Torture and Art in Wars on Terror: A Comparative Analysis of "Zero Dark Thirty" and "The Battle of Algiers" (Part 3 - Zero Dark Thirty)

And now, ladies and gentlemen, we come to the finale of our examination, although, ironically, the subject is the basis of our whole discussion.  Having discussed the depiction of torture in The Battle of Algiers, we finally turn to Zero Dark Thirty.  Given my thesis that The Battle of Algiers succeeds in portraying terror in a nuanced way and that ZD30 does not, we now have to compare the two movies to determine where, exactly, the difference lies.

Let me start out by acknowledging that ZD30 is very good movie.  Katheryn Bigelow is an exceptional director, and the Oscar she won for The Hurt Locker was well deserved.  ZD30 is yet more evidence (as if any were needed) of her skills: the film is slick, well-paced, and many of its shots are downright beautiful.  And, of course, the climactic storming of bin Laden's Abbottabad compound was a cinematic thrill unlike any that is likely to be seen on the silver screen for some time.

But the aspects of the film that some people have claimed gives the movie the moral complexity to be a masterpiece - specifically, its focus on "enhanced interrogation" and its obvious message that torture provided the leads that led to Osama bin Laden's killing - in my mind, at least, do precisely the opposite.  If the use and depiction of torture in The Battle of Algiers provides an example of a film that treats torture in both a morally and situationally complex way, the depiction of torture in ZD30 provides merely an illusion complexity.

As an initial matter, for the purpose of this analysis let us begin by crediting (whether we believe them or not) three of the core presumptions that ZD30 seems to make:

• First, that none of the detainees who are tortured in the course of the "enhanced interrogation" program are innocent - all are, in some way or another, connected to al-Qaeda
• Second, that torture is effective - it results in accurate, actionable intelligence
• Third, that, more specifically, torture was essential to the discovery and elimination of Osama bin Laden himself

OK.  So . . . if we credit these points, we, the viewers, are left in roughly the same situation in which we found ourselves at the beginning of The Battle of Algiers.  Torture works, and torture helps you succeed.  So what is it that makes the movies so utterly different?

Failure to Seriously Examine Torture-as-Tactic:
I'll begin with an observation based more on artistic style and story-telling than anything else.  As I noted in the previous post, The Battle of Algiers provides the viewer with the movie's (quasi) outcome at the beginning of the film: the French eliminate the FLN and "win" the Battle of Algiers.  The rest of the film is a deeper, darker journey through the struggle between the FLN and the French - the roots of the FLN's urban guerilla campaign, the atrocities committed by both sides, the strikes, the press conferences, the torture, the systematic elimination of the FLN's executive bureau.  And then, at the very end, we have the historical version of the classic "twist" ending: despite Colonel Mathieu and his troops' destruction of the FLN's organization, the Algerian people rise up and France eventually has to abandon its former colony.  The entire movie, then, is not only an attempt to understand the complexity of the conflict in the city Algiers; it is, itself, an explanation for the eventual failure of France's colonial venture in Algeria.

Contrast this with ZD30, which is not, and, granted, is not meant to be, an overarching examination of the United States' War on Terror.  ZD30 is, above all else, a detective story and thriller.  Thus, it follows the typical detective story/thriller plot layout: a crime is committed (9/11); which sets in motion an investigation; which results in leads/clues, but also leads to obstacles; these obstacles are overcome, and the leads/clues are used to solve the crime or capture the criminal. Or, in this case, kill the criminal. In this kind of set-up, there is no reflection.  There is only forward momentum.  Whereas torture in The Battle of Algiers was both a device for propelling the plot and a central moral theme, torture in ZD30 is simply the former: it's the tool that gets the leads, sets further detective work in motion, and, eventually, results in the killing of bin Laden.

Worse still, torture is not merely a tool: it is an unexamined one.  ZD30 contains none of the back-story or explanation that makes up a significant portion of The Battle of Algiers.  ZD30's CIA personnel never really discuss torture - no justification is given for its use, no defense of the tactic is employed, indeed, its use and efficacy are never questioned by anybody.

Now, one could argue that, surely, the film's brief opening scene (a blank screen with real, heartbreaking audio from 9/11 emergency calls playing in the background) provides the justification for the torture we see committed by the CIA seconds later.  But I find this argument unpersuasive.  The 9/11 attacks were terrible.  But so was Pearl Harbor.  So was every battle during World War II (and many of these battles involved death tolls far in excess of 9/11).  I can understand the visceral terror and shock of watching as the heart of America was attacked on national television - hell, I remember it, I was there watching with everyone else.  But tell me this: have you ever seen a World War II film (that is, one that's not directed by Quentin Tarantino) in which American troops make a habit of torturing Nazi or Japanese prisoners?  I can't think of a single WWII film in which American troops are portrayed as torturers, much less one in which atrocities or violence by America's enemies was used as a justification for widespread torture.  What is it that makes the 9/11 attacks so different that ZD30 can take the US from Ground Zero to torture in the span of about two minutes?

I'll grant the possibility that Bigelow's juxtaposition of 9/11 and torture at the beginning of the movie was artistic, perhaps meant to symbolize the panicked and unreflective speed with which the Bush Administration instituted the "enhanced interrogation" program.  But given the ultimate trajectory of the film and its overwhelmingly positive portrayal of torture (see above and below), I can't say that this artistic choice was successful, if, indeed, it was intended at all.  And so the viewer is left with torture that simply is.  There is no explanation for it; no justification for it.  Why did we do it - was it out of malice (revenge), fear, an honest belief that it was the only way we could present future attacks?  The movie comes closest to endorsing the third possibility - or, at least, that's my interpretation of Bigelow's continuous use of depictions of real-life terrorist attacks (the London 7/7 bombings, the Islamabad Marriott Hotel bombing, the Camp Chapman suicide attack, and the attempted bombing of New York's Times Square) to punctuate the plot at various points in the movie.  But we don't know, because, throughout, the use of torture is simply unexamined.

Lack of Moral Complexity:
ZD30's failure to seriously examine the roots of torture in the aftermath of 9/11 leads to my second point: unlike many of the critics who have lauded ZD30 for its "brave" and "honest" portrayal of torture, I would disagree with the proposition that the movie is morally complex.  It isn't.  While you could argue this point at some theoretical level, reading into the movie's so-called "subtext," the film itself is unequivocally pro-torture.  In fact, to the extent that it is mentioned or recognized at all, nearly every reference to "enhanced interrogation" in the movie is laudatory: as Noah Millman writes in a mostly positive review of the film for "The American Conservative,"

"Down the line, top to bottom, nobody ever says anything critical about the torture of prisoners. Multiple times, after torture ceases, CIA officers complain that they can’t get good information anymore now that they can’t torture suspects. Nobody contradicts them."

And so it is.  The only negative things said about torture in the film come not from any moral or philosophical opposition to the tactic, but, much more practically, from political considerations. At one point in the film, Dan, the CIA operative who acts as ZD30's torturer-in-chief (ironically, also my favorite character... though for entirely different reasons), tells Maya that the political winds are changing and that she ought to consider getting out of the torture business because she won't "want to be the last one holding a dog-collar."  In another scene, of a strategy session between Maya and two of her CIA colleagues, a television in the background is playing a speech by President Obama decrying the use of torture and issuing an executive order halting the "enhanced interrogation" program.  The looks on the faces of Maya and her colleagues are completely non-plussed.  They may as well have rolled their eyes.  "Of course those politicians would be saying such things," they seem to think, "but us, here on the ground? We know better."

I'll end this section with a block-quote from Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi.  Although he is writer with whom I frequently disagree, and vociferously, he pretty much nailed his review of ZD30 (ominously entitled "Zero Dark Thirty Is Osama bin Laden's Last Victory Over America"), in which he writes,

"Bigelow put [torture] in, which was "honest," but it seems an eerie coincidence that she was "honest" about torture in pretty much exactly the way a CIA interrogator would have told the story, without including much else.

There's no way to watch Zero Dark Thirty without seeing it as a movie about how torture helped us catch Osama bin Laden. . . . . This was definitely not a movie about two vicious and murderous groups of people killing and torturing each other in an endless cycle of increasingly brainless revenge. And this was not a movie about how America lost its values en route to a great strategic victory. No, this was a straight-up "hero catches bad guys" movie, and the idea that audiences weren't supposed to identify with Maya the torturer is ludicrous."

This is absolutely correct.

Grand Scale (or "Second-Tier") Consequences:
My final critique in this comparison of ZD30 with The Battle of Algiers lies in the realm of what I'll call "second-tier consequences."  In my mind, the term "first-tier consequences" would describe the negative consequences that occur during or as an immediate result of torture - for instance, the moral degradation of the torturer; the risk of torturing an innocent person or one who does not have/know the information the torturer is seeking; the obtaining of false or exaggerated intelligence, given simply to make the torture stop; and similar problems.  Note that, because we have accepted ZD30's presumptions about torture - that it works, that it produces useful and actionable intelligence, and that none of its victims are actually innocent - we have wholly eliminated a discussion of the "first-tier consequences" that would obviously be integral to any analysis of the real-life "enhanced interrogation" program.

But the "second-tier consequences"?  Whole different ballgame.  These are the negative secondary effects of torture: the loss of stature and support for the United States among its allies, the cementing of the US image as "oppressor" to those already predisposed to think of it as such, the domestic horror and subsequent decline in public support for America's international actions.  And it is in this realm that ZD30 truly falls short.

Sure, in ZD30-land torture helped Maya and the CIA find and kill bin Laden.  But this is a cause-and-effect relationship that occurs only in the film's detective/manhunt/thriller vacuum.  In the movie's single-minded focus on Maya's hunt for bin Laden, nobody - not Bigelow, not Maya, not any other character - mentions or even considers the effects that torture might have in the wider world.  Which, in the context of a global War on Terrorism, is actually pretty freaking important.

Recall, as we saw in my last blog post, that the French military's use of torture in The Battle of Algiers resulted in a deeper level of alienation among the Algerian populace and a marked increase in their anti-French and anti-colonial sentiments.  Eventually, the film insinuates, it was these factors, bubbling to the surface in widespread public demonstration, and not the FLN's bombs and assassinations that doomed France's colonial control over Algeria.

As those of us who live in the real world know from painful experience, the United States and its interests around the world have suffered less dramatic, but by no means unimportant, repercussions as a result of the "enhanced interrogation" program.  The infamous images of torture at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison decimated the United States' image as Iraq's liberator, poured fuel on the flames of the growing Iraqi insurgency, and jilted the American public's support for the war.  Reports of prisoner abuse and Qur'an desecration at Guantanamo resulted in deadly riots in Afghanistan and in other locations around the Arab World.  And with each report of torture in Iraq, in Afghanistan, at Guantanamo, or at some secret CIA black site, more American stature was lost and the United States' insistence that it merely sought to bring freedom and democracy to the world rang more hollow.  There is a quote in the U.S. Army's Counterinsurgency Handbook (circa 2007):

"Any human rights abuses or legal violations committed by U.S. forces quickly become known throughout the local populace and eventually around the world. Illegitimate actions undermine both long- and short-term COIN [counter-insurgency] efforts."

Talk about an understatement.

But just as ZD30 fails to examine any other aspect of torture, so, too, does it fail to examine torture's second-tier consequences.  Iraq is never mentioned.  Global public opinion is never mentioned.  The Muslim world's opinion of the United States is never mentioned.  Neither Maya nor any of her CIA superiors seem to consider or care about whether their efforts are really the best strategy for eliminating global terror - whether they are really effectively preventing attacks and knocking off terrorists, or are merely nurturing the resentments that will lead to greater anti-American sentiment, strengthen radical Islamists, and result in yet more terror.

It is questions like that that a serious, nuanced examination of torture would have produced, and it is questions like that which fall by the wayside in the heady, heart-thumping adrenaline rush of the film's ending.  Because, hey, they got bin Laden.