Zero Dark Thirty is the story of hunting and killing Osama bin Laden. The centerpiece of this story is Maya, an agent recruited by the CIA directly after high school, and her focus on the destruction of bin Laden, with the audience following her journey from the repercussions of 9/11 to bin Laden’s death. This film portrayed a captivating story, posed serious questions to the audience, and contained a stunning performance by Jessica Chastain as Maya. Even if I did perceive a few hollow moments, I highly recommend it to all.
The opening sequence, a collage of 911 calls from 9/11, is a bleak start to a harrowing movie. While frightening, I believe this device is deployed exquisitely as it manipulates the audience to accept jingoism in regard to torture during the following scenes. This torture does not last long, and we’re taken away toward other parts of the story rather early, but I think Kathryn Bigelow’s depiction of is especially complex, and I wouldn’t have been averse to a longer meditation on the subject. Unlike the thriller genre which often contains tense and exciting interrogations, these interrogations were terror laced with psychopathy, and I was drawn to sympathize with the detainee, regardless of his crimes or knowledge. Chastain nails the internal struggle of the subject matter with her body language in the opening scenes, but she deftly manages to don cold indifference, a mask she must wear throughout the film.
As we move away from torture, the pace picks up so quickly that we’re more given snapshots of moments than a cohesive story. When Maya first meets her colleagues in Pakistan, the audience is thrown into an incomprehensible roundtable discussion filled with confusing military terms, names, and abbreviations. The exposition seemed non-existent, as if the director assumes every viewer enters with the cultural knowledge and understanding of 9/11. This hurts the film because the audience must start out deconstructing jargon and determining where in the post-9/11 narrative we are, instead of seeing character or relationship development. As we travel through the movie, a rotating door of characters assume the usual positions for Maya to act at. I can honestly say I do not recall a single character’s name besides Maya.
At seemingly regular intervals the film jumps forward, usually to a new act of terrorism. I think these scenes rapidly achieve predictability, as apparently everything in Bigelow’s world goes eerily silent moments before an explosion. Even if predictable, the handling of the violence was masterful, showing that Bigelow can display such acts without a sense of voyeurism or emotional exploitation, and I think the scene at the Afghanistan army base involving Maya’s single female friend was the only heavy-handed attempt at an otherwise successful portrayal of true violent events. Between the terrorist attacks and torture, I’d argue this film is less the hunt for Osama bin Laden and more a depiction of the complexity of torture and war in the Middle East.
Torture and war are ever-present topics in our culture and Bigelow excels in confronting the viewer with conflicting views on these topics. The movie’s first bout of torture produces helpful information for Maya, but at what cost. As the film progresses and the political views on torture transform over the years, we’re shown the difficulties placed on these agents as they try to gather intelligence without what they consider a most useful and necessary tool . Instead of allowing the audience to leave the theater with a completely vindicated opinion on the horrors of torture, Bigelow forces viewers to consider opposing perspectives they’d perhaps not previously considered. The most memorable of these moments is the strike of Seal Team 6. As we watch these men descend on the house, we’re aware of not only the terrorists behind the walls, but also the women and children. This stark difference between how these two different groups are treated in the raid illuminates the conflict inherent to this war, that of terrorists as people, not simply targets, and those scenes full of terrified children and dead bodies resonate long after the viewer has left the theater. Through Chastain’s final scene, the audience understands this conflict has taken its toll on all involved. Sitting alone in a military aircraft preparing to fly home from Pakistan, the final line is a question posed to Maya from the pilot. “Where do you want to go?” Sadly, this is unanswerable. This woman’s sole purpose the past twelve years has been realized and now the death of this terrorist might imply the death of her purpose. The unfathomable relief is tempered with that loss, and the final moments leaves the viewer with an uncertain future for both Maya and the Middle East.
More character piece than depiction of truth, this movie is a modern myth that succeeds in stirring my American patriotism and consideration of complex moral issues surrounding torture, and I think it you should seek it out. I don’t expect it will win the Oscar, but I think it deserves a place on the nomination list, unlike others. See this movie, you won’t regret it.
Critical Dan 