Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

After the surprisingly deft Hurt Locker cleaned up at the Oscars a few years back, Kathryn Bigelow’s next project had everyone’s attention, and the topicality of Zero Dark Thirty – both political and awards-season – has everyone talking all over again.  And rightly so, because Zero Dark Thirty is another smartly crafted thriller dissecting the effects of war on the human psyche.

Jessica Chastain stars as CIA investigator Maya, who’s sent to Afghanistan during the early days of the manhunt for Osama bin Laden.  After a stint with a torturer (Jason Clarke), Maya picks up a lead on bin Laden’s location and pursues it, even against the advice of her superiors.  The film culminates with a tense and cathartic retelling of the predawn raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where American forces finally caught up to bin Laden.

In many ways, a review of Zero Dark Thirty necessarily must weigh in on the controversy of torture, which some contend is endorsed by the film.  I disagree, though; it seems instead that the film takes a documentary approach to the issue, demonstrating that, yes, torture happened, sometimes with beneficial results and sometimes without.  The film doesn’t make blanket statements about the efficacy of torture, though its moral opposition seems evident; the opening scenes depict an intense interrogation that emphasizes the desperate dehumanization of the act glibly elided over by 24 and others.  Instead, the film argues that bin Laden’s capture was effected by the rugged determination of one agent.

That the film is inspiring such fervent debate, though, suggests something about the caliber and fertility of the art; our willingness to interpret and engage with this work tells me that Bigelow has crafted something rather dense and significant, the stakes of which involve the way we remember our own past.  (Perhaps, even, the film is neutral to the point of permitting us to read our own prejudices onto it.)  As a piece of art, then, Zero Dark Thirty is important in the same way that The Hurt Locker was – it’s fresh and relevant, and it asks us to consider if we as a people have changed over the last ten years.

The battleground for this issue is Maya, a rather unique character in that we know next to nothing about her – no backstory, no character insights, no next of kin.  Yet it’s not a weakness of story, since we learn in a key scene that Maya has no other life beyond her pursuit of bin Laden (which may explain her tears in the final shot of the film).  It’s a credit to Chastain, then, that she manages to make this character compelling in spite of her relative anonymity.  One character remarks that it’s her confidence that sets her apart, and Chastain does well do show the difference between Maya’s performative poise and her inner doubts and frustrations.  It’ll be a well-deserved trophy should she win the Oscar next month.

That the selfsame Academy snubbed Bigelow for her directing duties is a shame.  The film is quite suspenseful and dramatic, with the audience following along with Maya’s investigation.  For a film that has a foregone conclusion, an ending that everyone already knows, Zero Dark Thirty manages to be gripping because Bigelow is an expert at generating that sense of unease in her audience; as with Hurt Locker, danger is around every corner, but Bigelow doesn’t let you know that until she’s ready.

The centerpiece of the film is, perhaps naturally, the Seal Team 6 raid on bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound, in which Bigelow crosscuts between standard camerawork and first-person night vision shots that put the viewer in the position of a team member.  Again, the outcome of the raid is inevitable, but Bigelow manages to make the adventure exciting and compelling; indeed, I’m not sure I blinked during the last half-hour of the film.  As filmmaking, it’s among Bigelow’s better work, but as art it’s perhaps cathartic for viewers who felt vindicated after a ten-year manhunt.

The ambiguous note on which Zero Dark Thirty ends asks, “What next?”  Like The Hurt Locker, there is no easy answer – there may not be an answer at all.  A more interesting question, though, might be, “What’s next for Kathryn Bigelow?”  I’m hoping she makes a third war film to round out the thematic trilogy; it’s obvious she has much to say and a gift for knowing how to say it.

Zero Dark Thirty is rated R "for strong violence including brutal disturbing images, and for language."  The torture scenes are quite intense though mostly bloodless; there is a suicide bombing, also without gore, though the raid includes a few bloody gunfire exchanges and a few out-of-focus glimpses of a badly-mutilated body.  The F-word is sprinkled throughout, as are less offensive words.