by J Malcolm Stewart:
Sometimes the shadows that color our world are not the province of fiction. Sometimes the monsters are are real. And sometimes, the monsters are ourselves.
In Katheryn Bigelow’s taut retrospective Zero Dark Thirty, the horrors of the last decade are replayed with all the shades and ambiguity of the dark. The follow up to her 2010 Academy Award winning turn for The Hurt Locker brings to the screen an unyielding insiders look at the CIA manhunt of 9/11 mastermind Osama Bin Laden.
In doing so, Bigelow has produced what will surely be remembered as the first great cinematic exploration of of the War on Terror and its shaping of America’s recent past, present and future.
The recent movie landscape has been littered with noble but faulty attempts to translate the events of September 11, 2001 and the two wars that followed into film. Pictures such as World Trade Center, Flight 103 and Green Zone tried to explain the U.S.’s path into to Afghanistan and Iraq by casting as thematically wide a net as possible.
Audiences and critics alike cited the difficulty of the proximity these films had to 9-11. It was too much, too soon was the argument. The events were still to fresh and raw for the public to have perspective. As a whole, it was too big and diffuse and complex. And most importantly, it was still a story with no ending
That changed on May 11, 2011 when the world was rocked by the news that Osama Bin Laden had been tracked down and killed in Pakistan. Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal had already begun production on Zero, focusing on the declassified reporsts of the CIA field unit hunting the world’s most famous terrorist.
The finality of SEAL Team Six’s Pakistan mission gave Bigelow a natural ending to play with. And the ability to her sharpen her narrative by placing her audience in the shoes of a CIA covert operative named Maya (Jessica Chastain), the composite identity given to the real-life agent who doggedly pursued Bin Laden for more than eight years.
The film itself puts the pressure on from the opening credits as it gives us a field of blackness accompanied by the panicked cries of actual 911 calls from the offices of World Trade Center I. From there, we are dropped into a black-ops base in Afghanistan where Maya, fresh from a D.C. Desk, has joined her new trainer, Dan (Jason Clarke), in conducting a rendition interrogation of a captured insurgent.
Bigelow spares us nothing in detailing of the flesh-and-spirit breaking process of waterboarding, sleep deprivation and emotional blackmail that was standard operating procedure for CIA interrogations during the middle years of the 2000’s. Without commentary or embellishment, she thrusts us into the moral morass of those individuals, who in the name of our freedom, used the harshest measures available to them extract information from those who potentially would harm and kill our citizens .
The first twenty minutes of the film has enough power to shock even the most jaded observer and trouble the conscience of the most fervent patriot. Even our heroine seems overwhelmed by the process used to break a rendition subject down, even when she is compelled by circumstance to take an active role.
Maya brings a technician’s resolve to the chaotic brutality that surrounds her, dangerously single minded in her resolve to capture or kill Bin Laden. Her brusk, sharp personality leaves her with few allies in her ultimate assignment in Pakistan and brings her into conflict with her skeptical and often patronizing station chief (played with smarmy efficiency by Kyle Chandler).
Her motivation grows into obsession when another station agent (Jennifer Ehle) with whom she has bonded is killed by an al-Qaeda terrorist strike. With her anger at Bin Laden personalized, Maya is driven into a cat-and-mouse game with her quarry, fueled by a passion that nearly destroys her career and at other times, nearly takes her life. Her pursuit of the terror mastermind eventually bears fruit, landing her an audience with then-CIA Director George Tenent (played with wry humor by James Gandolfini) and into the controlling role in the ultimate SEAL operation that ended Bin Laden’s life.
Bigelow serves up the ascending stakes the chase of UBL (Bin Laden’s CIA nickname) with dizzying mastery as Maya pursues his trail over multiple countries and half a dozen years. The final intelligence breakthrough and the resulting SEAL assault on Bin Laden’s compound is a breathless composition of cinematic tension and release, sure to be compared the penultimate scenes of Coppolla’s Godfather and De Palma’s Untouchables.
As a presenter of pulse pounding action Bigelow is now at the front of the class with such modern heavyweights as the Scott brothers, the Cohen brothers and Michael Mann. I can sum up her chances for a second Oscar for Best Directory thusly: As an application of her craft, Zero Dark Thirty makes The Hurt Locker look like Heidi.
The only thing preventing Zero from being a new-wave masterpiece is the film’s moral ambiguity. Like Puzo’s and Coppolla’s Godfather, Bigelow doesn’t tell you how to feel about the actions of her protagonists. And if her subjects ever had any objections to their conduct or the conduct of their fellows during the secret prison era of the War on Terror, they mostly keep it to themselves.
Bigelow throws the whole record out for you to see without commentary, moral or otherwise. While certainly a shrewd step in some regards (the interpretation of the film will fall firmly in a potential viewer’s reor blue colored lenses), it also leaves an unsettled air at the end as we see the outpouring of emotion in the wake of the death of Bin Laden. Should we feel exultant in the death of a man who plotted the deaths of over 3000 Americans? Or is the victory shallow because of the ethical price paid to kill him?
Zero also meanders a touch into hyper-excitability when showing the interactions between the competing CIA units who were involved in the Bin Laden hunt. A few scenes descend into blatant set-chewing and over-the-top profanity laced brinkmanship between “important” people in high-level meetings. While certainly conceivable given the pressures of the task at hand, one more scene than is needed ends with fists pounding on tables and free-flowing f-bombs. .
Even our final moments of Maya are viewed through a screen of uncertain perception. Is she releaved? Exhausted? Did her moment of vengeance give her a savage triumph? Or are her tears an expression the futility of allowing yourself to be motivated by hate?
That said, Zero is a star making triumph for Chastain who creates for us a 21 century heroine who has no need to show her soft edges or to make any accommodating gestures to the boys I say this not to diminish the work of great actress past, but there perhaps has never been a female lead like Maya in a wide-release American film. A solitary, driven anti-hero who demolishes all people, places and things standing in her path. And who carries the momentum of a thriller without a male lead to divert her fury or weaken her resolve.
Her performance is a roaring force of nature in which we see echoes of DiNero, Pacino and Daniel Day Lewis performances past. Trust me, that force will also have to be reckoned with come Oscar time.
Despite its insistence on not taking a stand on the means used for our shadowy ends, Zero Dark Thirty will be the must see drama of the Winter. Enter into the dark and get prepared what what you will find there.
J. Malcolm Stewart is a Northern California-based public relations/marketing professional. He holds degrees in Political Science and Comparative Religion, but can have a conversation someone without starting a small war. Long interested in suspense, thrillers and horror, he writes and reviews on the subject for websites far and wide. When he’s not writing, reviewing or reading, you can find J. Malcolm riding around Northern CA with something radioactive in his trunk.
Follow J. Malcolm on Twitter: @sabbathsoldier, and learn more about him at http://about.me/jaymal.
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