale of 1 to 5 Dick Cheney's.

Glenn Greenwald is the most hateful, hypocritical and deluded man in media.