Zero Dark Thirty - Cinema Review

'Bigelow is too clever to take us down the road of token sexual release for the heroine. Maya isn't the stereotypical screen loner. She is the real thing.'

The ethical issue of torture does not deserve to have dominated the discussion surrounding Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty quite as much as it has. Whilst the film does suggest that the torture of detainees led to useful information, its politics about the broken morals of the matter are clear. 'This is what defeat looks like', Jason Clarke's Dan says in the interrogation room, after a casual bit of waterboarding. It is entirely ambiguous exactly who he is talking about. The same character's later retreat to Washington, where previously he was suggested to be a stoney-faced killer, backs up the argument that such tactics ultimately perpetrate negativity and harm.

The film's treatment of torture as an issue then is hardly worth extreme consideration but Zero Dark Thirty's focus on it does raise a structuring quibble. The first third of Zero Dark Thirty is comprised of a tour around various grimy CIA 'black sites', hidden bases full of detainees with useful information to spill at Maya's (Jessica Chastain) feet. This overt violence jars with the tension and subtler moments of the desk work (think a modern-day Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and you're somewhere in a similar area of spying) that makes up large parts of the final two thirds. At one-hundred and fifty-seven minutes too, this is a film that could do with a few less trips to random prison cells.

That said, the more time in the company of Maya, the better. Chastain crafts a believable battle-axe, a woman successful to the detriment of everything, who thinks little of showing up a future 'friend' when she knows she is right. Maya goes through quiet resignation, ecstatic success and virulent passion. At one point Mark Boal's screenplay suggests we may see the token moment of sexual release, but Bigelow is too clever to take us down that road. Maya isn't the stereotypical screen loner. She is the real thing.

This makes the finale, with the Joel Edgerton-led team assaulting the now-famous compound, all the more frustrating. Whilst it perfectly showcases Bigelow's grasp of tension - show the mundane things, like leaving your house or opening a door and the rest will follow - and action, Maya disappears off-screen for around twenty minutes. As a cameoing John Barrowman says at one point, 'I want to know what Maya thinks'. So do I, and her complete absence from this section weakens the argument that Zero Dark Thirty is a film concerned more with her and how she represents us, than it is a film concerned with being about entertaining gun-play.



5 comments:

  1. Great review, man. Love that paragraph on Chastain. A "believable battle-axe." Yes. Just yes.

    And I agree with you entirely about the frustration of the raid and the way it leaves Maya on the sideline. Seems strange to say it given the subject matter but it's true. But don't you also kind of respect Bigelow for not forcing Maya into that sequence? I think any attempt to do so would have been ungainly. It's tough but I think it's a necessary sacrifice.

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    1. Thanks Nick!

      I was discussing this on twitter after I watched it and someone else suggested that it's a good thing as it begins to show the fact that Maya is going to have to let this hunt go, to pass it on to other people.

      I think that and your argument both hold up - I do think it could have been ungainly... and yet, I still think a couple of cuts to Maya watching on could have helped. By that point I was really invested in her story, and suddenly watching a story without her in it, even for a moment, caught me off guard.

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  2. Some might say it was a little long, but I thought it was thorough. The characters were very well developed and the limited amount of action is a nice change from recent films of this genre. I have since considered how other directors may have tackled the subject matter (eg. Michael Bay) and those films would have been wildly different / entertaining but nowhere near as good as this one. I believe Kathryn Bigelow to have pulled off a master stroke with this film.
    Believe it or not, the final raid - which, unless you have been living under a rock, we all know the outcome of - is still dripping with suspense and, depending on your views on the war on terror, you may find yourself letting out a quiet "Fuck yeah" when the film is over. I know I did.

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    1. Agree with all of that really. I didn't sit there looking at my watch my any means - it did hold my attention throughout the long runtime and yes, I really think the comparison to 'quieter' spy films, such as TTSS, shows that Bigelow was after something different from your typical Bay 'guys'n'guns' flick. The film is all the better for that.

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  3. https://twitter.com/LeeRClements/status/293816848720482304/photo/1

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