"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

[furiousxgeorge]

JFK was made three decades after the event. The history was already written. On torture and the War On Terror, the history is still being made. There are people who were tortured still in United States custody. There are still people down in Guantanamo. There are still soldiers in Afghanistan fighting Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

After the next election there might be another President who wants to torture in the White House. We better hope a pro-torture film doesn't set the record for what happened with bin Laden. I haven't seen this one yet so I can't say what it is, but I have a lot of respect for Greenwald and he generally does not lead his readers wrong.

[PaulJBis]

I haven't seen the movie either, but that's not going to stop me from commenting because I enjoy the sound of my own voice... erm, because there's one thing that caught my attention.

It seems that the deepest, most fundamental disagreement at play here is that Mrs. Greenwald and Mayer think of "art" and "Hollywood movies" as mutually exclusive categories, while film nerds (like us here) don't. One of them is Art, the other is for eating popcorn. That disagreement is at the root of everything, including the way in which they judge the artistic decisions in the movie and give it a pass or not. I mean, this painting:

http://www.museodelprado.es/enciclopedia/enciclopedia-on-line/voz/emperador-carlos-v-a-caballo-en-muehlberg-el-tiziano/

Is pretty much political propaganda, made by a guy who was in it for the money and the favour of a totalitarian monarch... but it's in museums, and it's Art, so it's judged by a completely different standard.

In the end, it's a variant of the same kind of thing that was discussed here some time ago, about young people today and their reactions to classic film. "Ugh, why would you want to watch a B/W movie?"

[Freddie deBoer]

It's funny, how you at once attack Glenn for being condescending towards the "standard viewer" while your entire argument is dedicated to lampooning him for not being the sophisticate you are.

We don't, actually, have to imagine standard viewers who take ZD0 as an endorsement of torture and our war on the Islamic world. You can already find conservatives who have seen the movie and come to that conclusion. And as it opens to a wider audience, you will see that argument prosecuted again and again. It already is being used to justify torture and it will be used to justify torture, war, and aggression. So what will you say? Will that suddenly become a concern for you?

I doubt it. I assume, in fact, that you'll dissemble, you'll evade, you'll justify. Because what you want is not that art not be taken seriously, or that art not be considered for its moral content. You just want that to happen only when it flatters you, when it contributes to your self-conception. When it actually challenges you, when it asks you to indict yourself, rather than to live in a comfortable defense such as this one-- well, then you're not interested.

[David Ehrenstein]

"I haven't seen the movie but I have no problem with Greenwald's comments."

Well Greenwald hasn't seen the movie either, as I pointed out here

http://fablog.ehrensteinland.com/2012/12/11/intellectual-dishonesty-101/

Call me Old-Fashioned, but I always thought that one was required to see a film before reviewing it. Glennzilla compounds his dishonesty by claiming that what he's writing isn't a review -- which it most certainly is. Likewise the screed from Patient Less Than Zero.

They're BOTH writing on the level of Bret Easton Asshole.

I used to respect Greenwald. Not anymore. He's trash.

Your dealing with ZDT as a "work of art" is understandable in the light of all this blather, but not really necessary. It's "based on a true story." And while there has been much talk as to how much the administration did or didn't help Kathy the resultant film doesn't include anything we don't already know.

The way its detractors have been talking you'd swear that the guy being tortured coughed up Bin ladin's address. That's FAR from the truth, as those who actually bother to see the film will immediately discover.

[Glenn Kenny]

Mr. deBoer: Not to get all tit-for-tat, but it was Greenwald (I'm not familiar enough to call him "Glenn") who started in with throwing around words such as "pretentious," "pseudo-intellectual," and so on.

After laying out a scenario for me to get outraged about, and asking if this scenario will solicit my concern, you provide the answer: "I doubt it. I assume, in fact..." Yes, you do, IN FACT, assume. That's what you and like folks are good at, are best at: getting on a high horse, and making assumptions. So, if I may put this as politely as possible, here's hoping we don't meet on the barricades, or anywhere else.

Also: did you MISS the part where I talked about how I thought the movie dealt out viewer complicity in a distinctly uncomfortable way, or did you just decide it wouldn't fit in to your condemnation of me as a Bad Self-Interested Person?

[David Ehrenstein]

Glenn you may have to do some intense Googling, but back when it was released i was one of the few who took on Oliver Stone for "JFK" and its noxious compendium of LIES. My reward was the republication of James Kirkwood's 1967 book about Jim Garrison and the Clay Shaw trial "American Grotesque."

[James Keepnews]

You're all in the tank for torture and empire, just like the known fasicismo that is the New York Film Critics Circle. If only they knew as much as Glenn Greenwald an Jane Mayer. Bunch o' dummies...

Cinema 101 for Mr. Greenwald, Esq.: ALL cinema is fictional. Nanook of the North, The War Room... OK, not Weekend at Bernie's 2, but stop interrupting me. Montage alters reality just as sure as a camera points in only one direction. Kind of like your socio-political conception of aesthetics. Just saying -- you're right about so much else, I won't slag you on the Twitterz. Fight the power. I love my Glenns.

(BTW, I believe GK has opined disfavorably about JFK in the past, which I find lamentable -- I love JFK, precisely because it is so very much NOT history, it takes its socio-politico-aesthetico ball and runs with it in the unlikeliest damned directions. One man's psychosis is Oliver Stone's flexing across formats, narratives, disputed testimonies, &c., &c., on an order we haven't such the likes of from our Ollie since. Much of Greenwald's critique seems of a piece with Updike's dismissal of Cosmopolis (the novel)'s eschewing of "realism's patient surfaces". Except, as this fine thread so amply demonstrates, reality's surface is not exactly patient -- it teems, backtracks, reflects, reacts, responds to changes as it clarifies, &c. A step away from the moral certitude of your blog software will demonstrate as much tout mf suite. Emmis.)

[David Ehrenstein]

"love JFK, precisely because it is so very much NOT history, it takes its socio-politico-aesthetico ball and runs with it in the unlikeliest damned directions."

No it runs with it the most likely direction: "The fags killed Kennedy."

In this Stone is as one with James Dobson and the rest of the right re the Connecticut school shooting.

[bill]

I'm so glad that Connecticut has been dragged into this. Twice.

[Noam Sane]

"Kathryn Bigelow...milks the U.S. torture program for drama while sidestepping the political and ethical debate that it provoked. In her hands, the hunt for bin Laden is essentially a police procedural, devoid of moral context. If she were making a film about slavery in antebellum America, it seems, the story would focus on whether the cotton crops were successful." - Jane Mayer, New Yorker

[James Keepnews]

LBJ was a fag?

[Chris H]

You write in paragraph 2: 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.

I'd be interested to know how you frame that in terms of Lincoln. I saw the movie at roughly the same time as I was reading a book entitled April 1865 By Jay Winik. A terrific read. The more I read the more I found myself reflecting back on the movie with a sense of disappointment. The situation at that time--early spring 1865--was soooo much more complicated and nuanced than the movie's portrayal of it. Obviously, you say. Of course, it's obvious, but my question, or struggle, is on what level should I be watching the movie? If I view the movie solely as fiction...well, what's the point really? Is Spielberg capturing something ineffable about the man and about the time? I think in many ways he is. But then does that mean that the story itself isn't telling me anything?

Anyway, as I said from the outset, I'd be interested to hear how turn off and on your movies as fiction lens. Or perhaps you don't.

[David Ehrenstein]

If ZDT is "essentially a police procedural, devoid of moral context," then what was the last scene about.

Jane Mayer's a pretty good journalist but she knows NOTHING about movies.

[John M]

I'm not sure I've ever seen a movie devoid of moral context.

[Glenn Kenny]

Chris H writes: "I'd be interested to hear how [you] turn off and on your movies as fiction lens. Or perhaps you don't." Actually, Chris, it's pretty simple: I go in knowing I'm going to see a movie, a dramatic enactment of events. I don't go in, as Hendrick Hertzberg seems to have gone into "Lincoln," anticipating a show off between what my studies of the period have taught me and what's depicted on the screen. The separation comes to me pretty naturally. It's not a struggle. I don't enter the theater with the anticipation that my superior knowledge of the facts it may be based on will defeat that movie if the movie comes up short in its depiction/interpretation of those facts. I bet Abraham Lincoln never whistled "Dixie," either.

You seem to have gotten a lot out of Jay Winik's book. Your expectation that Spielberg's movie live up to it is/was entirely your own.

[That Fuzzy Bastard]

"LBJ was a fag?"

"The hell he was!"

"He was too, you boys."

[James Keepnews]

Ah, bless your heart, Fuzz, great minds, &c. -- that's all that went through me mind when I hit that "Post" button:

"I went to install two-way mirrors at his ranch in Stonewall (sic, emmis, for realz). He came to the door in dress."

That dont' prove nothin' -- lots o' guys like to watch their friends fuck!"

"Shit, yeah, I know I do!"

[David Ehrenstein]

Well to quote Tallulah Bankhead, how should I know? He never sucked MY cock.

There's a well-established historical record re Abraham Lincoln, Glenn. I don't think it's unreasonable to examine what Speilberg and Kushner have done in light of that record.

ZDT deals with much fresher history about which much material is still in the process of being assembled. ZDT chiefly deals with one ("based on a true") woman and her role in teh OBL search and destroy mission. We know nothing of "Maya" outside of her work.

[Chris H]

Thanks for responding. Funny enough, Mr Hertzberg's thoughts on the movie were indeed influential on mine. Perhaps too much so. And honestly, I'm not entirely sure why I feel compelled to view Lincoln this way. Maybe it's nothing more than a knee-jerk anti-Spielberg reaction. Not that I'm anti-Spielberg exactly. He's just so damn prolific and talented that I need there to be something wrong with his interpretation and/or staging of events. Yet, I don't apply this test of hyper-verisimilitude to most other "based on" movies. A film I know you and I both liked very much is Carlos. I'm sure many, many aspects of the movie are fictionalized, condensed, reinterpreted, etc. I don't know how and I don't care because the movie got so much right. As did Lincoln. For me, details aside, what Lincoln nailed is that sense of heavy hangs the head that wears the crown. What I need to do now is re-visit the movie, as did Mr Hertzberg, and re-evaluate.

[TFH]

Not that I've seen the movie yet, but the "it's only fiction" makes me slightly uncomfortable. It's like the Inglourious Basterds defense: "it's only cinema", which seemingly gave the director considerable leeway to enact various forms of cruelty on his characters.

Of COURSE, narrative films about true events tend toward fiction, but that is not all they are, esp. if someone claims it is a "work of art". Once anyone begins to analyze the ethical and political considerations that go into making a film (as Glenn K. does in the subsequent paragraphs), it automatically invalidates the "only a fiction" fiction. Or as a corollary- just because something is staged doesn't always imply it is "untruthful".

Needless to say, I didn't fully agree with Greenwald's comments on the film, which involved a lot of asinine remarks that people who don't take movies seriously are prone to make, but he is clearly a valuable journalist and doesn't deserve the various epithets tossed against him here. But he is more worried that the movie would influence and strengthen the existing narrative about how torture might save lives (in some variation of the ticking bomb scenario, for example).

[Chris H]

Mea culpa. It's "Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown," which doesn't quit capture my feelings. Anyway...

[bill weber]

I've seen the film, and my myriad objections to it are inevitably colored by the fact that, yes, primary sources for Boal's screenplay were the CIA and Pentagon.

When a major-studio release is promoted as THE REAL STORY behind the hunt for bin Laden, there will be a large minority of Standard Viewers who will believe what one in my post-screening elevator said: "I feel so educated." Not to acknowledge this is compartmentalizing a bit too gullibly.

I admire Greenwald for his consistent four years of criticism of Our Fifth Consecutive War-Criminal President, but this Peter Maass piece on the "embedded" nature of ZDT was far more cogent:

http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/12/dont-trust-zero-dark-thirty/266253/

[bill weber]

btw, David E, Greenwald wrote a follow-up column. He has seen the film.

His first column was not a review because he is not a film critic.

[James Keepnews]

On the subjects of ZDT and AMOUR, Mr. Hoberman writes earlier today the following in a post -- perhaps, where Ms. Mayer is concerned, a riposte -- at his perch on artinfo.com:

"Although the endings of both movies are givens, each in its way is a procedural—which is to say, a heightened experience." Heightened by its absent moral context? Clearly, that's for truly serious critical sensibilities like Jane Mayer's to decide.

[Randy Byers]

Thanks, Glenn, I haven't seen ZDT yet either, but I'm another huge Bigelow fan whose bullshit detectors went off as soon as I started seeing these claims that it's pro-torture propaganda. It's possible that Bigelow has gone over to the dark side (courtesy of Oscar the spirit guide, perhaps), but her long history of implicating her viewers in the atrocities on screen will make me disbelieve it until the film shows me otherwise.

[Glenn Kenny]

@TFH: I appreciate where you're coming from but I have to point out that nowhere in my piece do I write "it's only fiction." By describing, or by insisting on reading, "Zero Dark Thirty" as fiction I'm not trying to trivialize it or sweep its implications and functions under the table. Just wanted to make that clear.

I am really trying to not give in to my temper, but I must admit I am not enjoying being called gullible. I have to keep reminding myself that I kind of "asked" for some holier-than-thou "schooling" though so I guess I need to lump it. I would submit to Mr. Weber that he might have wanted to ask the post-screening knowledge recipient precisely how he or she felt "educated."

[Rob]

While only tangentially relevant to the discussion, it's a little-known fact that Glenn Greenwald strongly supported Bush's invasion of Afghanistan because he wanted to wreak "vengeance" on the people behind 9/11. He went on to support the invasion of Iraq because he trusted Georeg W. Bush. In his own words, despite reservations, he supported the Iraq war out of "loyalty," to his "leader." And in his entire career as a blogger, he's never written a word about it. Meanwhile he viciously tears apart those that took the same positions he once did without revealing these facts. In other words, he helped enable most all he so stridently condemns today.

As to lies and hyperbole, that's been Greenwald's MO since his early days. As when he went on truly disgusting xenophobic rants against Mexicans in 2005. To quote A. Jay Adler at Sad Red Earth, "He's become such a vile, rancid read, so dishonest and ugly on every topic - he's like Limbaugh with none of the entertainment value."

http://bit.ly/HEG6DY

http://bit.ly/HH5c3U

And no, I haven't seen the movie. And yes, I want to.

[Zach]

Oh, boy, now come the baseless Greenwald smears. Go peddle your trash elsewhere, Rob, grownups are trying to have a serious discussion.

[bill weber]

Glenn, I only meant to assign you any gullibility in perhaps not sharing the assessment of the Standard Viewer espoused by The Waco Kid in Blazing Saddles: "You know, morons."

As for the Educated Elevator Woman, she proceeded with "If it hadn't been for this woman Maya..." Questioning seemed unnecessary; she essentially bought it as nonfiction, title cards be damned.

I think your personal points on the efficacy and justice of the UBL hit are well taken, and I haven't seen them made elsewhere in relation to this film (except by the "holier than thou").

[Michael Straight]

The thing missing from this discussion is that Glenn Greenwald doesn't really care about the movie. He's on a political crusade to end torture and, as an intermediate step, trying to turn public opinion away from the increasing acceptance of torture.

I think he'd say that battle to change public opinion is far more important than trying to be fair to this movie and the artists who made it. If this movie is the occasion to have a public discussion about whether torture was really an effective method leading to the killing of Bin Laden, I think he'd say that discussion is far more important than the movie itself.

And I think you can talk about the effects of watching a movie without talking about the movie itself. You could do a poll of people before and after they watch it and find out: Are they more likely to support the use of torture after watching this movie? Are they more likely to hold false beliefs about how Bin Laden was captured after watching this movie?