WARNING: Contains spoilers for the film Zero Dark Thirty
When I reviewed Zero Dark Thirty two weeks ago, the film had only been released to markets in and around New York and Los Angeles, a common rollout strategy for a film not scheduled to fully open until early January but aiming to qualify for Academy Award nominations. As such, I made only passing mention of the “this film endorses torture” controversy because at the time I was writing and editing the episode, said controversy looked like it was going to be a small one, limited to the immediate fallout from incendiary political columns like those by Frank Bruni and Glenn Greenwald.
My sense that the controversy wouldn’t likely grow much beyond there was because, having seen the film, I was unable to discern how a great number of reasonable people – particularly those whose careers weren’t premised on finding the political angle in anything – could see Zero Dark Thirty and then conclude that a film so resolutely ambiguous about its subject matter could be seen as an “endorsement” of anything (other than Jessica Chastain’s lead character being tough as nails). It even avoids being cathartic about the climactic termination of Osama bin Laden. When the SEAL who fires the fatal shot is asked by a comrade, “Do you realize what you just did?” he doesn’t even register a glance. A few seconds later, when he informs the others that “I shot the third floor guy,” they pause for less than a moment before telling him to get back on cleanup duty.
But, as usual, I’ve underestimated the sheer level of distracting white noise indignation that can be generated when journalists from other disciplines try their hands at being movie critics. A man has to know his limitations, which is why I’m going to try and avoid getting too deep into any actual geopolitical implications concerning the film except where absolutely necessary (besides, there’s another guy on the site who’s better at that sort of thing than I am). But the controversy has only gotten bigger, so now I guess it’s incumbent upon me to weigh in.
These are the facts: Zero Dark Thirty purports to be a dramatization of the CIA and U.S. Military Intelligence efforts to track down and kill 9/11 mastermind and Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. The entire affair lasted ten years and culminated with a raid by SEAL Team 6 on a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan where the world’s most-wanted terrorist was killed. Because the details of such operations (and intelligence ops in general) are largely classified, the film and filmmakers have stated that names and certain details have been altered or made vague – though they insist that it hews as closely to known/knowable facts as a film aiming to function as drama can reasonably be.
Here is the controversy, in a nutshell: The film effectively begins (after an audio-only opening featuring an “sound collage” of 9/11 related sound clips played over a black screen) with its main character, Maya (Chastain) observing the interrogation of a captured terrorist. During the interrogation, the agents – primarily one played by Jason Clarke – try to extract information from their prisoner using sleep deprivation, waterboarding, sexual humiliation (specifically, they take away his pants while Maya is present) and, finally, folding him into a box roughly the size of your average family camping-cooler for an undisclosed period of time. Among other questions, during the waterboarding, he is repeatedly and loudly asked “When was the last time you saw bin Laden?” The audio (but not the video) of that moment became the rhythmic background noise of the film’s first trailer.
It’s a tough scene. Hard to watch, impossible to be “happy” about even when you already know (as we do here) that the guy is a terrorist. In fact, in cinematic terms he’s unnervingly close to sympathetic. While being boxed up, he’s given one last chance to give them “the date” … and instead rattles off every day of the week in a moment of “you can’t break me!” defiance not all that dissimilar to displays of the same by good guys in other movies.
Except, as it turns out, the information he was withholding was the date and location of The Khobar Massacre in Saudi Arabia. “When was the last time you saw bin Laden?” was an extra bit thrown into the mix by the interrogator, but preventing this imminent attack was the primary goal – which they don’t accomplish and which goes off according to plan, resulting in horrific murders. For those of you playing at home: the torture didn’t work.
To me, this should be “Case closed!” on the whole controversy. In the film’s “set piece” moment of so-called enhanced interrogation, the brutal techniques are shown to fail. Furthermore, later on they do get good intelligence from the tortured man by switching tactics. Assuming that, as a captive, he can’t possibly have known that his allies’ attack was successful, Maya and the agents invite him out into the sunlight, offer him his first actual meal in ages and attempt to tease information out of him by claiming that – in his battered stupor – he had given up “the date,” that they’d thwarted the attack and that he no longer had anyone or anything to protect. This technique works, and hands Maya a few more scraps of data to continue her quest. I can’t imagine a more thorough rebuke of enhanced interrogation short of the characters turning toward the audience and gravely intoning, “This. Is. Wrong!“
Which seems to be what much of the outraged Pundit Class wants it to have done – nevermind that to do so would violate the strenuously detached motif of the film, to say nothing of the rules of good drama.
Either way, now that more and more of the people angry/worried about the film’s position (or lack thereof) on torture have actually seen it (apparently, journalists outside the arena of film reviewing aren’t keen on the idea that you should watch a movie before opining on its content) and, presumably, noted the same key elements I just did, the talking point has been shifted from “Zero Dark Thirty endorses torture” to “Zero Dark Thirty implies that torture played a role in catching bin Laden, but it actually didn’t.” This new critique is shared by The CIA itself – The CIA, of course, being an organization that would only ever speak with 100% truth and clarity about itself and its activities, right?
Snark aside, this feels a bit more like an understandable (though not necessarily agreeable to me) concern, given the source of the discontent. Almost to a man (or woman) the hand-wringing about Zero Dark Thirty‘s presentation of torture has come from pundits hailing from the left wing of the American political spectrum, many of whom have been part of a long-fought effort to expose as an unmitigated disaster the near-entirety of the Bush-era “neo-conservative” anti-terrorism effort of which enhanced interrogation was most definitely a part.
Many such folks, being denizens of the professional media, are more than likely themselves fully capable of discerning that Zero Dark Thirty presenting torture as having taken place as part of the vast post-9/11 intel-gathering mission that included the hunt for bin Laden (which is true) is not the same thing as saying that there was a direct or meaningful connection between this or that instance of torture and the actual capture of bin Laden. However, one could be forgiven for assuming that a great deal of the U.S. movie-going public does not possess the same capacity for nuance and might indeed come away from this very dense, very complex film having (incorrectly) interpreted its story and/or message as “Oh, we beat those guys up and that’s how we found Osama!” Which would be unfortunate for any number of reasons including the possible follow-up conclusion of “I guess those Bush guys were right, after all!”
In other words, I think it’s fair and reasonable to ask if those attacking Zero Dark Thirty for supposedly endorsing torture are having that reaction through honestly feeling that it does or if, even on some subconscious level, they’re more specifically worried that said endorsement might be inferred by audiences and potentially undermine a narrative about the Bush-era “War on Terror” that they’ve put considerable effort into advancing. It would be a familiar cycle wherein the discussion of films by personalities more concerned with politics than artistry is concerned. Ironically enough, prior to the film’s release it was attacked by “the other side” on the basis that a big movie about the foreign policy triumph of his administration might help President Obama secure a re-election victory (although it turns out he didn’t need the help).
Concerns about audiences inadvertently taking the wrong lesson away from a film that refuses to make things “easy” for them are perfectly valid (to be clear, all of the various pundits’ concerns are perfectly valid- as concerns). But for me it comes down to this: It’s wrong to punish a movie for something an audience member might wrongly infer from it, and it’s also wrong to accuse a movie of promoting something when it does exactly the opposite right there on screen.
There are a lot of smart, intense discussions that Zero Dark Thirty can start. Whether or not the film endorses torture, however intense, is not in my estimation one of the particularly smart ones.
Bob Chipman is a film critic and independent filmmaker. If you’ve heard of him before, you have officially been spending way too much time on the internet.
