Since When Was This All So Black and White?
Because of the film's motivation and background as well as obvious political gravity, it seems that when we look at this film we come with the expectation that what we see is all we are going to get and a political agenda should be added to such superficial observation. Yes, Bigelow and Boal wanted it to be as accurate as possible, but let me explain this possibility in terms of cinema, especially, the fiction film. If Bigelow wanted to make the most accurate and authentic account of the Bin Laden manhunt then she would have made, well, a documentary, which would instill a different set of expectations from the audience. The fact that it is a fiction film means the film is a reproduction of such facts acquired, not a representation. There are far more stylistic choices to be made with a fiction film than with a documentary. Everything, from the sets to the acting to the editing, is re-imagined.
There also seems to be a strange conviction that the story presented is one that is black and white, good versus evil. Of course, it is easy to have that sentiment in America, but Bigelow never visualizes this story in a good versus evil dichotomy even though it is most definitely from the American perspective. Does one really think that this manhunt was so simple that torture wasn't used and that the people involved were all for the pure cause for protecting their country and avenging 9/11 in an idealistic way (I hate to sound cynical, but really.)? Are the (real) players to this event really that flat? I'll go into more detail about the characters in the film later, but just think about this controversy surrounding the film. Again, they are only focusing on the torture and if they think that is the most integral part into killing Bin Laden then it's hard to argue against. Yet, from my understanding of the film, it was more of a hunch than torture. The problem I keeping finding in Jonathan Kim's criticism (I linked it up there) is that he explains what the film ignores about torture in the film is its significance and the global perception of the US policy towards Iraq when in fact that is not what the film is about. Like The Hurt Locker, it is about the futility of the process. Bigelow shows the process with ambiguous austerity and what reverberates is such futility. This is not a film about torture; torture is just a means of the long manhunt which, again, was based more off a hunch than anything else. Again, this is because Bigelow does not present this film in a black and white manner, she relies on ambiguity to showcase a harsh truth while also injecting some of her own thoughts on the process as a whole. I'm not saying Bigelow doesn't place torture in some moral context (I'll get to that later), but it is, indeed, applied to the larger process of finding Bin Laden because that is what the film is about and the narrative would become convoluted if it steers towards a more moral tale about torture.
Through this, one cannot just deduce from the fact that torture helped catch Bin Laden means it was deemed, 'a good thing to do' by Bigelow in order to apprehend the 'evil.' Whether or not it is true is still murky until the CIA actually discloses that (though it is interesting to see them defend against what the film shows without using the closed information- why not just unveil the information if there was no torture involved?). Though there seems to be a popular sentiment that torture wasn't used based more on moral reasons than actual facts. In general, seeing this film as a pro-torture, pro-war, or even anti-violence film is disrespecting the ambiguity Bigelow has implemented in the film, an ambiguity that ultimately demonstrates the American mentality over the last twelve years.
An Unreliable Protagonist
We can understand this film better in connecting many of the narrative elements of The Hurt Locker with ZDT, especially with the mechanism of the unreliable protagonist. In The Hurt Locker, Jeremy Renner's character, William James, is the man whose perspective we follow, but it is not a perspective morally aligned with ours. James thrives on war, it excites him. Early in the film he relentlessly shocks his partners with his inexplicable carelessness and flamboyancy during tense missions. Towards the end, he comes to terms with the atrocities of his job but, nevertheless, needs this job to keep functioning. Violence and danger are his only source of happiness. We understand the futility of the process through the tragedy of the protagonist, the inability for us to connect with the main character because of some internalized mechanism that drives his unfortunate flaw.
ZDT has Maya, who I explained in my Top Films blog, represents a tragedy and a sadness. There is one crucial, albeit very subtle, scene where the CIA head speaks with Maya about her career here. It turns out that she was recruited out of high school thirteen years ago (approximately 1998) and she has only been here for the sole purpose of finding Bin Laden. It is as if she had a program injected into her brain that kept her on this task, no matter the cost. At the beginning of the film, she grimaces and turns away from the torture before her yet when she and Dan are outside the interrogation room and it looks like they will stop for the day, Maya firmly states that they should continue. A part of her, emotionally, sees the grisly actuality of torture but her reason sees the practicality of its usage in finding Bin Laden. It gets to the point where she feels that she cannot die because she is destined to find this man.
It baffles me that anyone could really sympathize with her in the same ways we cannot sympathize with James. Symbolically, Maya is the representation of America's fixation on aggressive paranoia on terrorism, the weariness of trying to avenge an atrocity that simply cannot be reconciled. She is always trying to build an austere shell around her such that what she is witnessing cannot be fully regarded emotionally and morally. This is all in the search for one man., one singular man in this whole mess.This is her devotion of her mind, body, and soul, since high school. Bigelow constructs this story with the same austerity that Maya embodies and that we, ourselves, have embodied as we struggle to find some sort of explanation to the events that have unfolded since September 11th and even before.
One Short Shot = One Significant Criticism
The scene in which Maya tells her very brief story of her career in the CIA to the CIA head is subtle. It is not contemplative, it is just there. Maya, herself, doesn't seem to care too much of it for the reason that she can only think about Bin Laden. Bigelow injects subtle comments about this whole situation in clever ways. Again, using the inherent characterizations of fiction film to achieve this goal. I'll need to see the film again to spot more, but there was one scene that stayed with me the instance it appeared on the screen in which I loudly whispered, "Oh, I get it!"
The shot came in one the torture scenes. Or, right before the torture commenced as Dan was eating ice cream and was feeding the monkeys some of the ice cream. This was all in a medium shot and close up construction, but then the sequence cuts to a longs shot that placed Dan and the monkey cage closer to the camera towards the right part of the frame and in the left half, in the background, where the prisoners in their cages looking lifeless. A juxtaposition was made within the frame, within the same shot, for about 1.5 seconds. The story continues unhindered, unabridged.
The juxtaposition is obvious, the significance as well. Besides the horrific display of torture in the films, Bigelow sidesteps the journalistic and austere approach of her filmmaking and inserts a raw illustration of her own perspective. In many ways, it is a masterful touch. It comes so natural that one could easily overlook it with understandable ignorance. But it's there and the shot selection is, well, stark, or too strong, to be labelled as just an insert shot or some sort of establishing shot. Here is what Jonathan was looking for. Of course, it may not satisfy many people, but remember, Bigelow is not trying to tell this story as a moral story, but at the same time she will slip in some of her own beliefs from time to time.
Note: I wish I could show you the actual shot as it would obviously be helpful to concretely present my case but the film is not on DVD and there is no way for me to acquire the shot beforehand.
The Climatic Anticlimax
There are strange criticisms on the internet that either derive form the torture scenes or derive from the 'lackluster' scene of Bin Laden's death. It is hard to discuss this film in any length if you are one side or the other as well as generate any interest in the film, whatsoever. The raid plays out with the same tone as the torture scenes which, of course, is embedded in Bigelow's approach to the narrative. It is unflinching and voided of all glamour, convention, and pre-determined morality. What happens happens. The cinematography, editing, and sound design are all constructed as strategically as the raid, itself.
Many of the criticism come from the comment section of some of the links I posted, but they are intriguing, to an extent, to think about. Maybe people would have liked more background on Bin Laden, himself, instead of not even seeing his face and have him die, in the words of T.S. Eliot, not in a bang but in a whimper. Roger Ebert, in his review, called for that. Again, that would go against Bigelow's style of filmmaking as well as tone. Recalling The Hurt Locker again, we can see that that film also never gave much background and specifics on the Iraqi natives to the extent that James even was confused with his relationship with the boy who sold bootleg DVDs.
In ZDT, the same thing goes on except a step is taken further as we are denied any connection, whether visual, narrative, moral, to the target of the manhunt. Just think about it, what good would it do to the audience to his face? Shouldn't it be just the fact that once he was alive and now he is dead sufficient? Here lies much of the emotion and morals of this whole, cold story. How many of us were actually thinking about Bin Laden the month before he was captured. When was the last time we saw him on the news? It got to the point that he did become synonymous with terrorism, but only in a fleeting existence, where the obscurities to his whereabouts coupled with no news of him denied any of us a concrete grasp of one of the most intense figures of national insecurity. Through this, confusion melds with paranoia and a lack of a way to vent out insecurities until there is solid, definable evidence of his death.
Not for Maya. She gets to see his face because she has looked upon his face for over a decade. The last time she sees it is for confirmation that he is, indeed, dead. As she walks by the celebrating soldiers, the is certainly a disconnect in emotional conclusion. In my personal experience, something that echoes how many of us reacted to the news.
A little more on the actual raid. I believe that, right now, Bigelow is the filmmaker that best captures the hyper-realism of battle. It is done with such lifelessness it is clearly unconventional. This reminded me of another great battle scene in The Hurt Locker where the bomb squad and mercenaries fought opposition in a vast open desert. The opposition stationed themselves in a small building and the only way to take them out was to wait and pick them off from afar. It is a scene that is both spontaneously tense and lingering with uncertainty. But, no matter, it carries with it a realism that makes it courageous. The raid is the same way. Its primary objective is austere realism, not a build up to a manipulative climax. The camera never seems to teleport to locations that will capture a moment of dramatized emotions. That's not how these raids work.
Where Do We Go From Here? A Futile Question
So where does this leave us now? Bin Laden is dead. Has terrorism stopped? Well, we can all answer that. Have we become safer, both physically and mentally? That is tougher to answer. Maya doesn't know that. In the last scene, a scene that seems to finally take a large step out of the journalistic filmmaking and into a surreal moment, Maya goes on a plane all by herself, takes a seat, and stares off into space, eventually shedding a tear. The film ends.
Her mission is done. She found and killed Bin Laden. What does she do then? She has been programmed to get this guy for over a decade. She has tortured others and seen her friends die. How does she feel?
There is no absolute interpretation for such a scene, but it will help to look at how Bigelow constructs this scene. Although I do feel there is some sort of surreal element to the scene, it manages to still play out in an austere manner right up to the point where Maya sheds a tear. Has the shell broken? Maybe, but if that were to happen, the morals and the confusion that she suppressed throughout the whole endeavor would come flooding in without any restraint. Bigelow, ends the film before we really see what is going on, almost saying that this cold approach to the film was mentally exhausting to make and that there must be some sort of catharsis but, ultimately, there isn't one. One could see this film as a revenge film. In that case, this film is conventional in approach, since in the end the vengeance does not satisfy anyone. Maya maybe is unsure or even scared at what the future holds.
Nevertheless, the tear represents a siphoned outflow of emotions and morals during a span of time that suppressed such ideas because of our uncertainty towards other peoples, their motives, and possibly costly actions. We have lived in a time of hesitation and anxiety. This builds in our minds and in our souls to make us numb of many of the actions we pursue as a nation and, also, what we endorse. It is the America that had developed since 9/11 in an attempt to bring conclusion for an act that will never have a conclusion. Anger and frustration as well as determination was fueled into the search for the embodiment of our angst. But with this search we have seemed to lose sight of a certain hope, an assurance that renders us the ability to trust and to clearly see things the way they are. Maybe torture wasn't involved, but how many decisions were made that were questionable after 9/11? We are not free of the actions we committed as a nation and we are certainly not free to scrutinize a projection of a mentality that may underline these actions in a manner that is hinged upon the psychology of these actions.
Kate Bigelow must be commended for this film. A brave film that defines an aspect of our generation much like The Social Network does in other ways. Yet, to understand this film is to see the futility of the process. Maya finally opened up and saw it. What happens happens, but what for? I feel, from the entire nation to individuals, we are still asking that question.
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