The Condo of Darkness

The war on terror presented through a glass darkly in Zero Dark Thirty

««1/2   Zero Dark Thirty. Written by Mark Boal. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow. 

They say success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan. In the case of the decade-long hunt for Obama bin Laden, success also has a mother: the anonymous intelligence analyst depicted as “Maya” in Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty. The role of the real-life Maya in the search that culminated in the May, 2011 killing of bin Laden at his compound in Pakistan is a matter of wide discussion. Nor is it the only one: for implying that crucial information was obtained through torture, Bigelow’s film has provoked a Senate investigation of its sources in the CIA. All this press certainly hasn’t hurt Thirty at the box office, where it out-earned the work of another guy who’s been known to indulge in enhanced entertainment techniques, Quentin Tarantino.

            Notoriety is rarely substance and Bigelow’s film is no exception. Despite the high-level security clearances and references to 9-11, this is really just a police procedural about a very shy fugitive. For the most part, we watch this movie in order to watch the heroine (Jessica Chastain) process video feeds, glower significantly, and make a pest of herself to her superiors. Take away the searing topicality and it’s doubtful the film would have been made in the first place. Take away bin Laden’s name and it would be downright dull.

            True, actual intelligence work is a meticulous craft, demanding not 007 heroics but patient spadework with facts and probabilities. As Bigelow presents her, Maya is not just good at her job but ferociously driven—a flame-haired Fury of counter-terrorism. For 10 years (but in real life, only five), she kept at the task, keeping the torch of vengeance alive even as her bosses seemed to lose interest. Mostly through her physical presence, Chastain does as much with this deliberately one-dimensional character as she can. When Leon Panetta (played here by a laughingly bewigged James Gandolfini) demands to know why she deserves a seat at the big table for discussions of bin Laden’s hideout, she replies “Because I’m the motherfucker who found the place…sir”.

            If this was just a story of about a mid-level bureaucrat who sacrifices her life for a cruel but just cause, we might had seen more of what Maya gave up to get her man. We’d learn what opportunities she passed on, what relationships she gave up. Who is Maya, really, and what makes her so different from the others? But beyond saying what she isn’t (“I’m not that girl,” she declares, “the girl who fucks…”) this isn’t the story Bigelow wants to tell. This is ostensibly because she and screenwriter Mark Boal were determined not to make Maya’s real CIA counterpart recognizable in any way.

            One obvious option would have been to fictionalize a back story for her. Instead, Bigelow pads out the story with long scenes of Maya and a colleague (Jason Clarke) torturing a detainee (Reda Kateb) using water-boarding, stress positions, and sexual humiliation. That these are the scenes that have sparked the most discussion is ironic, given that only the barest sliver of a hint to bin Laden’s whereabouts come from torture, and in fact only after, when the guy makes a casual reference over lunch. Bigelow and Boal insist they don’t condone torture, arguing that the scenes are there to show the full range of “tools” the agency was willing to use in the hunt. But this is hardly convincing, given that they never bother to show what the brutality really costs the torturers, let alone the tortured. There’s barely a hint of discussion about the actual efficacy of stringing people up for information.

            Mostly, the water-boarding seems to be in there because the rest of the manhunt is so visually dull—just Maya in her cubicle, staring at computer screens—and because the filmmakers don’t dare make her a rounded, complete person. So really, where else could they go? The filmmakers trap themselves in an unresolveable dilemma: if the torture is presented as effective, then the film is a lie; if it isn’t effective, it’s gratuitous.

            The film finally does take off when Seal Team Six sets off on its mission at “zero dark thirty” (that’s military slang for “sometime after midnight”). It’s in these final forty minutes or so that we glimpse the flair Bigelow showed in The Hurt Locker—the tightly-wound physicality she releases only in spasms, as the raiders creep deeper into bin Laden’s condo of darkness. There’s a fitting symmetry there, as the payback comes from above on the guy who attacked us from the air.

            Yet even here there’s a sense of dissatisfaction. Maya can’t go on the commando raid she set in motion. For two hours her primary dramatic function is not to act herself, but to beg and plead for others to act. As the helicopters take off and all that is about to end, she seems more reflective than frustrated, as if this were all happening to someone else.          

            Military protocol might dictate that Maya remain passive. But Bigelow might have found a way to make this final thwarting feel as tragic as it was. Or at least as compelling as stuffing a wet towel down a guy’s throat.

© 2013 Nicholas Nicastro