Zero Dark Thirty is a film that has sparked a great deal of debate. The debate centers around the ethical and moral issues it presents, which will be discussed. The film is a darkly realistic unfolding of the events following the September 11, 2001 attacks. The film climaxes with the discovery and killing of the sponsor of the September 11 attacks, Osama bin Laden. The film is presented from the inside point of view of the CIA agents involved with the gathering of information. The thought-provoking film forces us to question government secrecy and counter-terrorism. The main focus of the debate concerning Zero Dark Thirty is torture, and the necessity of it as a means to the end of the film. Many reviews have surfaced, both in favor of and questioning the intention of the film’s director, Kathryn Bigelow. This essay will focus on six reviews of the film. Three of the reviews will be positive, and three of the reviews will be negative. A commentary on the pivotal points of these reviews will be presented, along with my interpretation of the film.
The first reviews that will be discussed are the positive reviews. Because of the subject matter of the film, as well as the events of torture presented in the film, few of the reviews of the film have a glowingly positive view. However, several reviews express very positive views of the film, and these reviews, will be summarized.
The first positive review of Zero Dark Thirty is “Two Cheers for ‘Zero Dark Thirty’s’
Torture Scenes,” by Spencer Ackerman, a national security reporter. Ackerman makes it clear in his review that the torture, though resoundingly brutal in the movie and in real life, did not result in the answers that the CIA sought in the film, and in real life. He writes, “There is little interrogation in ‘Zero Dark Thirty’. There is a shouted question, followed by brutality (Ackerman, 2012). All in all, there is a sense in summary that Spencer Ackerman appreciates the film, and defends the director, Kathryn Bigelow of “The Hurt Locker” fame—incidentally, the first woman to win an Academy Award for best director—from the accusation of being an apologist for torture. Ackerman delivers sound reasoning for his positive view of the film. I agree with him, because on film and in real life, the CIA does not get what it desires from torturing detainees, but the film does expose detailed events within the film that are based on fact.
The review, “By Any Means Necessary” by Manohla Dargis, a film critic for the New York Times, is also a positive look at the film. Dargis’ focus of appreciation for the film takes form in her summary of the film rather than in defense of director Kathryn Bigelow, which was expressed by Spencer Ackerman in his review. Dargis focuses on the aspect of the CIA agent Maya, played by actress Jessica Chastain. Dargis speak at length about the character, who is focused on her work, but without the usual emotion the average viewer has come to expect in a character in this kind of situation. Although Dargis voices positive support for the movie, she does so with a more humanistic viewpoint by presenting more of a narrative review with a humane standpoint, in a gentler tone, as she writes that Zero Dark Thirty “is also a wrenchingly sad, soul-shaking story about revenge and its moral costs, which makes it the most important American fiction movie about Sept. 11.” (Dargis, 2012). She goes on to make more points in regard to the degradation of humanity within the film, but does not rally against it, writing about the hard truths in a tone I associated with being humane in approach.
The third positive review is from Owen Gleiberman, who reviewed the film for Entertainment Weekly. In his review, “Is ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Pro-Torture? And if so, is it Telling a Lie?”, Gleiberman is seemingly more detailed in his viewpoint, and has the same calm as Manohla Dargis does in her positive review of the film. Owen Gleiberman admits that there is a “great deal of reality in the plot of Zero Dark Thirty, technically speaking.” (Gleiberman, 2012).
He even mentions the scene where the CIA agents are only able to get answers of any kind from the detainee after they allow him to clean up, and lie to him over a table of food while hoping to convince him by their kindness that he has given them information already. Gleiberman answers the pro-torture question by saying that he supports Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal’s view that they want the viewer to take in the landscape of the film and not make it a pretentious debate about policy. (Gleiberman, 2012).
The next three reviews are not positive, and are not a defense of Zero Dark Thirty. The reviews speak on the standpoint that there was too much graphic violence in the film, and untruth about the results of torture in the film. There is also the question faced by Maya, as she seems to symbolize a break from what used to be the only options from a Cold War long gone, and replaced by actions by terrorists. As before these reviews will be described in summary, similarities between them will be drawn, and a final viewpoint from the essayist will be stated in the conclusion.
The first of the negative reviews is “Don’t Trust ‘Zero Dark Thirty’,” by Peter Maass, a reporter for The Atlantic. Maass writes that torture in the movie or in real life did not help in the discovery and killing of bin Laden, and that it should not have been portrayed as having done so.
Maass is also critical of what he sees as “a new genre of embedded filmmaking that is the problematic offspring of the worrisome endeavor known as embedded journalism.” (Maass, 2012). He expresses in a purist’s tone a fear that this look at tactics by the CIA is misrepresentative of what happened in reality, but was passed off as necessary and helpful. His technique of using the film’s quotes is effective in establishing his negative review of Zero Dark Thirty. One of my favorite quotes, to prove Maass’ point, is when he writes of the heroine character Maya. He shows that she sometimes goes from one emotion to another too easily within such a serious film, cringing at one time over the treatment of the detainees, then almost a hero cowgirl the next, when he writes, “Did it really happen? Did the film’s heroine, who is called Maya, really tell the CIA director, during a meeting about bin Laden’s compound, ‘I am the motherfucker that found the place’?” I certainly agree with this opinion, and do not know who is to blame, the filmmaker, the screenwriter, or the actress Jessica Chastain.
Jane Mayer of The New Yorker gives the second negative review. She is calmly yet adamantly against the film director’s use of torture in the film. She is eloquent in writing that sometimes, in the case of the scene where the detainee is waterboarded, goes against the administration at the time. She writes that the George W. Bush administration considered waterboarding a war crime, and she sides with this view (Mayer, 2012). She sees director Kathryn Bigelow as a torture apologist, because she writes that Bigelow defends her use of torture in the movie. The writer also stated in the review that the film suggests that “the C.I.A.’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” played a key role in enabling the agency to identify the courier who unwittingly led them to bin Laden (Mayer, 2012). Of course, Mayer does not agree because of the fact in reality, no detainee gave up this information during torture.
The final negative review comes from Glenn Greenwald, who reviewed the film for The Guardian. Greenwald goes all about against the film, and writes that Zero Dark Thirty “glorifies torture, because it powerfully depicts it as a vital step—the first, indispensable step—in what enabled the US to hunt down and pump bullets into America’s most hated public enemy.” (Greenwald, 2012). He also calls the film propaganda, because he felt the portrayals of all the Americans were of hard working people who made sacrifices to do their job, while all the Muslims in the film were portrayed as shady characters in one way or the other—except one of the CIA members, who happened to be Muslim (Greenwald, 2012.) I disagreed with Greenwald on these two views, and will express this in my conclusion of the essay.
As for my point of view, I liked the reviews of the film, even if I did not agree with some of the reviewers points wholeheartedly. Having written about the film before, I did not take the time to write what I felt really felt about the film, and wrote only about the reviews. Now, I will take the time to write my viewpoint. I still maintain that Zero Dark Thirty is one of the greatest movies I have ever seen. That being said, there were some points I thought needed more thought. There was a very realistic feel about the movie, even if there was torture involved. However, America, and other countries were attacked, and people were killed by a group of people that were targeted on the whole, mainly because no one knew who to trust in a situation so treacherous and new. In this sense, I felt the use of torture was a necessary evil in the film, definitely, if not so much so in real life. In real life, it was embarrassing to see, because it was a violent human response by intelligent beings to violence, and it was morally and ethically wrong. Yet I am not totally against the use of torture in the movie, or real life because I do not know if I would not have had the same response to a situation like this, so it is hard to be totally against it. The only problem I really have about this issue is that the director or screenwriters chose to make it seem that torture brought answers the CIA sought in the film, and in real life. That is a lie.
I had two other concerns about Zero Dark Thirty. I felt as if the writing, the directing or the acting of Jessica Chastain in the role of Maya was inconsistent. One minute, she cared, it seemed, was concerned, then the next she was cursing coolly. At one time, it seemed she was about to be concerned, then she tells a detainee he needed to be truthful. My concern in this is that I did not see growth in her as an agent in the very lengthy movie, and I felt it necessary to see it, because years passed. I do not know who is to blame, but it is something I noticed. Perhaps it was the way she was cast, or directed, or written to perform. All I know is that I feel that the performance would have hurt the film, had the film not had so many other issues for the critics to take on. All in all, I saw the movie as great, but where I saw the film as a fair view of both sides, others took issue in debate about negative portrayals. I did not see the Muslims as shady types. I did not see the Americans just as hard workers, despite the “Maya” concerns I wrote before. I saw the film in wholeness, not the way somebody might want to play the torture, ethics, or morality card. It was a film about something that really happened. Did people really expect to see what they wanted to see? Great films don’t do that. They show what is deemed as necessary by those who produce them.
Aside from this, as I’ve said before, I looked at the wholeness of the movie. Had I not looked at it this way, I would have swayed any way the wind wanted me to think, and I believe that is how one reviewer did, at least. The way that Glenn Greenwald describes the Muslims all portrayed as shady—I didn’t look at this way. I was too busy looking at what attack would happen next, and where. It was not a film that cried out that torture was alright, either. It is a movie that included instances of torture no one was used to viewing in a film. There is a difference. I liked most of all that what it really took was observation and patience to find the culprit, in the film, and in real life.
Works Cited
Ackerman, Spencer. “Two Cheers for ‘Zero Dark Thirty’s’ Torture Scenes.” Wired. 10
December 2012. Web. 16 June 2016.
“Zero Dark Thirty”. Dir. Kathryn Bigelow. Perf. Jessica Chastain, Joel Edgerton, and Chris
Pratt. United States: Alliance Films, 2013. Web.
Dargis, Manohla. “By Any Means Necessary.” The New York Times. The New York Times
Co., 18 Dec. 2012. Web. 16 June 2016.
Gleiberman, Owen. “Zero Dark Thirty.” Entertainment Weekly. 19 Dec. 2012. n.p. Web. 16
June 2016.
Greenwald, Glenn. “’Zero Dark Thirty’: CIA Hagiography, Pernicious Propaganda.”
The Guardian. 14 December 2012. Web. 18 July 2012.
Maass, Peter. “Don’t Trust ‘Zero Dark Thirty’.” The Atlantic. 14 Dec. 2012. n.p. Web.
16 June 2016.
Mayer, Jane. “Zero Conscience in ‘Zero Dark Thirty’.” The New Yorker. 14 Dec. 2012.
Web. 16 June 2016.
