The torture scenes, while ugly and graphic, aren’t presented in neat, ends-justify-means terms. It’s the day-to-day tradecraft that’s shown to be more important in the intelligence hunt, as CIA operatives use deception, misdirection and resources to pursue and woo their leads. (Perhaps the most crucial piece of information leading Chastain’s character to bin Laden is a name that a colleague finds buried in old files; a crucial telephone number is obtained by buying a Lamborghini for a source.) If “Zero Dark Thirty” justifies anything, it’s not torture but data mining, which might be sexy enough for “Moneyball” but not for “Hardball.”
If “Zero Dark Thirty” makes an editorial statement, Boal and Bigelow say, it’s in an operative’s line about “the big breaks and the little people who make them happen.” In many ways, they’re paying tribute to the kind of career officials and government bureaucrats that are so often ridiculed and scorned outside Washington. Like “Lincoln,” “Zero Dark Thirty” celebrates process, professionalism and continuity of government that transcends partisan bickering and policy changes.
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Director Kathryn Bigelow on her new film, "Zero Dark Thirty," which chronicles the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
“Bin Laden wasn’t killed by superheroes,” Boal said. “These are people doing their job, and in a sense that’s extraordinary and in a sense it’s not.”
With luck, when audiences finally get to see “Zero Dark Thirty,” that nuance won’t be lost on them — even as they become swept up in the film’s taut suspense (especially in the final 30 minutes). Rather than a simplistic, torture-good, terrorists-bad argument, they’ll find an absorbing, richly textured portrayal of a pivotal chapter of American life, one that’s not just clarifying but cathartic.
Is it problematic that, on the way to condensing a secret 10-year history into a 21/2-hour film, “Zero Dark Thirty” takes some liberties with characters, timing and particular events? Will American viewers emerge feeling more ambivalent than certain about everything done on their behalf during the Bush administration and beyond? Are we willing — at the box office and through repeated viewing — to endorse “Zero Dark Thirty” as a metonym for the war on terror, the same way we’ve accepted “All the President’s Men” as a symbolic catch-all for Watergate, which was a much larger and more complex episode than two dogged reporters bringing down a president?
We’d better be. In an era when legacy media are on the ropes and genuine investigative reporting is becoming increasingly rare, journalism will surely keep migrating into other popular forms, creating a new audience of citizen-spectators. At least Boal hopes so: Earlier this week he announced plans to form Page One Productions, through which he’ll work with reporters to create TV and feature films based on their stories.
“If news can be entertainment, which it is on certain cable channels, why can’t it be a two-way street?” he asked rhetorically when we met. “I can tell you that if movies don’t do it, video games are certainly going to.” Coming soon to a theater near you: “Unmanned Drone Strikes: The Movie.” Grab some popcorn and let another argument begin.
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