In the wake of its release, "Zero Dark Thirty" (henceforth ZD30) - the tale of the CIA's ten-year manhunt for Osama bin Laden, culminating in the (spoiler!) May 2011 Navy SEAL raid on bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan - has inspired thousands of words of criticism from journalists, online commentators, Tweeps, bloggers, politicians, and even members of the intelligence community itself. While each individual commenter has his/her own personal take on the movie and its problems, the common thread between all the criticisms of the movie can be communicated in one word: torture.
Bigelow's depictions of the Bush Administration's "enhanced interrogation" techniques is brutal, deeply unsettling, and has created more ire from critics and (some) movie-goers than George Lucas's decision to put aliens in the fourth "Indiana Jones" movie. (NOTE: that's an exaggeration - from what I've seen of movie-goers' comments, it's apparent that the Indie aliens were far worse). In addition to the gallons of journalistic ink spilled criticizing Bigelow's portrayal of torture, three United States Senators (John McCain (R, AZ), Diane Feinstein (D, CA), and Carl Levin (D, MI)) also put their thumbs in a decidedly downward position, writing a public letter to Sony Pictures lambasting the movie as "grossly inaccurate and misleading in its suggestion that torture resulted in information that led to the location of Usama bin Laden." Senator McCain, a Vietnam war veteran and torture survivor, had especially harsh words for the movie, stating that watching the film made him physically "sick."
Bigelow has responded to her critics by insisting that torture played an undeniable role in the hunt for bin Laden and that, regardless of whether it was the primary intelligence method that led to bin Laden's death, it was something the screenwriters couldn't ignore. "War, obviously, isn't pretty," she says, "and we were not interested in portraying this military action as free of moral consequences." She has also stated that she personally finds torture to be "reprehensible," and, in a written statement/article published in the Los Angeles Times, she went on to say:
But my goal here is not to write a long-winded criticism of the film in the "why torture is bad" or "how torture doesn't work" or "why this movie is factually inaccurate" veins (although these points will certainly be discussed or touched on to some extent). Plenty of people have already done that. Nor is my purpose to prove that Ms. Bigelow or even the film itself is pro-torture. No, no. My goal is to write an even more long-winded critique of ZD30 and its depiction of torture from an artistic/realistic perspective by comparing ZD30 with another film - one of my favorites: The Battle of Algiers. It is my opinion that defenses of ZD30's torture scenes as being merely "nuanced" or showing "the whole picture" are wrong. While it can certainly be argued that the film holds an accusatory mirror up to American society in the post-9/11 era (e.g. "look what you have become"), if the film sought to show any deeper perspective on the strategic or moral consequences of torture, it fails miserably. To put it another way, merely showing American CIA agents torturing captured al-Qaeda members is not particularly deep or nuanced. And this is what ZD30 does: while there are certainly some stricken looks from ZD30's main character, Maya, during the early torture scenes, no one challenges the enhanced interrogation techniques, no discussion takes place about why they are - or even could be - bad/immoral/ineffective, and no negative results arise from their use in the course of the movie. Even this brief scene from the Batman movie The Dark Knight (on the topic of surveillance) is more nuanced than the treatment of torture in ZD30:
And this is where The Battle of Algiers comes in. I believe that, unlike ZD30, the Battle of Algiers actually succeeds in examining the issues involved in a Western nation's fight against terrorism - whether employed for nationalist or trans-nationalist purposes - from a nuanced perspective that actually allows the viewer to think more deeply about these issues. And, over a series of posts that examines what each movie did right and what each movie did wrong when it comes to artistic portrayals of torture, I hope to show why. We will begin (hopefully soon) with a post about The Battle of Algiers, with a background primer on that film and an examination of its treatment of torture within the context of the French-Algerian conflict.
Bigelow has responded to her critics by insisting that torture played an undeniable role in the hunt for bin Laden and that, regardless of whether it was the primary intelligence method that led to bin Laden's death, it was something the screenwriters couldn't ignore. "War, obviously, isn't pretty," she says, "and we were not interested in portraying this military action as free of moral consequences." She has also stated that she personally finds torture to be "reprehensible," and, in a written statement/article published in the Los Angeles Times, she went on to say:
"Those of us who work in the arts know that depiction is not endorsement. If it was, no artist would be able to paint inhumane practices, no author could write about them, and no filmmaker could delve into the thorny subjects of our time."Which, of course, is true - as far as it goes. But, as I watched ZD30, I fully understood the points being made by the movie's critics, and my personal opinion is generally one of agreement: Bigelow's film comes dangerously close to, not legitimizing, not promoting, but . . . sanitizing the "enhanced interrogation" tactics employed by the CIA. Baptized in the endorphin-drenched victory of a successful hunt and a dead enemy, the torture tactics seen by the viewer in the early parts of the film fade into the background - grim, but necessary, component parts of America's victory. As the credits roll and the movie theater crowd begins to clap, who, then, remembers the suffering of Ammar earlier in the film?
But my goal here is not to write a long-winded criticism of the film in the "why torture is bad" or "how torture doesn't work" or "why this movie is factually inaccurate" veins (although these points will certainly be discussed or touched on to some extent). Plenty of people have already done that. Nor is my purpose to prove that Ms. Bigelow or even the film itself is pro-torture. No, no. My goal is to write an even more long-winded critique of ZD30 and its depiction of torture from an artistic/realistic perspective by comparing ZD30 with another film - one of my favorites: The Battle of Algiers. It is my opinion that defenses of ZD30's torture scenes as being merely "nuanced" or showing "the whole picture" are wrong. While it can certainly be argued that the film holds an accusatory mirror up to American society in the post-9/11 era (e.g. "look what you have become"), if the film sought to show any deeper perspective on the strategic or moral consequences of torture, it fails miserably. To put it another way, merely showing American CIA agents torturing captured al-Qaeda members is not particularly deep or nuanced. And this is what ZD30 does: while there are certainly some stricken looks from ZD30's main character, Maya, during the early torture scenes, no one challenges the enhanced interrogation techniques, no discussion takes place about why they are - or even could be - bad/immoral/ineffective, and no negative results arise from their use in the course of the movie. Even this brief scene from the Batman movie The Dark Knight (on the topic of surveillance) is more nuanced than the treatment of torture in ZD30:
And this is where The Battle of Algiers comes in. I believe that, unlike ZD30, the Battle of Algiers actually succeeds in examining the issues involved in a Western nation's fight against terrorism - whether employed for nationalist or trans-nationalist purposes - from a nuanced perspective that actually allows the viewer to think more deeply about these issues. And, over a series of posts that examines what each movie did right and what each movie did wrong when it comes to artistic portrayals of torture, I hope to show why. We will begin (hopefully soon) with a post about The Battle of Algiers, with a background primer on that film and an examination of its treatment of torture within the context of the French-Algerian conflict.
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