5 out of 5
In 2006, director Paul Greengrass released United 93, a docudrama about the hijacking and crashing of United Airlines flight 93 on September 11th. The film never gained a huge audience - for many, it was simply too close to the events for comfort - but the film sought to strip the hijacking of its political and emotional baggage and simply depict the events as they happened, focusing not on the historical weight of it all, but instead on the people who were there and died. Now we have Zero Dark Thirty, which seeks to do much the same thing for the hunt for Osama Bin Laden that ultimately led to his death. This is not an action-packed thriller, not a technologically driven spy thriller, and not some American "rah rah" propaganda. Rather, what Bigelow has done is try to wade through the commentaries, the perspectives, the political axes to grind, and the historical shading to get at the hunt and what we as a country were willing to do to get the man behind 9/11 - and, indeed, whether it was an essential goal at all. Zero Dark Thirty is, I would say, as apolitical as a film about these events can possibly be; while it depicts both incredible successes and devastating failures, and while the brutality ranges from the much-discussed torture scenes to the climactic, riveting raid, ultimately the film feels as though it's attempting to merely depict, never judge or bring its own perspective to the table. That, of course, has led to much debating as to whether the film endorses things like the waterboarding it depicts, a question which seems absurd to me; from my perspective, the torture is merely something we did, not necessarily something that worked. But it's to the film's credit that it evades easy answers; even in the final raid, the film neither whitewashes the violence nor demonizes the soldiers, instead attempting to depict the soldiers as consummate professionals who did what it took to achieve success. Zero Dark Thirty is riveting, fascinating stuff; while there's no doubt a certain appeal to the film simply in the fact that it tells a story few of us were aware of, that doesn't account for how rivetingly told and expertly paced this is, especially once you understand just how sprawling the material the film has to cover is. The film no doubt gains from its timing, but to handwave away Bigelow's storytelling abilities and the astonishing richness of the film is to ignore one of the finest examples of filmmaking of the year.
- Josh Mauthe
- Josh Mauthe