Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty is a taut, tough, tart film that brims with tension and suspense. Promoting it as a thriller has been a bold move, considering we all know the conclusion. But the movie does thrill, because few are familiar with the ins and outs of the ten-year manhunt for al-Qaeda’s leader in this much detail.
Penned
by Mark Boal, the reporter-turned-screenwriter who won an Academy Award for
Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, the movie
is a seamless weave of truth (allegedly based on “first-hand accounts of actual
events”) and drama that hews closely to real-life but takes some poetic
license. Much of the fascination of watching it comes from the gradual
unveiling of facts, the meticulous and comprehensive chronicling of every step
forward, every setback, dead-end and disappointment on the long, slow, arduous
road to bin Laden’s capture on May 2, 2011 at zero dark thirty (military-speak
for half past midnight).
More
than anything else, the film celebrates process, professionalism, and the
perfect mix of deduction, intuition, supposition, screaming matches, and luck
main character Maya (the versatile, ubiquitous, incredible Jessica Chastain)
uses. Like Spielberg’s Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty takes us behind the
scenes of one of the most important events in American history, showcasing the
messy, ethically complicated, strenuous means by which progress is oftentimes achieved.
Whereas
the mindless violence in a movie like Django Unchained is wildly over-the-top, hilarious, and entertaining, here the
brutality is realistic, ugly, stark, almost businesslike, which makes it that
more horrifying. The detailed torture techniques—including waterboarding,
extreme stress positions, sleep deprivation, and, in a later scene, sexual humiliation
and confinement in a frighteningly small box—clearly makes C.I.A. operative
Maya uncomfortable on her first day in Pakistan. She is tense, even turning
away and covering her face. In a few more years she will become as skilled and
effective at this kind of cruelty as her cowboy partner Dan (a formidable,
scary Jason Clarke). It’s a job, like any other. But management is changing,
bringing along a whole new set of rules; “You don’t want to be the last one
holding a dog collar when the oversight committee comes,” Dan warns Maya.
Despite
the hefty controversy Zero Dark Thirty
has spurred, the film by no means promotes torture as an acceptable means of
garnering information. Old-fashioned detective work, deception, misdirection,
bluffing, and bribery were, the movie argues, more effective than strong-arming
tactics in gaining viable intel.
The
relentless Maya battles false leads and false hope in her search for a needle
in a haystack, which, she insists, is not in a cave somewhere, but hiding in
plain sight in a large, sealed-off Pakistani compound. “I’m gonna smoke
everybody involved in this op, and then I'm going to kill bin Laden,” she vows
and, in the end, succeeds. The game of discovery Maya engages in at times
resembles a chess game against an opponent using invisible pieces that don’t
move from square to square according to any rules you’re familiar with.
At
156 minutes, the film emulates the seemingly infinite stretch of time between
the attacks of 9/11 and the subsequent result. Like David Fincher’s brilliant Zodiac, Zero Dark Thirty makes you feel firsthand how weeks can turn into
months and years. Keeping track, in dry-erase marker, of the bureaucratic
delays, the screech of writing on glass (on her boss’s office door) might be
akin to the noise that fills Maya’s head in anticipation.
Whereas
The Hurt Locker is an exercise in
suspense, Zero Dark Thirty is more visceral,
immersive, and action-driven, capturing the kind of filmmaking we have come to
expect from Bigelow. But the director is as adept with emotion as she is
action, and her helming is unexpectedly stunning, at once bold and intimate,
infusing even large-scale action sequences with a tender human element.
The
biggest and most thrilling set piece, of the raid that led to bin Laden’s
death, is masterfully executed. Cinematographer Greig Fraser employs a shaky
handheld camera, staging the scene in real-time, in a world of darkness,
half-shadow, and confusion. This is the authentic environment this sort of acts
takes place in, only heightened by the introduction of many shots through the sickly,
weirdly unreal green haze of night-vision goggles.
Academy
Award nominee Jessica Chastain holds the screen and the viewers in the kind of
rapt fascination Maya holds her colleagues and supervisors in during boardroom
meetings. When asked by the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (James
Gandolfini) who she is, the seemingly delicate “girl” replies without blinking:
“I’m the motherfucker who found this place. Sir.” Maya provides a face to an
often faceless organization, although we know nothing about her personal life
(no family history or romantic connections to speak of) or what drives her
professional one. Our sense of her emerges slowly by way of Chastain’s
elegantly steely performance. The character is drained and toughened by her
job, and Chastain’s beautiful oversized features seem to harden before our
eyes.
All
the supporting roles are filled by strong character actors with a commanding
screen presence. Jennifer Ehle plays a fellow agent who sets up an ill-fated
sting operation with an al-Qaeda informant; Mark Strong is memorable as a mercurial
C.I.A. official; Stephen Dillane has a few juicy lines as a White House
security adviser; and Chris Pratt and Joel Edgerton are just two of the brave Navy
SEALs who raided the austere compound in Abbottabad where bin Laden was hiding.
The
film’s message has nothing to do with policy or terrorism. It’s summed up
nicely by one of the characters as “here’s to the big breaks, and the little
people that make ’em happen.” A workplace drama that unfolds mostly in offices
and in front of computer screens, Zero
Dark Thirty is beautifully apolitical. The movie adds up to an excellent
C.I.A. procedural about how unrelenting determination, perseverance, and resolve
can yield results. Bigelow understands that, and her mix of conscientious
research and cautious fiction make for a glowing, riveting accomplishment. Zero Dark Thirty is as single-minded and
emotionally distant as its character, and its achievements are just as
remarkable. “It’s her against the world,” someone says about Maya at some
point, and the same can be said about Bigelow, who, as the first woman to ever
win a directing Oscar, has become something of a real-life, modern-day heroine.
The
director takes no sides, letting us decide if the death of bin Laden was worth
the price we paid, and ends on a note of reserved ambivalence. “Where do you
want to go?” someone asks Maya in the film’s pointedly anti-climactic final
scene. Silence is all that follows, in a close-up which Chastain holds with
haunting pain and subtlety. Zero Dark
Thirty poses difficult questions without offering easy answers. Where are we
going?
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