Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty LLC/Jonathan Olley)
Kathryn Bigelow’s controversial film about the plot to kill Osama bin Laden does not endorse torture. That the film gives rise to such claims demonstrates at least one thing about this compelling work: It’s not a comfortable ride.
Neither a puff piece for the Obama administration nor a complete indictment of the Bush era, Zero Dark Thirty sets up a moral landscape in which blood letting, whether it’s by the good guys or the bad guys, leaves the world in darkness.
The movie begins with darkness, just a black screen and a soundtrack of audio tapes from harrowing emergency calls placed on 9/11. In case anybody has forgotten the horrors of that day, there it is. We can’t see it, but we can hear it, just like the nation could not see the machinations that led to bin Laden’s death, though the shots that killed him were heard around the world. When audiences listen to these heartbreaking tapes, does the thirst for bloody revenge rise?
Revenge is the stuff of centuries of drama and tragedy, but this is real life, and therein lies the moral dilemma. This dark audio collage leads leads us directly to the first of a number of scenes that some insist point to an endorsement of torture. What happens is more complicated.
In 2003, Maya (Jessica Chastain), a CIA recruit not long out of high school, is assigned to a detainee camp where she bears witness to a violent interrogation that clearly horrifies her. But this is early in her career, and as months and years pass her character develops in ways that are not always empowering and heroic. As more people die, and the War on Terror fails to prevent attacks in London and Spain, Maya’s resolve slips. She signals a colleague to rough up a detainee, and although she is sick of it afterwards, there comes a point in her career when rough tactics don’t faze her. Finally, when too many of her friends have been killed in this mess, her taste for blood comes full blown: She wants—she needs—to kill bin Laden.
Kyle Chandler and Jason Clarke (Zero Dark Thirty, LLC/Jonathan Olley)I can imagine viewers coming to this film from different viewpoints reading this in different ways, but Bigelow’s tone is far from jingoistic. This is no rah-rah bloodletting but a thriller about frustration, from a personnel and management level to a ground level where targets are elusive and dangerous. When a frustrated manager blows up and demands that his staff bring him someone to kill, this does not feel like an ultimate triumph, but simply a continuation of killing.
Factual inaccuracies are a given in any dramatization, and the operation’s success is placed largely in Maya’s hands. But as the film personalizes the accomplishment, it also personalizes the moral consequences. The weight of what happened is on her shoulders alone. She works for and symbolizes her country, but as she has gained stature, has she lost something as well?
The film plays out like a police procedural and ends like a found-footage horror film, at times resembling The Cabin in the Woods. As that film deconstructed horror movie tropes to take a satirical look at what makes us entertained, the genre tropes that resonate in Zero Dark Thirty suggest myth-making that is watched over from a control room. Chastain’s performance at the film’s core, and Maya’s shift from detached and conflicted observer to primary actor conveys the film’s moral complexity. Despite moments of braggadocio, her role is not that of a standard Hollywood hero but that of a revenge tragedy, consumed by bloodlust.
Zero Dark Thirty does not provide easy answers for either side of the political aisle. It is a tale of and revenge no less disturbing than those of Quentin Tarantino. But this is no revisionist history where we take revenge upon Nazis or slave owners. However much dramatic license she may take, Bigelow powerfully depicts the real world we live in. The sight of a helicopter touching down and upsetting dust all around it is an apt a metaphor for the consequences of violence. It upsets everything in its path.
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Directed by Kathryn Bigelow
Written by Mark Boal
With Jessica Chastain, Joel Edgerton, Chris Pratt, Kyle Chandler, Jennifer Ehle, and Jason Clarke.
Running time 157 minutes
Rated R for strong violence including brutal disturbing images, and for language.
Opens today . Note: Montgomery Royal in Wheaton and Rivertowne 12 in Oxon Hill are the only theaters in the area showing a 35mm print.
