“Tastes great!” “Less filling!” Kyle Chandler and Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty
I have made some remarks in social media concerning my
critical objections to some writing by Glenn Greenwald concerning the movie Zero
Dark Thirty. Much of the response to these
sideline snipings has been along the lines of “put up or shut up.” My official
review for MSN Movies has yet to be posted, and I would prefer to launch my
arguments pertaining to Greenwald’s observations using that review as a
platform, but it seems the die is cast. I cannot stress this enough: I have no
expectation of changing Greenwald’s mind, earning his respect, or persuading
his most loyal readers, what have you. But I have said that I think he’s lied
about the movie. So what I’m going to address here, eventually, is why I think
that. I ask any reader’s indulgence, as things are apt to get a little
potentially laborious. It helps if you’ve already seen the film, is another
thing I can’t stress enough.
Let me lay out how I look at Zero Dark Thirty. First of all, I see it entirely as a fiction. The great journalist Jane
Mayer, in her New Yorker blog post objecting to the movie, cites its title card
that says the story is “based on first-hand accounts of actual events.” She
goes on to argue, “If there is an expectation of accuracy, it is set up by the
filmmakers themselves.” Leaving aside for the moment the extent to which Zero
Dark Thirty depicts events accurately (and
even here it is arguable that the accounts of events from which Boal and
Bigelow took off are entirely different from any number of official or
unofficial constructions of the bin Laden pursuit narrative), when I’m watching
a film in which actors are performing scripted actions in front of a very
deliberately set-up camera, my takeaway from a title card such as the one Mayer
cites is centered on “based on.” I am looking at a fiction, period. And it is
from experiencing the work as a fiction that I draw my conclusions. (To tell
you the truth, I personally never had much invested in the idea of bringing bin
Laden to “justice” or not. Which is not to say that I did not take the 9/11
attacks somewhat personally, but I just never believed that bin Laden’s capture
or death could do much to repair the damage of the attacks. Looked at another
way, I didn’t believe that either bin Laden’s capture or death would have the
effect of having made him “pay” for the 9/11 attacks.) So when a pundit tells
me “Don’t Trust Zero Dark Thirty,”
my response is, “Don’t worry, I don’t; at least not in the way that you are so
kindly concerned about.” I’m not forming my impression of history around it,
no. I deal with it as a discrete story and, when forming a critique of it, try
to look at the way it’s told.
Second, when I’m looking at, and trying to figure out, a
movie, that’s what I look at: the movie. Not interviews with the filmmakers.
“It’s the singer, not the song,” the Rolling Stones once opined, and while in a
specific way they might have been right what is missed is that the singer makes
the song. Trust the tale, not the teller is a pretty hard and fast rule for me,
and if Zero Dark Thirty cannot achieve
its coherence and /or comprehensibility as a work entirely on its own, then
it’s probably not even worth discussing. It would be disingenuous of me to
claim that Greenwald and Mayer are playing “gotcha” in their citations of Boal
and Bigelow and the varied inconsistencies that have emerged in their accounts
of their methods and intentions. Those inconsistencies are there. But I didn’t
go into the screening of the film carrying those with me.
And what I saw when I watched to movie was a very
well-constructed narrative that, to my mind, was concerned with knowing and
with the action taken as a result of knowing, or “knowing.” I saw a movie that
subverted a lot of expectations concerning viewer identification and empathy,
including the use of a lead character who in a conventional
good-guy-versus-bad-guy scenario would raise objections to torture but who
instead, a few queasy looks and pauses aside, rolls with it as an information
gathering policy. In 1976 Robert Christgau wrote this about the first Ramones
record: “I love this record–love it–even though I know these boys flirt with
images of brutality (Nazi especially) in much the same way ‘Midnight Rambler’
flirts with rape. You couldn’t say they condone any nasties, natch–they merely
suggest that the power of their music has some fairly ominous sources and tap
those sources even as they offer the suggestion. This makes me uneasy. But my
theory has always been that good rock and roll should damn well make you
uneasy.” I agree with Bob in all these particulars, and even more so if you
substitute “good art” for “good
rock and roll.” Zero Dark Thirty made me
uneasy. Greenwald’s evocations of amorality are not entirely inapt. There’s a
sense in which the film at least skirts outright amorality by refusing to
assign any definite values to the various Xes and Ys in the equation that makes
up its narrative. Its perspective, from where I sit, is sometimes flat to the
point of affectlessness. There is an almost cynical mordancy in its depiction
of events, and this to me is entirely clear from the film’s visual grammar (not
to mention the entirely deliberate lack of ostensible multi-dimensionality in
some of its characters, which moves Greenwald to make an unfavorable comparison
of Jessica Chastain’s Maya to Claire Danes’ “let-me-show-you-my-tic-collection”
Carrie on Homeland, which is
pretty funny). But Greenwald sees none of this, and insists: “There is zero
doubt, as so many reviewers have said, that the standard viewer will get the
message loud and clear: that we found and killed bin Laden because we tortured
The Terrorists.”
I have neither the inclination or the mental space to
expound on the sheer undifferentiated condescending shittiness behind the
phrase “standard viewer.” What I would like to do, then, is make my own direct
defense of what Greenwald dismisses as “the art excuse.” But I don’t think I
can make a truly persuasive one, or at least not one that will persuade
Greenwald or his most sympathetic readers, because it comes down to a
fundamental disagreement on what Greenwald and myself actually saw in the
movie. That is, he believes the movie ought to be held accountable for
“political implications” (he calls them “implications” after devoting a
considerable amount of verbiage on the insistence that the movie’s pro torture,
C.I.A.-lionizing message is spelled out in neon). I believe that those
implications as he describes them are not there. Sometimes they are not there
as he describes them. (As one point, as an aside, he shows maybe more of his
hand than is entirely prudent, writing, “Nobody is ever heard talking about the
civilian-destroying violence brought to the world by the U.S.” The
why-isn’t‑this-movie-behaving-as-I-would-like-it-to whinge is the most reliable
of philistine giveaways, but it has an extra dimension here.) And sometimes
they are not there at all.
It’s tough to make this argument, or at least make it
persuasively, without access to actual images from the film, or at least
without my having made detailed notes on certain images, although having the
images to display might be really useful. Then again, maybe not, because in his
descriptions of the movie Greenwald does tend to shy away from specifics with
respect to film grammar. Perhaps he’s doing visually literate people a favor,
given how he handles other descriptions. I don’t consider him all that hot in
terms of specifics regarding characterization. For instance, he writes, “Almost
every Muslim and Arab in the film is a villainous, one-dimensional cartoon
figure: dark, seedy, violent, shadowy, menacing, and part of a Terrorist
network.” According to my notes and memory, there are not very many Muslim/Arab
characters in the film, and almost all
of them are detainees. Are they dark? Well, they are darkly complected. Are
they seedy? They don’t look so great, but that’s because they’re locked in huts
and cages and not given a lot of amenities. (There’s one guy who’s bribed with
a Lamborghini, but I’d say he’s more tacky than seedy. You call something
“seedy” and I think Akim Tamiroff in Alphaville.) Are
they violent? As Greenwald actually points out elsewhere, mostly they have
violence inflicted upon them, and it is not pleasant to watch. I myself thought
the first detainee depicted to be a pretty sympathetic figure. Not necessarily
admirable, but more human, or “human” than Jason Clarke’s swaggering, torturing
character in that scene. Again, maybe it’s just me. Mayer cites a scene in the
film in which “an elderly detainee explains that he wants to coöperate with the
U.S. because he ‘doesn’t want to be tortured again.’” I am sorry that I do not
have the name of the actor who played this character at hand, because I found
him rather poignant.
I would be remiss though if I did not mention the notes of
Stuart Klawans, film critic for The Nation, which Greenwald cites. Writing of
the torture scenes Klawans says “the movie juices the audience on the
adrenaline generated by these physical confrontations,” an assertion that’s
arguable at best; then he goes on to state “and offers vicariously the sense of
power enjoyed by the person holding the leash.” And I say that part is just
plain wrong, and it’s here particularly that it would be useful to be able to
do a shot-by-shot breakdown of the torture scenes. The first sequence begins
with a shot from the back of the room, with the detainee hanging there by
ropes. A door opens, three people, presumably men, enter noisily, and all
wearing masks save the bearded one. The film grammar is such that the viewer
flinches on entry; the sight of the detainee hanging there alone establishes
his helplessness, the entry of the figures establishes threat. The torture
scenes continue in this fashion and never ONCE do they invite the viewer to
enjoy either holding or pulling the leash. I cannot speak to how Klawans, a
seasoned and perceptive viewer, came to these conclusions, but I insist they
are incorrect.
Whether or not the instances of torture actually happened,
which for the purpose of assessing this fictional film does not concern me, or
whether they “worked” and that their efficacy makes them right (a rather
knottier question that I think the movie does want us to consider, but not with
respect to forming a policy theory) I share my friend Tom Carson’s view about the
function of the torture scenes: that rather than endorsing the
barbarity, the picture makes the viewer in a sense complicit with it. A whole
other can of worms. Where Jane Mayer complains that she “had trouble enjoying
the movie,” I respectfully submit that perhaps the movie’s agenda is not
entirely about enjoyment. “Maybe I care too much about all of this to enjoy it
with popcorn,” she writes later. Implying that admirers of the film probably do
not care enough. I submit, sadly, that if you think the only thing movies are
useful for is enjoyable visual distraction while eating popcorn, maybe we don’t
have too much to say to each other. But it’s easier to run this particular
agenda if you only see Zero Dark Thirty
as a product of “the entertainment industry.”
This ties in to the way that Greenwald lies about the movie.
Here’s how. After laying out what he believes to be “the art excuse” and then
laying out why it is wanting, which has something to do with his having gone on
record as defended Homeland. He insists
that any argument that the movie should not be “held accountable” for its
politics is “pretentious, pseudo-intellectual, and ultimately amoral.” Give the
man credit; he covers his bases, even if he declines to detail just how the
movie ought to be “held accountable.”
Greenwald then, finally, avers that the art excuse doesn’t
apply anyway because “to demand that this movie be treated as ‘art’ is to
expand that term beyond any real recognition.” I give Greenwald credit: he
stacks his rhetorical deck even more thickly than Bill O’Reilly does. (I was
once on O’Reilly’s show, and he was laying in to Parker and Stone [this was
before they came out as libertarians I guess] on account of them being “bad for
the kids,” and he said to me “Come on, all these guys care about is making
money, right?” which, you know, how are you supposed to answer that? You can’t
say they’re NOT interested in making money, but once you step into that pile of
shit that Bill’s placed in front of you there’s no way you’re going to get to
any other, and actually salient, points.) I mean, start with the word “demand” which opens up a whole can of
worms with respect to taking offensive action on the film’s behalf, and that as such is an
affront to the obviously manifestly right-thinking Greenwald perspective. Well,
as Robin Wood once said, a film is either a work of art or it is worthless. I
don’t “demand” that the movie be treated as art; I just treat it as art, my own
self. (I treat the first Ramones record as art, too.) I’m gonna leave the rest of that straw-man trap alone. Anyway, I’m really not concerned with what Glenn Greenwald
thinks is art.
Greenwald continues: “This film is Hollywood schlock.”
Again: not much to say to that, beyond “No it’s not,” and then, of course, and
again, you’re already dead. Like, if I said “Glenn Greenwald’s writing isn’t
‘activist journalism,’ it’s whey-faced self-aggrandizing puling self-righteousness
that holds everything and everybody save Greenwald and his claque to an
impossible moral standard,” what could Greenwald propose in response, save
“Says you, you moral monster?” Am
I right?
But wait. Greenwald continues: “The brave crusaders slay the
Evil Villains, and everyone cheers.” (I’m surprised he didn’t capitalize the
“c” in “Crusaders:” his complaint goes back a LONG way.) And that is the lie.
Of course his rhetoric is such that some may argue that I stretch in calling it
a lie, but a lie is what I call it. The movie moment that his
slaying-evil-villain-and-audience-cheering assertion conjures up for the
“standard” viewer would be something like Hans Gruber’s fall from the near-top
of Nakatomi Plaza in Die Hard, or Aziz
being blown up by his own missile at the climax of True Lies or Terry Molloy getting the shit kicked out of him
at the end of On The Waterfront oh
wait…scratch that last one. You get the idea. Now, those who have not seen the
film may want to just stop reading around here if they’d like, but… I don’t
believe that it represents a “spoiler” to reveal that the raid on the place
where bin Laden is living, that is, the movie’s climax, represents anything
even resembling a “evil villains slain” cinematic crescendo. Save for Alexander
Desplat’s musical score, which is moody and ominous and very low-key rather
than building-to-the-triumphalist moment, this is the scene in which the movie
affects to purport its most “realistic” perspective. Much of it is depicted in
forbiddingly lowlight, there’s a lot of stuff through night-vision goggles. The
dominant sense is of organized activity that creates chaos that is then reigned
in, so to speak, via slaughter. With the exception of one or two armed
resisters, the “Evil Villains” who get shot down don’t even have a chance.
Unless the viewer himself has a higher than average understanding of the
details of how the raid unfolded, the viewer doesn’t even know which of the men
shot down was bin Laden until the SEALS reconvene on the ground floor of the
compound and put two and two together and fetch the body bag. In the meantime
the viewer has been treated to depictions of fearful women and cowering
children being herded about by shouting Americans. Where anyone can pull
“everyone cheers” out of this mess is beyond me, but maybe if I see it with a
paying audience I will find out. (I do not know what kind of audience Greenwald
watched it with.)
So yes, I insist that
in this specific instance Greenwald’s characterization of the movie is a lie.
It is a purposeful lie, designed to get his reader to believe that people
defending Zero Dark Thirty on
artistic grounds are, at best, tired fools (“Perhaps film critics are forced to
watch so many shoddy Hollywood films that their expectations are very low and
they are easily pleased,” he muses with exemplary disinterest, before pulling
the now standard “I’ve got a friend who works in the film industry who says I’m
totally right” trick) and at worst, moral monsters. I suppose then that I can
be forgiven for taking his puling whey-faced jibes a little personally. As for
his incredibly ignorant and misleading summation of the critical controversy
concerning Leni Riefenstahl, all I can say is that life is too short.
UPDATE: My review for MSN Movies, which I filed before even Frank Bruni’s column appeared, is now up. I stand by it. Manohla Dargis makes some salient points beautifully, as she always does, in her NYT review. The great Larry Gross has some provocative perceptions at Film Comment’s site. And Devin Faraci shows me more grace and kindness than I’ve ever shown him in commending my work in a piece about the film for Badass Digest, and I am grateful for his giving me a necessary lesson in humility, but more important, I think his perceptions on the film and his detailed descriptions combine for a wholly admirable piece of criticism. I thank him. Scott Tobias’ AV Club review is valuable. Also, I am reminded that David Poland, commendably, got the ball rolling from our end with this piece.
UPDATE 2: Ignatiy Vishnevetsky’s piece at MUBI’s Notebook is remarkable.
Huzzah.
Thank you!
“I submit, sadly, that if you think the only thing movies are useful for is enjoyable visual distraction while eating popcorn, maybe we don’t have too much to say to each other.”
+1 on this. Greenwald seems to have a very limited definition of what movies are and can be.
Also, since when are artists morally responsible for every audience member’s misreading or misunderstanding of what their art is trying to do? I’m sure we can all come up with famous examples of film, books, or music being taken out of context and misread in ways quite antithetical to the point of the original work. I know people who think the climax of “Taxi Driver” is “cool,” even though it’s meant to be horrifying. (That’s a film, BTW, that I’ve been thinking about a lot given the events of the last week. Still the one of the best movies about young white men in America made in the last 50 fifty years, no?)
My point is: even if some viewers walk out of “Zero Dark Thirty” (which, for the record, I haven’t seen) thinking torture is awesome because we got Bin Laden, would they be right? Is the worst possible response to a film the one we need to take the most seriously? Is Scorsese responsible for John Hinckley? Greenwald would probably say, “Yes.”
I’ll need to read his defense of “Homeland” at some point, though, because that’s a VERY problematic TV show regarding the functioning of the American intelligence system, its portrayal of Islam, etc. I had to stop watching it because it just got too ridiculous. But I suppose there’s a couple of token scenes where characters voice doubts about the War on Terror, therefore it’s Greenwald approved?
Very interesting argument and I generally share your ideas about art and criticism, especially opposed to those who see everything as political. Greenwald’s piece in the Guardian was one of the more tiresomely self-riteous whinges I recall having read. Am curious though about his contention that the filmmakers worked with the government to consciously produce an explicit piece of political propaganda. Do we know if that’s true? Did the filmmakers work directly with the government and purposely fashion the visual grammar of the movie to artfully parrot the CIA’s propaganda? If so, should that matter from a film criticism perspective? Does the intent behind the fiction matter or only how well they are able to pull it off?
Regarding that opening card that so set off Mayer, I haven’t seen Zero Dark Thirty yet but rewatching Bigelow’s films in anticipation I was reminded how she’s often played with the conventions of such titles. The repeated “In 1961s” of K‑19’s opening scrawl insisting on a global context the movie’s restricted locale couldn’t otherwise provide; placing The Weight of Water’s based on truth title at the end, its “speculation remains” disclaimer undermining a narrative we’ve just seen completed. The days in rotation tags in Hurt Locker, of course.
Just a reminder to Greenwald et al. that, yes, Bigelow usually knows exactly what she’s doing, and sucking up to fascist tendencies hasn’t been part of that heretofore.
This was good. This was necessary. Thank you.
That was heroic, Glenn. Thank you.
Still have to wait until January to watch Zero Dark Thirty (one of the main reasons I HATE slow roll-outs: usually by the time I finally get to see it, my expectations are totally colored and distorted by a month’s worth of commentary/criticism/discussions…but anyway).
The one point, though, that I only wanted to raise, which you’ve probably already considered, and is really just more of an issue of semantics, is that I wouldn’t so much say it’s a “stretch” to say Greenwald lies about what’s in the film, but more that it’s maybe a mischaracterization. I just know from my own experiences in trying to argue against the category of argument that Greenwald is making here (again, according to your reading of the film, which I have not seen) that the people making these arguments tend to truly believe what they’re saying. It’s not so much a lie as in “I know this is bullshit, but it serves my point so I’ll say it anyway,” as it is a case of simply seeing what they desperately want to see, whether it’s there or not. Which, in the end, is an even harder argument to win against, because you’re no longer even agreeing on reality anymore.
Or in other words, “to see what’s in front of one’s own nose takes a constant struggle,” and whatnot.
Anyway, smarmy parsing over. Enjoyed the article. I intend to re-read it when I’m finally able to watch the damn thing.
Oh, and on the subject of “Based on actual events” cards: For cripes sake, UNSTOPPABLE started with one of those things. I’m pretty sure all they were referring to with that movie was the fact that trains exist.
I have not seen ZERO DARK THIRTY yet, though I have been very much in the camp of Glenn and others who have taken Greenwald to task on various sites, most especially regarding his original “haven’t seen it, here’s why it’s evil” piece (I can’t help but wonder if he was picketing outside theaters showing THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST way back when), and because of how vigorously Greenwald bet all his chips before seeing the film I can’t put any stock in his announcement, after he’d seen the film, that he’d won the hand. My stance his not shifted one inch after reading various other articles on the matter, and it certainly hasn’t been changed by Glenn’s excellent piece here (I’d like to note, Glenn, that this: “And that is the lie. Of course his rhetoric is such that some may argue that I stretch in calling it a lie, but a lie is what I call it” is fantastic, in terms of straight writing, and the force thereof).
But what I do object to is this line, posted by Tom above:
“I know people who think the climax of TAXI DRIVER is ‘cool,’ even though it’s meant to be horrifying.”
Cool, the ending of TAXI DRIVER is not. Horrifying, it certainly is. But I’m very tired of the kneejerk reaction, when faced with one kind of simplification of that film’s climax, to counter with another simplification coming from the opposite direction. For all the blown-apart hands and knife wounds, is it so easily forgotten that Travis Bickle – not a man to be admire or emulated, as the film does make clear – chooses as his victims mean who operate and/or patronize a grimy New York whorehouse that offers to its clients 12-year-old girls? To whom they can, and are even expected to, do whatever they please? And the variety of things they might please to do is laid out pretty clearly by Sport at one point. Schrader and Scorsese didn’t do this on a whim.
Glenn says that ZERO DARK THIRTY makes him uneasy, and I believe it does. The fact that he loves it at least partly for that reason is a rare reaction. Over the years, I’ve noticed that, among the many positive things a film might offer, one that many critics and cinephiles claim is most desired is a film that challenges their core beliefs and received morality. It’s my experience, however, both as an observer of people who claim to want this and as someone who claims to want this himself, this is pretty much bullshit. Not all the time, but most of the time, and pretty much. I’ve seen it over and over again – a film presents a discomforting moral ambiguity, and that ambiguity is absorbed in such a way that all the fuzz and haze that held the two or more points of the ambiguity together is sharpened, for the viewer, so that the film is saying either one thing or the other. Whether the thing the viewer has decided is being said means the view loves the film for confirming their beliefs, or hates the film for rejecting them, depends a lot on what the person wanted out of the film in the first place.
This is why I hope to never again hear or read anyone talk about STRAW DOGS again. Peckinpah was one of the most ruthless purveyors of morally uncomfortable films, and he was never more ruthless or aggressive than with STRAW DOGS. It’s almost as if he was specifically saying “So you think you want to be challenged on these grounds? Okay. Let’s go.” The reactions to that film over the years, both positive and negative (“fascist work of art” my ass) is a strong indicator that this sort of thing isn’t really that desired at all. And not that I think Greenwald would EVER want moral ambiguity in whatever the hell he considers good art, but this is precisely the line of thinking he’s following, right off the cliff.
They need to redo that indiewire poll about the best film criticism of 2012.
A very thought provoking argument, and I have to say I agree with a lot of it. Not say you want it, but to ever get respect from a crusader like Greenwald, you’d have to attack on his arguments’ facts and logic. He’s a former lawyer – he’s every smarmy defense attorney on Law & Order. His rhetorical style is not dialectical, but singular attack. His readers are his jury.
I’ve seen him make concessions before, he isn’t pig-headed. For instance, he disputes the veracity of claims of “terrorism” and the concept generally, so he rips into people who make terrorism analysis their life’s work. Earlier this year he relented on this a bit after some thoughtful critiques against his nebulous position.
In the end, whatever you think of Glenn’s position, you have to look at what he foresaw … something like Kyle Smith’s review in the New York Post, which claims Zero Dark Thirty justifies the Bush admin.
Though Greenwald personally has a paternalistic view of the “standard viewer”, and probably sees his writing as a way to shed some light on the reality behind the fiction, I personally care nothing at all for the “standard viewer”, any more than I care for the “standard person”. Whether scrawled on bathroom walls, Call of Duty lobbies, or youtube comments, I’ve never been the least bit oppressed by the person of mean disposition, and don’t feel as though telling them the truth behind Zero Dark Thirty would improve their lot in life. I see Greenwald using the mob to command the cultural waves, so the Bush people can’t cover themselves, but they’ll always be a slovenly drooling mob, no matter how liberated.
Glenn, you might want to re-read Christgau’s review of “Ghost in the Machine,” if you’re going to be at all fair to his views on how extra-textual knowledge affects his appraisal of art and its political sympathies.
http://www.robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=the+police
Christgau wasn’t even accusing The Police of pushing any kind of CIA agenda or message when he wrote that. But that’s Greenwald’s (and others) real knock against ZDT. A charge which you conveniently ignore.
The CIA kidnapped, tortured and likely killed hundreds of people, including innocents, since 2001. They destroyed the tapes of their torture sessions, and then worked with Bigelow and Boal to restage them for Hollywood’s official narrative of the event. They have forbidden the agent who inspired “Maya” from talking to journalists, while allowing her to meet with the filmmakers. This special relationship is now the subject of a Justice Department investigation.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/12/17/177676/bin-laden-leak-is-referred-to.html#storylink=cpy
I know you want to defend film and its prerogatives from the Philistine Greenwald. But you’re being intellectually dishonest when you avoid the central charge lobbed at the film. That it was made in close coöperation and support with an institution that literally got away with torture and murder.
Liberals: champions of the common man.
My last comment was for Lucretio. Oh forget it.
Matt, I know the review, and as far as I’m concerned it contradicts nothing.
I actually do have some thoughts pertaining to the movie’s perspective relative to The Agency. Greenwald says that the movie is a CIA “hagiography;” I see the organization as the host body for the movie’s point of view, which is not the same thing.
What assistance/coöperation Bigelow and Boal received from The Agency is no doubt a subject not without interest. (I don’t mean to sound coy here, but I’m really exhausted.) But again, the film I saw did not really convince with respect to being a sort of apologia for the policies/actions you describe. In other words, if the CIA wanted a recruitment tool, this ain’t that. Nor, for that matter, is it anything that would hold up as defense evidence in a criminal, military, or civil court. Greenwald’s piece is a sprawl, and part of the purpose of that sprawl is, I strongly suspect, to further squelch objection. I said my piece about the things in Greenwald’s essay that elicited the strongest sense of objection to me, and I’m not gonna get sucked into a game of ideologue Whack-A-Mole.
Nice piece, Glenn. I haven’t seen the movie yet (sometime this week, thanks to a family member’s generosity), but I trust Bigelow, and while my sympathies are usually more inclined with Greenwald’s than, say, Bill’s are, Greenwald really dropped the ball on this one.
Till I do see the film, once again, I’m going to be highlighting the arcane points of your post. First of all, I haven’t heard that Miller Lite slogan in years, yet it’s still embedded in my brain, and weirdly appropriate as a caption for that picture. Secondly, somehow I never knew Pete Townshend lifted “it’s the singer not the song” from the Rolling Stones. Live and learn.
Finally, I know hindsight is always 20/20, but when you were asked about the South Park creators only being in it for the money, it might be a little too obvious, but as far as comebacks go, what about, “And you’re not?” (or “Just like you”). Maybe that opens up the can of worms of why it’s okay for one person who makes a lot of money to criticize someone else for making a lot of money (or wanting to), but maybe that’s a can of worms worth opening.
At any rate, looking forward to seeing the movie, especially after your write-up.
Oh, my. I may just have to sit this one out…two Glenn’s that I read more or less daily, and both of whom I respect, and there is some serious shit being slung around.
I haven’t seen the film, so I should just sit on my hands here and wait. But for now, here’s what troubles me:
In the first part of your piece, Glenn, you basically do away with the notion that a work of fiction has any significant obligation to the reality of the historical events it presumes to depict. I agree with your sentiment; I consider myself a free and smart enough person to take “based on a true story” with a grain of salt. But I’m not willing, sentiment aside, to simply, at this point, enter the Fiction Zone and hang up any cares or worries about the “real world” and its relationship to this fiction. It would seem to me that at this point, what follows of your argument would matter very little; the depiction of torture, the relative presence or lack of celebration over finally offing Bin Laden, etc. Sure, it matters aesthetically; but at this point, you’ve basically concluded that Greenwald isn’t interested in aesthetics, because he isn’t willing to accept the liberties of the storytellers. So it seems a little, erm, excessive to go on slinging mud about him being a philistine and whey-faced and all that. I mean, what did he ever do to you, besides dis a movie you happen to like? Okay, he did stack the deck so as to basically obviate any defense, but if he’s really a philistine, why bother accusing him of lying? And if you think about it, such charges cancel each other out: if he’s lying, he’s no philistine – he is capable of seeing the film’s virtues but chooses not to reveal that to his readers; if he’s a philistine, he can’t be lying, because his utter lack of aesthetic sensitivity means that to his eyes, ZDT can ONLY be crap.
And let’s not be glib, either, about the enormous significance of these events; this isn’t some sensational yarn given a “based on true events” Hollywood treatment; this deals directly with extremely consequential and politicized events, and it will form a part of the historical record. I mean, as far as the Hollywood-World History nexus is concerned, I think Godard (to name one) has rather exhaustively made that case.
If I’m misconstruing you, I’d like to know how.
Anyways, at this point, the ZDT is gonna be hard to sit through with any kind of open mind, but I now feel duty bound. Some days I hate the internet.
I haven’t seen the movie but I have no problem with Greenwald’s comments. Bigelow and Boal should put on their “big boy pants” (CIA reference intended) and stop resorting to artistic license to excuse the conflation of torture scenes with courier intelligence.
Should we really believe the torture program was a good faith effort to prevent terrorist attacks? There is plenty of good evidence that indicates the entire program was garbage, implemented for ulterior reasons by corrupt officials and then sold to the public via fearmongering and by means of excessive secrecy.
Boal and Bigelow have made statements to the effect that the torture program happened and thus they put it in the movie to reflect reality. What reality are we talking about? A fake CIA reality of “getting tough on terror?”
Did Boal or Bigelow interview Alec Station Chief Rich Blee who was one of the advocates of the torture program? During his time as chief of Alec Station he and his subordinates repeatedly withheld information about Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar. Supposedly one of the CIA agents who comprised the composite character of Maya in the movie is Alfreda Frances Bikowsky. She too was implicated in withholding al Qaeda intelligence from the FBI before 9/11. Why isn’t this context included in the movie?
I haven’t seen the movie, but… that’s the reason I’m saying nothing else.
I happen to be revisiting Carlos at the moment. Wonder if a lot of this hand-wringing could have been forestalled by an opening disclaimer similar to the one Assayas used:
“This film is the result of historical and journalistic research.
Because of controversial gray areas in Carlos’ life, the film must be viewed as fiction, tracing two decades in the life of a notorious terrorist.
His relations with other characters have been fictionalized as well.”
No doubt ZD30 has the usual small-print version of the above in its end credits, but I think a phrase like “must be viewed as fiction” at the outset would have helped a lot.
“I am sorry that I do not have the name of the actor who played this character at hand, because I found him rather poignant.”
The actor is Homayoun Ershadi, better known as the lead in Taste of Cherry.
(BTW, great piece!)
I don’t know what film Greenwald actually saw, but the torture sequences are disturbing as hell and they’re meant to be. The killing of bin Laden is not a rousing feel-good climax. It’s claustrophobic, nightmarish and damned unsettling with the screaming women and children.
Coming out of it I actually expected the right to decide the film is unpatriotic for showing the truly ugly side of the 10-year hunt for bin Laden. Instead it’s my fellow liberals who aren’t comfortable with a film that doesn’t tell its audience what it should be feeling.
“(I do not know what kind of audience Greenwald watched it with.)”
When Greenwald initially wrote his piece for the Guardian, it was a variation on the “I didn’t see the movie, but…” argument. This combined with his stubborn doubling down (based on secondhand accounts derived primarily by David Edelstein’s mischaracterization of ZDT’s torture scenes) is one reason I abandoned a Twitter argument with Greenwald over the piece.
Has Greenwald stated somewhere since then that he’s seen the movie?
Glenn, great piece, even if I do not agree with all your arguments. For instance, you say, you took the film as “fiction”, but is this how Boal and Bigelow wanted it to be seen? I doubt they did, and if they didn’t , you are guilty of the same “mistake” as Greenwald and Mayer – all you are doing is imposing a reading on the movie that the filmmakers never intended in the first place.
I also seriously doubt whether one can elevate the notion that statements by artists about their own work simply do not matter into a dictum as you do here. So an artist’s intentions are totally irrelevant? Why? Because every film has a “truth”/an “essence” that a critic can subtract just by having a close look at the movie itself? There is a reason why hermeneutics is only one of several critical approaches: it has severe limitations, not least because it lends itself so easily to projections, such as “the film is a work of fiction and should only be seen as such”.
In the case of “ZDT”, I would argue that Boal’s and Bigelow’s claims that their film is “journalistic” and “non-judgemental” are anything but irrelevant, because they point out a fatal flaw in their thinking and filmmaking – the belief that they could ever escape being political or of being exponents of a certain ideology. (It’s intriguing to think what Robin Wood would have had to say to that.) But then, “ideology” seems to be a topic that the film reviewers of today are all too willing to ignore. To me, the whole discussion of “ZDT” reveals first and foremost one thing: to most critics nowadays, “politics” is a dirty word and another topic best to be avoided.
Bigelow and Boal take one of the most political and politicized stories of recent years and try to escape the minefield of contrasting liberal and conservative interpretations of the events they portray by defiantly not setting the film in anything resembling a larger context. They do this in the same way they avoided tackling the thorny issue of the Iraq War in “The Hurt Locker” – by reducing the hunt for Osama Bin Laden to a story of personal obsession. It’s astonishing how many reviewers seem to agree with Bigelow and Boal that the socio-political background doesn’t matter when dealing with global events as lived through by dedicated individuals. (Just as the protagonist in “HL”, Maya in “ZDT” conveniently has no political convictions.) For the majority of reviewers, the idea that the personal is political clearly is no longer relevant: not one of the critics’ organizations who voted “ZDT” “Best Picture of 2012” found the political vacuum at its centre even dubious.
Now the whole discussion is reduced to whether or not Bigelow and Boal condone torture – but what about the dispiriting fact that that speficic debate was started by political journalists when it should have been initiated and led by film critics?
Re Tony Dayoub’s post: Glenn Greenwald did see ZERO DARK THIRTY and amended his GUARDIAN article accordingly.
Thanks to everyone, and thanks especially to Zach and Olaf for providing pushback in a measured, civil way. Zach, I don’t want to be glib, and I understand the momentousness of the historical events depicted, but I also, as you might infer, have a problem with respect to the idea of art and “obligation.” I try and keep consistent in my view; if a film or book offers a particularly stupid or crass insult to history, I focue on the stupidity and crassness, not the fact of the insult. I know where to find non-fiction accounts. As for the idea that this sort of work becomes part of the historical record because of Hollywood’s power, I don’t know. People feared that about Oliver Stone’s “JFK,” which was a popular hit, but I don’t see it referred to as a monolithic object that wipes out all other work on the subject. There may be some poor souls who take it as gospel, but they are few. The lies of “Birth of a Nation” spurred events that did considerable damage; the counter to those lies today means that the film is rarely screened without multiple caveats, as should be the case. With respect to “Zero Dark Thirty” I’d like to again point out that in no way does it play as some kind of “let’s go out and kill Muslims” screed.
As for Bigelow and Boal’s intentions, again, I insist on looking at the film as fiction because as it is a piece that actors with a script are performing for cameras, it simply is that. The implications of their claims are not without consequence for a lot of viewers, but given Bigelow’s past work and the inquiries it contains, I suspect one reason she’s hitting the authenticity button so hard is because it’s good or “provocative” marketing. Given the way her and Boal’s remarks have tended to skew the debate on the movie, I’m beginning to think it would be more prudent, not to mention genuinely intellectually coherent, to give that theme some rest. I also agree with M’da’s hindsight suggestion.
@Bill: I think we’re in agreement about TAXI DRIVER, which certainly doesn’t have a black-or-white moral scheme. My point was the same as yours, I believe, in that it’s an example of a film that can be (and has been) misread and misunderstood, but that it’s not the fault of the filmmakers for that misunderstanding.
Thanks, TVMCCA. Going back to read it now.
Wonderful piece, Glenn. You ably identify many of Greenwald’s aesthetic and political simplifications in his article. Another disturbing problem with his approach to the film (and by extension the political responsibilities of the spectator), though, is his misunderstanding of criticism’s essential existence as dialogue, not consensus. As you and many commenters demonstrate, artistic reception is an organic thing whose natural state is one of shifting disagreements and reconsiderations. In his article and in social media, GG bludgeons any respectful disagreement by pointing out that Filkins, Mayer et al feel differently and hey, are you saying these super-smart people are WRONG? There isn’t any consideration that ZDT, like any film, has passionate and intelligent people passionately and intelligently disagreeing with each other–about formal construction, political ramifications, etc. This is obvious, of course, to you and the many, many great critics working today, who are constantly in dialogue with each other; one of the great innovations of social media is that audience members (even ‘standard’ ones!) can be privy to and take part in such discussion. It’s filled with people saying the other side gets it wrong, but never demanding silent agreement. GG’s preferred medium, the angry political polemic that drowns and exhausts the reader in seemingly overwhelming evidence, simply does not match the subtleties demanded of art criticism, which at its best seeks to enliven and wait for a response.
Donovan, that is a fascinating and accurate breakdown of this entire discussion.
JFK was made three decades after the event. The history was already written. On torture and the War On Terror, the history is still being made. There are people who were tortured still in United States custody. There are still people down in Guantanamo. There are still soldiers in Afghanistan fighting Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
After the next election there might be another President who wants to torture in the White House. We better hope a pro-torture film doesn’t set the record for what happened with bin Laden. I haven’t seen this one yet so I can’t say what it is, but I have a lot of respect for Greenwald and he generally does not lead his readers wrong.
I haven’t seen the movie either, but that’s not going to stop me from commenting because I enjoy the sound of my own voice… erm, because there’s one thing that caught my attention.
It seems that the deepest, most fundamental disagreement at play here is that Mrs. Greenwald and Mayer think of “art” and “Hollywood movies” as mutually exclusive categories, while film nerds (like us here) don’t. One of them is Art, the other is for eating popcorn. That disagreement is at the root of everything, including the way in which they judge the artistic decisions in the movie and give it a pass or not. I mean, this painting:
http://www.museodelprado.es/enciclopedia/enciclopedia-on-line/voz/emperador-carlos-v-a-caballo-en-muehlberg-el-tiziano/
Is pretty much political propaganda, made by a guy who was in it for the money and the favour of a totalitarian monarch… but it’s in museums, and it’s Art, so it’s judged by a completely different standard.
In the end, it’s a variant of the same kind of thing that was discussed here some time ago, about young people today and their reactions to classic film. “Ugh, why would you want to watch a B/W movie?”
It’s funny, how you at once attack Glenn for being condescending towards the “standard viewer” while your entire argument is dedicated to lampooning him for not being the sophisticate you are.
We don’t, actually, have to imagine standard viewers who take ZD0 as an endorsement of torture and our war on the Islamic world. You can already find conservatives who have seen the movie and come to that conclusion. And as it opens to a wider audience, you will see that argument prosecuted again and again. It already is being used to justify torture and it will be used to justify torture, war, and aggression. So what will you say? Will that suddenly become a concern for you?
I doubt it. I assume, in fact, that you’ll dissemble, you’ll evade, you’ll justify. Because what you want is not that art not be taken seriously, or that art not be considered for its moral content. You just want that to happen only when it flatters you, when it contributes to your self-conception. When it actually challenges you, when it asks you to indict yourself, rather than to live in a comfortable defense such as this one– well, then you’re not interested.
“I haven’t seen the movie but I have no problem with Greenwald’s comments.”
Well Greenwald hasn’t seen the movie either, as I pointed out here
http://fablog.ehrensteinland.com/2012/12/11/intellectual-dishonesty-101/
Call me Old-Fashioned, but I always thought that one was required to see a film before reviewing it. Glennzilla compounds his dishonesty by claiming that what he’s writing isn’t a review – which it most certainly is. Likewise the screed from Patient Less Than Zero.
They’re BOTH writing on the level of Bret Easton Asshole.
I used to respect Greenwald. Not anymore. He’s trash.
Your dealing with ZDT as a “work of art” is understandable in the light of all this blather, but not really necessary. It’s “based on a true story.” And while there has been much talk as to how much the administration did or didn’t help Kathy the resultant film doesn’t include anything we don’t already know.
The way its detractors have been talking you’d swear that the guy being tortured coughed up Bin ladin’s address. That’s FAR from the truth, as those who actually bother to see the film will immediately discover.
Mr. deBoer: Not to get all tit-for-tat, but it was Greenwald (I’m not familiar enough to call him “Glenn”) who started in with throwing around words such as “pretentious,” “pseudo-intellectual,” and so on.
After laying out a scenario for me to get outraged about, and asking if this scenario will solicit my concern, you provide the answer: “I doubt it. I assume, in fact…” Yes, you do, IN FACT, assume. That’s what you and like folks are good at, are best at: getting on a high horse, and making assumptions. So, if I may put this as politely as possible, here’s hoping we don’t meet on the barricades, or anywhere else.
Also: did you MISS the part where I talked about how I thought the movie dealt out viewer complicity in a distinctly uncomfortable way, or did you just decide it wouldn’t fit in to your condemnation of me as a Bad Self-Interested Person?
Glenn you may have to do some intense Googling, but back when it was released i was one of the few who took on Oliver Stone for “JFK” and its noxious compendium of LIES. My reward was the republication of James Kirkwood’s 1967 book about Jim Garrison and the Clay Shaw trial “American Grotesque.”
You’re all in the tank for torture and empire, just like the known fasicismo that is the New York Film Critics Circle. If only they knew as much as Glenn Greenwald an Jane Mayer. Bunch o’ dummies…
Cinema 101 for Mr. Greenwald, Esq.: ALL cinema is fictional. Nanook of the North, The War Room… OK, not Weekend at Bernie’s 2, but stop interrupting me. Montage alters reality just as sure as a camera points in only one direction. Kind of like your socio-political conception of aesthetics. Just saying – you’re right about so much else, I won’t slag you on the Twitterz. Fight the power. I love my Glenns.
(BTW, I believe GK has opined disfavorably about JFK in the past, which I find lamentable – I love JFK, precisely because it is so very much NOT history, it takes its socio-politico-aesthetico ball and runs with it in the unlikeliest damned directions. One man’s psychosis is Oliver Stone’s flexing across formats, narratives, disputed testimonies, &c., &c., on an order we haven’t such the likes of from our Ollie since. Much of Greenwald’s critique seems of a piece with Updike’s dismissal of Cosmopolis (the novel)‘s eschewing of “realism’s patient surfaces”. Except, as this fine thread so amply demonstrates, reality’s surface is not exactly patient – it teems, backtracks, reflects, reacts, responds to changes as it clarifies, &c. A step away from the moral certitude of your blog software will demonstrate as much tout mf suite. Emmis.)
“love JFK, precisely because it is so very much NOT history, it takes its socio-politico-aesthetico ball and runs with it in the unlikeliest damned directions.”
No it runs with it the most likely direction: “The fags killed Kennedy.”
In this Stone is as one with James Dobson and the rest of the right re the Connecticut school shooting.
I’m so glad that Connecticut has been dragged into this. Twice.
“Kathryn Bigelow…milks the U.S. torture program for drama while sidestepping the political and ethical debate that it provoked. In her hands, the hunt for bin Laden is essentially a police procedural, devoid of moral context. If she were making a film about slavery in antebellum America, it seems, the story would focus on whether the cotton crops were successful.” – Jane Mayer, New Yorker
LBJ was a fag?
You write in paragraph 2: when I’m watching a film in which actors are performing scripted actions in front of a very deliberately set-up camera, my takeaway from a title card such as the one Mayer cites is centered on “based on.” I am looking at a fiction, period.
I’d be interested to know how you frame that in terms of Lincoln. I saw the movie at roughly the same time as I was reading a book entitled April 1865 By Jay Winik. A terrific read. The more I read the more I found myself reflecting back on the movie with a sense of disappointment. The situation at that time–early spring 1865–was soooo much more complicated and nuanced than the movie’s portrayal of it. Obviously, you say. Of course, it’s obvious, but my question, or struggle, is on what level should I be watching the movie? If I view the movie solely as fiction…well, what’s the point really? Is Spielberg capturing something ineffable about the man and about the time? I think in many ways he is. But then does that mean that the story itself isn’t telling me anything?
Anyway, as I said from the outset, I’d be interested to hear how turn off and on your movies as fiction lens. Or perhaps you don’t.
If ZDT is “essentially a police procedural, devoid of moral context,” then what was the last scene about.
Jane Mayer’s a pretty good journalist but she knows NOTHING about movies.
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a movie devoid of moral context.
Chris H writes: “I’d be interested to hear how [you] turn off and on your movies as fiction lens. Or perhaps you don’t.” Actually, Chris, it’s pretty simple: I go in knowing I’m going to see a movie, a dramatic enactment of events. I don’t go in, as Hendrick Hertzberg seems to have gone into “Lincoln,” anticipating a show off between what my studies of the period have taught me and what’s depicted on the screen. The separation comes to me pretty naturally. It’s not a struggle. I don’t enter the theater with the anticipation that my superior knowledge of the facts it may be based on will defeat that movie if the movie comes up short in its depiction/interpretation of those facts. I bet Abraham Lincoln never whistled “Dixie,” either.
You seem to have gotten a lot out of Jay Winik’s book. Your expectation that Spielberg’s movie live up to it is/was entirely your own.
“LBJ was a fag?”
“The hell he was!”
“He was too, you boys.”
Ah, bless your heart, Fuzz, great minds, &c. – that’s all that went through me mind when I hit that “Post” button:
“I went to install two-way mirrors at his ranch in Stonewall (sic, emmis, for realz). He came to the door in dress.”
That dont’ prove nothin’ – lots o’ guys like to watch their friends fuck!”
“Shit, yeah, I know I do!”
Well to quote Tallulah Bankhead, how should I know? He never sucked MY cock.
There’s a well-established historical record re Abraham Lincoln, Glenn. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to examine what Speilberg and Kushner have done in light of that record.
ZDT deals with much fresher history about which much material is still in the process of being assembled. ZDT chiefly deals with one (“based on a true”) woman and her role in teh OBL search and destroy mission. We know nothing of “Maya” outside of her work.
Thanks for responding. Funny enough, Mr Hertzberg’s thoughts on the movie were indeed influential on mine. Perhaps too much so. And honestly, I’m not entirely sure why I feel compelled to view Lincoln this way. Maybe it’s nothing more than a knee-jerk anti-Spielberg reaction. Not that I’m anti-Spielberg exactly. He’s just so damn prolific and talented that I need there to be something wrong with his interpretation and/or staging of events. Yet, I don’t apply this test of hyper-verisimilitude to most other “based on” movies. A film I know you and I both liked very much is Carlos. I’m sure many, many aspects of the movie are fictionalized, condensed, reinterpreted, etc. I don’t know how and I don’t care because the movie got so much right. As did Lincoln. For me, details aside, what Lincoln nailed is that sense of heavy hangs the head that wears the crown. What I need to do now is re-visit the movie, as did Mr Hertzberg, and re-evaluate.
Not that I’ve seen the movie yet, but the “it’s only fiction” makes me slightly uncomfortable. It’s like the Inglourious Basterds defense: “it’s only cinema”, which seemingly gave the director considerable leeway to enact various forms of cruelty on his characters.
Of COURSE, narrative films about true events tend toward fiction, but that is not all they are, esp. if someone claims it is a “work of art”. Once anyone begins to analyze the ethical and political considerations that go into making a film (as Glenn K. does in the subsequent paragraphs), it automatically invalidates the “only a fiction” fiction. Or as a corollary- just because something is staged doesn’t always imply it is “untruthful”.
Needless to say, I didn’t fully agree with Greenwald’s comments on the film, which involved a lot of asinine remarks that people who don’t take movies seriously are prone to make, but he is clearly a valuable journalist and doesn’t deserve the various epithets tossed against him here. But he is more worried that the movie would influence and strengthen the existing narrative about how torture might save lives (in some variation of the ticking bomb scenario, for example).
Mea culpa. It’s “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,” which doesn’t quit capture my feelings. Anyway…
I’ve seen the film, and my myriad objections to it are inevitably colored by the fact that, yes, primary sources for Boal’s screenplay were the CIA and Pentagon.
When a major-studio release is promoted as THE REAL STORY behind the hunt for bin Laden, there will be a large minority of Standard Viewers who will believe what one in my post-screening elevator said: “I feel so educated.” Not to acknowledge this is compartmentalizing a bit too gullibly.
I admire Greenwald for his consistent four years of criticism of Our Fifth Consecutive War-Criminal President, but this Peter Maass piece on the “embedded” nature of ZDT was far more cogent:
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/12/dont-trust-zero-dark-thirty/266253/
btw, David E, Greenwald wrote a follow-up column. He has seen the film.
His first column was not a review because he is not a film critic.
On the subjects of ZDT and AMOUR, Mr. Hoberman writes earlier today the following in a post – perhaps, where Ms. Mayer is concerned, a riposte – at his perch on artinfo.com:
“Although the endings of both movies are givens, each in its way is a procedural—which is to say, a heightened experience.” Heightened by its absent moral context? Clearly, that’s for truly serious critical sensibilities like Jane Mayer’s to decide.
Thanks, Glenn, I haven’t seen ZDT yet either, but I’m another huge Bigelow fan whose bullshit detectors went off as soon as I started seeing these claims that it’s pro-torture propaganda. It’s possible that Bigelow has gone over to the dark side (courtesy of Oscar the spirit guide, perhaps), but her long history of implicating her viewers in the atrocities on screen will make me disbelieve it until the film shows me otherwise.
@TFH: I appreciate where you’re coming from but I have to point out that nowhere in my piece do I write “it’s only fiction.” By describing, or by insisting on reading, “Zero Dark Thirty” as fiction I’m not trying to trivialize it or sweep its implications and functions under the table. Just wanted to make that clear.
I am really trying to not give in to my temper, but I must admit I am not enjoying being called gullible. I have to keep reminding myself that I kind of “asked” for some holier-than-thou “schooling” though so I guess I need to lump it. I would submit to Mr. Weber that he might have wanted to ask the post-screening knowledge recipient precisely how he or she felt “educated.”
While only tangentially relevant to the discussion, it’s a little-known fact that Glenn Greenwald strongly supported Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan because he wanted to wreak “vengeance” on the people behind 9/11. He went on to support the invasion of Iraq because he trusted Georeg W. Bush. In his own words, despite reservations, he supported the Iraq war out of “loyalty,” to his “leader.” And in his entire career as a blogger, he’s never written a word about it. Meanwhile he viciously tears apart those that took the same positions he once did without revealing these facts. In other words, he helped enable most all he so stridently condemns today.
As to lies and hyperbole, that’s been Greenwald’s MO since his early days. As when he went on truly disgusting xenophobic rants against Mexicans in 2005. To quote A. Jay Adler at Sad Red Earth, “He’s become such a vile, rancid read, so dishonest and ugly on every topic – he’s like Limbaugh with none of the entertainment value.”
http://bit.ly/HEG6DY
http://bit.ly/HH5c3U
And no, I haven’t seen the movie. And yes, I want to.
Oh, boy, now come the baseless Greenwald smears. Go peddle your trash elsewhere, Rob, grownups are trying to have a serious discussion.
Glenn, I only meant to assign you any gullibility in perhaps not sharing the assessment of the Standard Viewer espoused by The Waco Kid in Blazing Saddles: “You know, morons.”
As for the Educated Elevator Woman, she proceeded with “If it hadn’t been for this woman Maya…” Questioning seemed unnecessary; she essentially bought it as nonfiction, title cards be damned.
I think your personal points on the efficacy and justice of the UBL hit are well taken, and I haven’t seen them made elsewhere in relation to this film (except by the “holier than thou”).
The thing missing from this discussion is that Glenn Greenwald doesn’t really care about the movie. He’s on a political crusade to end torture and, as an intermediate step, trying to turn public opinion away from the increasing acceptance of torture.
I think he’d say that battle to change public opinion is far more important than trying to be fair to this movie and the artists who made it. If this movie is the occasion to have a public discussion about whether torture was really an effective method leading to the killing of Bin Laden, I think he’d say that discussion is far more important than the movie itself.
And I think you can talk about the effects of watching a movie without talking about the movie itself. You could do a poll of people before and after they watch it and find out: Are they more likely to support the use of torture after watching this movie? Are they more likely to hold false beliefs about how Bin Laden was captured after watching this movie?
He’s on a political crusade of ostentatious self-promotion.
And yes, he’s not a film critic. He just plays one in punditland.
To Michael Straight: I’ve pored over Mr. Greenwald’s writings on “Zero Dark Thirty” several times and I must say, for someone who “really doesn’t care about the movie,” he certainly has an eccentric way of articulating his indifference.
Glenn, thanks for your response. I suppose, as it stands now, we differ on the issue of Art’s “obligation.” I suppose I’d go so far as to say that even transgressive art – if it is truly art – is being on some level responsible; but that’s a different can of worms.
@ Michael Straight: the fact is that public opinion is already pretty opposed to torture, whether or not it was instrumental in capturing bin Laden. Which is the way the discussion should be framed in the first place.
So: I’d submit that the question of the movie’s “influence” or “effect” on what people think could even be considered as of lesser significance than the actual depiction itself. Which is to say, if the depiction of egregious human suffering is placed in the service of mere audience titillation, or jingoistic sensation, or any propagandistic ends, it deserves to be critiqued not just on moral but on aesthetic grounds.
I’m sorry, but I can’t separate aesthetics from morality. Beauty may indeed be amoral, but Art is not.
*Again – I’m willing to believe that the film is closer to Kenny’s estimation than Greenwald’s. I’m just saying, if not.…
@Zach I’ve found it a somewhat regular reaction that when I inform people about Greenwald’s past, they immediately claim none of it is true. In your case, you call what I wrote, “baseless smears.” But here’s Glenn himself on the subject of responding to Afghanistan and 9/11:
“I believed that Islamic extremism posed a serious threat to the country, and I wanted an aggressive response from our government. I was ready to stand behind President Bush and I wanted him to exact vengeance on the perpetrators and find ways to decrease the likelihood of future attacks. During the following two weeks, my confidence in the Bush administration grew as the president gave a series of serious, substantive, coherent, and eloquent speeches that struck the right balance between aggression and restraint. And I was fully supportive of both the president’s ultimatum to the Taliban and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan when our demands were not met.”
So we see Greenwald wanted to “exact vengeance on the perpetrators,” of 9/11 and was “fully supportive,” of Bush’s policies at that time. Now think about where that mindset lead and how it ties into this film. People like him cheered on Bush and Cheney and we know what they did with that support. They tortured people. Granted, Glenn changed his tune, but by the time he did, the horses had not only left the barn, they’d thoroughly trampled it.
As for Iraq:
“During the lead-up to the invasion, I was concerned that the hell-bent focus on invading Iraq was being driven by agendas and strategic objectives that had nothing to do with terrorism or the 9/11 attacks. The overt rationale for the invasion was exceedingly weak, particularly given that it would lead to an open-ended, incalculably costly, and intensely risky preemptive war. Around the same time, it was revealed that an invasion of Iraq and the removal of Saddam Hussein had been high on the agenda of various senior administration officials long before September 11. Despite these doubts, concerns, and grounds for ambivalence, I had not abandoned my trust in the Bush administration. Between the president’s performance in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the swift removal of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the fact that I wanted the president to succeed, because my loyalty is to my country and he was the leader of my country, I still gave the administration the benefit of the doubt. I believed then that the president was entitled to have his national security judgment deferred to, and to the extent that I was able to develop a definitive view, I accepted his judgment that American security really would be enhanced by the invasion of this sovereign country.”
Once could expend an entire column deconstructing that paragraph and how it relates to the ‘Obamabots’ Glenn so loathes, but the bottom line is, despite his reservations, he trusted and was loyal to Bush on one of the greatest policy disasters we’ve ever seen. And we certainly know where that lead. But he’s never blogged a word about any of this. It was in the preface of his first book. And that’s the only place he wrote about it.
http://thedailybanter.com/2012/07/glenn-greenwald-attacks-writers-for-supporting-iraq-war-when-he-did-too/
I suggest you actually read the links I posted before accusing me of slinging baseless smears.
Oh yeah, about the Mexicans, here’s a tidbit he wrote about immigration in 2005 while defending Tom Tancredo:
“Current illegal immigration – whereby unmanageably endless hordes of people pour over the border in numbers far too large to assimilate, and who consequently have no need, motivation or ability to assimilate – renders impossible the preservation of any national identity. That is so for reasons having nothing whatever to do with the skin color or origin of the immigrants and everything to do with the fact that what we end up with are segregated groups of people with allegiences to their enclaves, an inability to communicate, cultural perspectives incompatible with prevailing American culture, and absolutely nothing to bind them in any way to what we know as the United States.”
http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2005/12/yelling-racist-as-argument-in.html
What a guy.
Glennzilla has now seen ZDT but remains as ignorant as before. Speaking of Leni Reifentsahl – to whom he compared Bigelow before seeing the film, he now states
“Do the defenders of this film believe Riefenstahl has also gotten a bad rap on the ground that she was making art, and political objections (ie, her films glorified Nazism) thus have no place in discussions of her films? I’ve actually always been ambivalent about that debate because, unlike Zero Dark Thirty, Riefenstahl’s films only depicted real events and did not rely on fabrications.”
The Nazi Party congress in “Triumph of the Will” was about as “real”
as “Begin the Beguine” in “Broadway Melody of 1940” (Hitler’s favorite movie) It was staged EXPRESSLY to be filmed by her. As for “Olympia” the Olympic Games were a real event, but the film Riefenthal made of it is a romantically expressive montage in no way dependent on reality. See the famous diving sequence to see what I mean.
If it’s just a movie then why do some people seem to get upset when their filmmaker heroes get criticized? “You haven’t seen the movie. How dare you judge Oscar winners!” I mean after all Boal approached this like a journalist! We all know journalists are the greatest people on the planet.
Why should anyone believe in the absurd premise of a good faith torture program? That is what the CIA has been selling the public for years and now that Hollywood is on board we are supposed to be impressed?
Now all we need is Michael Ignatieff’s take on things (and I say that with only partial sarcasm).
From Greenwald’s piece:
“Almost all Hollywood action films end with the good guys vanquishing the big, bad villain – so that the audience can leave feeling good about the world and themselves – and this is exactly the script to which this film adheres.”
Rewrite:
“Almost all Greenwald blog posts end with him vanquishing the morally inferior villain – so that his audience can leave feeling good about him and themselves – and this is exactly the script to which this one adheres.”
@ Rob – you’re kidding, right? Did you actually READ what he wrote?
I guess all the good people, such as yourself, sprung from the womb as perfect, immutable, liberal saints.
Yeah, I was aware of those quotes; paraphrased in Greenwald’s blog, back when he was writing for Salon. I’m surprised you didn’t include the usual line about how Greenwald used to favorably comment on his own blog.
People who read the entirety of the posts can decide for themselves; at which point lame-ass, would-be slanderers like yourself usually move on to the next watering hole.
Puh-leeeeze.
“Almost all Hollywood action films end with the good guys vanquishing the big, bad villain – so that the audience can leave feeling good about the world and themselves – and this is exactly the script to which this film adheres.”
This ZFT certainly does NOT.
For Glenzilla’sfurtehr cinematic education:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcOFRonSqEE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRZ5pyuS58Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gChIpYwGJhU&feature=related
a fortiori (Glenn being gay and all–)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gymjH1Kg_s
Ah yes, the death of the liberal ass. It is very simple: Making a movie about historical events is different from making a movie about an imaginary taxi driver or some such thing. The filmmakers are responsible for some degree of accuracy. If Spielberg included a scene in Lincoln of Abe telling his closest advisors that he secretly plans to kill all blacks after freeing them, the film would be met with disgust and rightly so. Bigelow and Shoal are either truthful in their art or not. Torture either helped get Bin Laden or not. If it didn’t and the movie says it did, which is Greenwald’s concern, then the movie is lying. If Bigelow, the artiste does not want to be called a liar then she and Boal should not say ZDT is journalism. which they have. And then run behind the “it’s just a movie” defense when people call them out. Now, far be it from me to think of anyone in Hollywood as brave, but either piss or get off the pot. Either we were lied to by Obama and company about how we got the man or ZDT is lying about the efficacy of torture in getting Bin Laden. Now, if the movie does not link torture to the success of the mission, then GG is talking out of his ass. If it does, and the people on this blog blast its critics for not understanding the “complexities” of art, then the people on this blog are simpletons desperately trying to be oh so interesting. Like good centrist liberals everywhere.
You really like posting stream-of-consciousness Youtube links, don’t you?
I don’t know enough to have a useful opinion about this “baseless smears” bit in relation to Greenwald’s past history. But I think it’s worth pointing out that he and Andrew Sullivan did smear Kathryn Bigelow before either of them had bothered to check out the evidence firsthand. Thanks to them, she’ll be “torture apologist Kathryn Bigelow” for the rest of her life in the minds of any number of people who hadn’t and now never will see ZD30 either.
Greenwald’s qualifier in his original Guardian piece that he wasn’t “reviewing” the movie is specious, disingenuous nonsense. Nope, of course he wasn’t – all he was doing was condemning it and blackening Bigelow’s and Mark Boal’s names sight unseen. I’m aware that both he and Sullivan have since seen ZD30 and written more about it, with GG doubling down on his original argument and Sullivan’s opinion changing 180 degrees. But it never occurred to Sullivan to apologize for the damage he’d done her reputation by then.
Is that inconsequential? Not quite. I don’t give a damn about the Oscars myself, but they matter in Hollywood. Any slim chance ZD30 had of winning one of the big ones was probably doomed by Greenwald’s first piece. Unless Academy voters have developed a spine I’ve never discerned up to now, they’re unlikely to vote for a movie that’s been accused of “glorifying” torture, not even if they’ve seen it themselves and know better. It’s just not worth the headache of defending their choice. That will have an effect on Bigelow’s career and choice of projects, and my impression is that she’s had enough trouble getting her movies green-lighted as is.
Part of what infuriates me about this is that Greenwald and even Jane Mayer – for whom I’ve got far more respect in other contexts – plainly can’t see filmmakers like Bigelow as individuals who fight at often great cost to put their visions (like ’em or not) onscreen. To treat her as some sort of lawn-troll intermediary for what “Hollywood” does in corporate terms is a measure of their ignorance. And as it happens, there’s a useful term in this country’s political lexicon for smearing people without bothering to check out beforehand whether the facts back you up or caring about the consequences. Funnily enough, as Greenwald probably knows, it ended up damaging the careers of lots of people in Hollywood the first time around as well.
Clearly Walter missed “Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter.”
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/joe-scarborough-claims-zero-dark-thirty-torture-scene-true-screenwriter-and-facts-disagree/
So where is your post going after Joe Scarborough for saying that torture helped get bin Laden? Or is your contempt only for people who criticize the movie for saying torture works, and not for those who use it to justify torture?
I want to see the film even more, though I am already in such a mind that it will cover a lot of grey areas.
GK- very thoughtful piece.
“You really like posting stream-of-consciousness Youtube links, don’t you?”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q‑Q3gd6S1as
I’m gonna stick with Jane Meyer, sorry “the great journalist Jane Meyer” on this one. Though a reflexive circling of the auteurist wagons is always invigorating.
I’m detecting a lot self-serving BS and specious potshots here. Your eye-rolling riposte about how Greenwald sure covers his bases while you can’t for the life of you figure out what kind of accountability he’s talking about is pretty rich. It wasn’t obvious to you that Greenwald’s written attack of the film was his idea of holding it accountable? Did you think maybe he really wanted to advocate firebombing movie theaters but just didn’t get around to mentioning it?
A major component of your disgust with Greenwald’s discussion of the “art excuse” is that he has the nerve to write “to demand…”, as though this is somehow the intellectual equivalent of “Do you still beat your wife.” Which is somehow worthy of a lengthy discursion into something about Bill O’Reilly, which only serves to show that you don’t have a point. All this is pretty ironic because you really ARE demanding that the film be treated as art, and you’re demanding that Greenwald treat it as such, as well. It’s the entire basis for your rant. “It’s art, dammit! How dare he attack it on the basis of the claims of the ‘journalistic’ approach of the director?!”
What’s really remarkable about your voluminous rage here is that after all is said and done, you virtually ignore the defining point that Greenwald was making: torture was not valuable in the finding of bin laden, yet in Bigelow’s portrayal, it was critical. Your pushback here amounts to adopting someone else’s idea that the film doesn’t endorse torture so much as make the audience complicit with it–really, a distinction without a difference. If making us, the audience, “complicit” with these acts of torture isn’t an endorsement then the word has no meaning. If the audience is made to feel that it’s dirty work but it’s got to be done to Protect Us and get the bad guys, how is that not an affirmation of the efficacy of torture?
Your attack on Greenwald’s characterization of the film as “a lie” is way over the top. At least you admit your vicious response was a result of you taking his column as “personal”. The dripping condescension and contempt don’t serve you well here, however, and serve to make you appear rather childish. Overall, a pretty weak effort. But when you have to make excuses about having “neither the inclination or the mental space to expound on” this or that, or not being able to make an argument because, gosh, you don’t have images from the film, well, I guess one can’t be surprised at what follows.
And really, “whey-faced self-aggrandizing puling self-righteousness”? Yeah, really “heroic”. Stay classy, Glenn.
Abe Lincoln Vampire Hunter, The Hobbit, Zero Dark Thirty … quite a year for fantasy films.
I like to think folks here would be shouting down those people who rioted over Birth of a Nation. “It’s art!! It doesn’t have to be accurate! You should give Griffith credit for being brave enough to tell it like he sees it!” ZDT may be as good, who knows, and just as full of it.
I would argue there’s a SLIGHT difference between a movie that treats complicated and sometimes shameful historical events of the past 10–12 years with a certain level of ambiguity/complication and a movie that uses formal elements, however dazzling, to portray the KKK as heroes. But keep fucking that chicken dude.
No, no difference. The KKK WAS recent history when Griffith made it. They were “complicated”, they were “necessary at the time”, according to him. Much like torture is looked at today.
So keep your fucking chicken, moron, and know what the hell you are talking about.
“Is that inconsequential? Not quite. I don’t give a damn about the Oscars myself, but they matter in Hollywood. Any slim chance ZD30 had of winning one of the big ones was probably doomed by Greenwald’s first piece. Unless Academy voters have developed a spine I’ve never discerned up to now, they’re unlikely to vote for a movie that’s been accused of “glorifying” torture, not even if they’ve seen it themselves and know better”
Then you don’t know Hollywood. If that were true, Hurt Locker would have lost to Avatar. Joe Scarborough and Fox News have already praised this film, the former going so far to bloat how he was right about torture all along. And so far Hollywood is just as infatuated.
Hot female director directing a pro-CIA movie about a (dreamed up) heroic female agent–that is attacked by “sexists” like Greenwald who just hate women in power (yes, this was actually said of critics like Greenwald and Cockburn). That has just as much in its favor as against. Especially when “liberal” Hollywood can show how “unbiased” it is when it comes to flag waving. Most are not in Greenwald’s camp, whether you think they are or not.
You sort of lost me at “hot female” director, Walter.
I meant “Hot” as in “really in demand”.
Or maybe it was a Freudian slip.
OK, let’s call it a mulligan. But if Bigelow is “really in demand,” how come this is her first movie in five years? (Hurt Locker played at Toronto well before anyone picked it up.) As for Maya, a) she ain’t “dreamed up” – her real-life original is well documented – and b) “heroic” is an incomplete (at best) characterization. Toss in how forlorn and baffled she is about her purpose in life in ZD30’s closing scenes, and then we can talk.
A. She has been making Zero Dark Thirty for the last five years. Literally. They had to go back and change the script when Bin Laden was killed. Her “exile” before that from Hollywood was self-imposed
B. She is dreamed up.“The guy who was on the account from 2003 to May 1, 2011, when bin Laden was killed, and the guy who was always saying … that bin Laden is living in the mysterious compound in Abbottabad — that guy is a guy, he’s not a female,’ writer Peter Bergen told NPR.” This is fairly recent but the books that are cited as sources for the movie show that a man was the main player.
Furthermore, if I can find it, I will link to an article about the pseudo-feminism in the film. It can only be anecdotal at this point as I haven’t read it for awhile.
C. I think that if she had shown the protagonist being happy and sure of herself at the end, the movie would have been met with a collective rolling of the eyes. Though I do not like Bigelow’s movies, she is far too smart a director to go that far. The main argument still stands: Torture is horrible, but it works, does that mean we should do it? Which is a good argument. But to point blank lie about it working changes the entire conversation and remains dishonest as “art” or “journalism”. Why not make a fictional work if that is what you want to argue? Why insert a scene that makes it clear that without torture and the threat of torture, we would have never gotten Bin Laden? It is simplistic and silly … at best.
Though the CIA has affirmed that there was a female CIA agent who was working on the Bin Laden case also. The Maya character is really a composite.
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012–12-10/world/35745741_1_bin-laden-mission-osama-bin-cia-compound
She is apparently also the “Jen” in ex-SEAL “Mark Owen’s” NO EASY DAY.
I dunno. Funny how you courageously took on low hanging fruit – Greenwald is an easy target – but managed to avoid Jane Meyer’s arguments, except to reference them in order to bolster your own broad minded bona fides.
Next time? Eschew the broad side of the barn and attempt a more difficult target. Because in my view, Meyer is the definitive word on the subject.
As for Boals and Bigelow, as stated elsewhere, when you want to give them awards, they’re offering history, when you question their veracity? It’s just a movie.
Please, all of you. If you’re going to lean on Jane MAYER – great reporter, lousy movie critic – at least spell her goddam name right. I did.
Also, Mark Owen has refused to answer if in fact “Jen” is actually John, the person Bergen is referring to; he merely states that names were changed to protect the agent (can’t blame him for that). The agent Maya is primarily based on did not come to the Bin Laden case until 2010.
“As for Boals and Bigelow, as stated elsewhere, when you want to give them awards, they’re offering history, when you question their veracity? It’s just a movie.”
This is about as tiresome as it gets. I can’t speak for the bullshit that runs through the brains of the Academy, but critics and cinephiles etc don’t think “wow, this is great because this is how it happened.” They’re not the Pope (fictitiously) saying “It is as it was”. If you go to a movie hoping to learn the history of something, you’re out of your mind. Hell, learning “history” from a historian’s book is an absurd notion in many cases. If you think anyone values a film more because it is a perfect recreation of an event, you’re nuts. Films aren’t there for that. They’re fictions, with events and ideas funnelled through the minds of the creatives (as well as just happenstance, in many cases). Films can reflect an idea, and a spirit of reality, or our own cultural understanding, but they can’t recreate actuality, and nobody serious about film thinks that they can. So whether it’s as simple as beefing up a finale to make it more exciting or as complicated as choosing to favour certain aspects of a story to get across a theme or idea or to put something out there for the audience think about, films based on “actual events” are fictions no matter what. What is interesting to critics and (should be) to viewers is what they choose to depict, how they depict it, and what it says. The Hurt Locker isn’t good because it’s accurate (which it isn’t), it’s good because it is, yes, tense and exciting, but also presenting an intriguing character that leaves us contemplating his motivations and actions.
So thinking that critics like films because they’re “accurate” is like thinking that a band is good live because they sound “just like the album”.
And if Greenwald and Mayer want to comment on the political ramifications of a film, then that’s fine, but the problem is their arguments so far have about as much merit as the religious organizations that objected to Last Temptation of Christ.
One aspect of the story is the fact that much of the truth is derived from CIA sources. We are led to believe that Bin Laden was found by extremely dedicated CIA agents combing the planet for scraps of data. Maybe this is exactly what happened. Or maybe the CIA knew all along that Bin Laden was in Pakistan. I guess a five minute movie comprised of a phone call from the CIA Islamabad station to CIA headquarters wouldn’t have made such a dramatic story. The CIA has no sources with the ISI? The ISI had no idea Bin Laden was in the Abbottabad compound?
Or should we only question movies like JFK that dare to question establishment narratives?
“And if Greenwald and Mayer want to comment on the political ramifications of a film, then that’s fine, but the problem is their arguments so far have about as much merit as the religious organizations that objected to Last Temptation of Christ.”
The fact is people DO get their history from movies, whether you like it or not. I have taught for five years and if you saw not only how many teenagers but also their teachers and parents base what “know” on historical movies, you would not make such a careless statement. You are living in some fantasy world where every person who watches a movie is some Socratic genius. I don’t give a rat’s ass about critics. get it through your heads, making a movie that deals with historical events demands a different level of responsibility if the film is claimed as “historically accurate”. People do go into and come out of a movie like ZDT with totally different mindsets from a movie like Harry Potter.
The Last Temptation of Christ complaint is BS. That is dealing with religion and gospels. You can say anything you want about Jesus Christ because even his historicity is murky. We’re not talking about beefing up a finale to make it more exciting. We are talking about lying. You may want to muddy the waters because you can’t admit Bigelow lied, but that doesn’t change the facts on the ground.
And The Hurt Locker was praised for being accurate. Not just being exciting. What color is the sky in your world?
Must confess I think JFK is out there–the CIA and the LBJ and the Mafia and the kitchen sink. Even LBJ?!?! But that is my reaction. I have to say at least Stone didn’t try to play the cynical “Just a movie” line.
Blessings and thanks to MH (and TC, of course), for a few table scraps of sanity here. Can’t really blame our host for infrequent postings when he gets mostly self-righteous pedantic horseshit thrown his way for the trouble.
For some reason, the writer who surprised me on this one is Klawans. His politics, while often front and center, never appeared to get in the way of a fair approach to complex work before. Now he gives us a review that focuses on Chastain being an empty pretty face, with obligatory “Riefenstahl” aside tossed in to signal his real concerns. Whether those concerns are well-founded, I won’t know until 1/11 (non-major market customer). For now, I trust those who are willing to fix upon what is on the screen.
Belatedly, a “standard” rebuke to Lucretio from early in the thread. No liberal I know (self included) would wish to be tarred with the brush of his drippy, “slovenly” attitude.
“The fact is people DO get their history from movies, whether you like it or not. I have taught for five years and if you saw not only how many teenagers but also their teachers and parents base what “know” on historical movies, you would not make such a careless statement. You are living in some fantasy world where every person who watches a movie is some Socratic genius. I don’t give a rat’s ass about critics. get it through your heads, making a movie that deals with historical events demands a different level of responsibility if the film is claimed as “historically accurate”. People do go into and come out of a movie like ZDT with totally different mindsets from a movie like Harry Potter.”
So shall filmmakers tailor their films for idiots? Because a healthy portion of films released every year do just that. Where’s your moral outrage at the Transformers films for creating a world where women are sexual objects and nothing more, where the military is fetishized to an incredible degree, and where consumerism is lauded as the greatest of all virtues? And those films are seen by a huge number of people compared to those that will likely see ZDT, and a lot of them are impressionable kids. Should they not be allowed to be made because they’re damaging to the morality of the planet?
When you use the “people learn history from this so you have a responsibility” argument, you’re arguing for censorship. What’s the percentage of viewers that will be adversely effected by a film that should be considered? Do you have a number? A measurable way of determining said number? Filmmakers should be cogent of what they’re making, and the impact it might have, but I’m not certain that is applicable here. Imagine a ZDT without torture, and Greenwald and Mayers would likely lambast it for playing down the sheer ugliness that this “War on Terror” has created. One should make a film worried about how it will impact stupid people. What should be considered when discussing art is what was made, not the unintended consequences of what that art might bring about. Should Taxi Driver be banned? Catcher in the Rye? How about the Bible, because that’s wrought a hell of a lot of problems on our society based on interpretations of the readers.
Last Temptation is relevant not because it’s about historical accuracy, but because the critics are coming from very particular perspective and are only looking at, for lack of a better phrase, plot points. “Jesus has sex with Mary Magdalene, this is BLASPHEMOUS”, and yet if you watch the movie, it’s one of the most powerfully pro-Christianity films ever made. So when Jane Mayer uses a line of dialogue saying “they always break, it’s biology” to buttress her claims that this giving us a false representation of the usefulness of torture, she’s assuming that a line is somehow the perspective of the film itself, but it’s about the character that says the line, and the mindset it represents.
“And The Hurt Locker was praised for being accurate. Not just being exciting. What color is the sky in your world? ”
Please, find me the majority of reviews that laud The Hurt Locker as a great film because of it’s accuracy.
Ah yes, “the fact is people DO get their history from movies.” Very eager to hear comrade Walter fully flesh out the political implications of THAT statement, and his suggestions on policy implementation. Sure glad I’m not in school anymore.
The commenter Whitaker got so excited about my “vicious” treatment of Saint Glenn Greenwald that he posted his comment twice. I trust he’ll forgive me for removing the redundant block of prose.
Greenwald is analysing the film as a piece of propaganda. He anticipates exactly the kinds of objections leveled against him here when he writes: “to demand that this movie be treated as ‘art’ is to expand that term beyond any real recognition.” If Glenn Kenny doesn’t want to even consider the possibility that this film has an interested, ideological role beyond the aesthetic then that’s up to him. But it makes no sense to try and engage Greenwald’s piece by refusing that possibility. The fact that the film is fictional, and that its own claims to be representing actual events is also fictional, does not mean that its representation of those events cannot have political and ethical consequences. And it’s those consequences which interest Greenwald.
When he writes that “The brave crusaders slay the Evil Villains, and everyone cheers,” his point is that the film fails to challenge the official, orthodox, mainstream interpretation of the event. He is not claiming that this is literally what happens in the film, or that this is how audiences will react. He is saying that the film is entirely consistent with the standard Hollywood treatment of American good guys vs Muslim bad guys, i.e. “Hollywood schlock”. His argument, in other words, is that one can’t insist on treating it only as “art” because the film conforms to the basic norms of U.S. propaganda about these issues. That is not a lie. That is a political judgment about the ideological role of the film in framing historical events. The only reason Glenn Kenny insists that it is a lie, rather than simply mistaken, is because he refuses to read it as a political judgment. He want to assess it as an aesthetic judgment that impossibly (I’ll take Kenny’s word for it) compares the film’s mise_en_scène to that of the climax in “Die Hard” or “True Lies”. The problem is that Greenwald isn’t talking about that here. He is saying, against those who accuse him of not treating the film on its own terms as art, that in fact the film works perfectly well as propaganda. It’s a political judgment about the film and about Hollywood, one which I’m sure sensible people can disagree with. But it’s a perfectly legitimate objection and it’s certainly not a lie.
Mr. Montin: Had Greenwald stated something along the lines of “its arguable artistic merits notwithstanding, I want to discuss how the movie works as propaganda,” that would have been one thing, and I would have still disagreed, but in a different way. What he says, and what he hammers away at, is the idea that any defense of the movie on an artistic basis is by definition “pretentious,” “pseudo-intellectual” and “amoral.”
I watched ‘Argo’ with a diverse crowd in Sydney, Australia. During the credits Former President Jimmy Carter recounts the mission and suggests that Tony Mendez (played by Affleck) is one of the 50 most important CIA agents. A person in the crowd muttered “He’s the greatest. Why isn’t he the greatest?”.
The reality is most people treat what they see on the big screen as gospel and a declaration of its importance in and of itself. Then again I’m a believer that its all “real”. As William Gibson said “We’ll look back at the past and laugh at the so called distinction between the real and virtual worlds”
Oh, well, if William Gibson said it…it’s still nonsense, but at least William Gibson said it.
Also I love how every day on the internet, every day, millions of people use the phrase “most people” in a denigrating way that obviously excludes themselves.
@Zach You wrote:
“Yeah, I was aware of those quotes; paraphrased in Greenwald’s blog, back when he was writing for Salon. I’m surprised you didn’t include the usual line about how Greenwald used to favorably comment on his own blog.”
NONE of those quotes appeared on Salon, NOR were they “paraphrased,” as you so dishonestly assert. They’re direct quotes straight from the horse’s mouth. The ones about 9/11 Bush, Afghanistan and Iraq appeared in the preface of his first book (NEVER on a blog), and the one about “unmanageably endless hordes,” of Mexicans pouring “over the border in numbers far too large to assimilate,” is from Unclaimed Territory, the blog he wrote before Salon hired him.
I posted links but you’re obviously too much of a (what did you call me?) “lame-ass” to even check them. Instead, in true Greenwald fashion, when you can’t debate facts, you resort to smears, insults, distortions and and lies.
Glenn Greenwald is like the Candyman of internet discussion—just saying his name enough times turns everyone into a screaming freak.
@ Glenn (to the December 18, 2012 at 02:22pm post, anyway)
To clarify: I wasn’t accusing you of sweeping aside the implications of the film, (but that the argument based on the “I am looking at a fiction, period” might do that)- I only noted that your political analysis of a few scenes in the film impliedly repudiated the “fiction” argument, etc, because you took the film as worthy of serious consideration.
Apropos of nothing, cinema is filled with characters who have trouble distinguishing reality from artifice- which may not be a complete coincidence: (off the top of my head) from SHOP AROUND THE CORNER and SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN to Jia Zhang-ke’s UNKNOWN PLEASURES.
My Latest FaBlog
In which I waterboard Glennzilla
http://fablog.ehrensteinland.com/2012/12/19/dancing-in-the-zero-dark/
Hey, Rob: Of course he’s mentioned it on his blog; it’s part of his whole conversion narrative. And it’s perfectly tame, simple, “I once was blind but now I see” stuff. A little pat, but I’ll give it to him. Not that any of it is remotely relevant to the matter at hand, or that it adds up to the implications you tout – hence the “smear” I accused you of attempting. Like I said before – puh-leeze.
Back to reality:
This:
When you use the “people learn history from this so you have a responsibility” argument, you’re arguing for censorship.
– is not true. One can argue against a work without advocating that it be banned – which, by the way, as far as I know, no one has argued for. Greenwald actually implied the opposite – that it was good that this debate was occurring, which obviously would be impossible if no one saw the film.
As for Mayer, and the “discomfort factor” – I don’t think that she was arguing that movies (or, indeed, art) ought to only be enjoyable, popcorn affairs. Her discomfort came from what she saw as a distortion of the facts. This is perfectly understandable, given her extensive reporting on the events that ZDT purports to be dramatizing. And it doesn’t render any of her objections moot.
Mr. Kenny: But he doesn’t object to artistic defences of the film or indeed to the role of art critics. He is very specific. When he uses terms like “pseudo-intellectual” he is talking about the view that de-legitimizes readings of the film as propaganda:
“the idea that Zero Dark Thirty should be regarded purely as an apolitical “work of art” and not be held accountable for its political implications is, in my view, pretentious, pseudo-intellectual, and ultimately amoral claptrap.”
What I found interesting about your piece was the charge that Greenwald was lying: not that he was mistaken or confused, but that he was being disingenuous. And you even highlighted the fact that you were making a rhetorically risky move by levelling this accusation against Greenwald. As you point out, you could have just disagreed with him about what the movie was trying to say, but you didn’t do that. And while I think you’ve misread Greenwald, it’s worth considering why you took the stakes to be so high.
You read Greenwald as deliberately misrepresenting the end of the film. Why would that be so bad? Because if someone like Greenwald can come along and offer an interpretation of a film without any consideration as to its artistic form, to the interplay of its elements and the construction of its affect, then there is simply no role for the art critic to play in these debates, that is, in discussions about what a film means or its broader cultural significance. What is the point of studying and talking about a film as cinema if one can simply ignore everything that makes it cinema and instead treat it as the product of some ideological machine (Hollywood) or the symptom of a moral malaise? What is disingenuous about his review, then, is not that he misconstrued the ending or that he refers to cheering crowds that aren’t there. It’s that while he ostensibly seeks to criticise the film on non-artistic grounds, he is really attacking the value of aesthetics and art criticism, at least when compared to questions of politics and ethics.
In fact Greenwald doesn’t say this, but I can see why you read him that way and why you chose to respond as you did. It *would* be disingenuous for Greenwald to dismiss aesthetics in this way because he is all about analysing “the optics” of news and politics, the ways they are perceived, constructed, disseminated, interpreted, etc. How could one deny the relevance of all this to the assessment of a film (of all things)? But I don’t think he does deny its relevance. He just doesn’t want to be limited by a principle of aesthetic indifference, which is to say, limited to treating the film as something without interest or utility (in this case as propaganda). You seem to champion the principle of aesthetic indifference against Greenwald (“a film is either a work of art or it is worthless”) and I think there is something to be said for that: without doubt, there will be *some* people who will see the film and have second thoughts about the “war on terror”. But I think pursuing that debate would have to start from a different reading of Greenwald’s position.
Please, Mr. Montin, could either you or Mr. Greenwald direct me to the critics who insisted that ZD30 “should be regarded purely as an apolitical ‘work of art’ ”? Every colleague whose work I respect was more than alert to its moral and political implications, and that was reflected in their reviews whether I agree with their conclusions or not.
I’ve been through my own little drama around torture with the TV show “24”. Yes, a lot of it was fun, exciting, engaging, the bad guys were not always just the stereotypical ‘terrorists’ – they were sometimes the Cheney-like politicians too – it was exhilarating at times.
But while the show was on the air, the pictures of the prison guards torturing inmates at Guantanamo came out. I was horrified but the majority of Americans were not. I grew up in a world where Nazis tortured but Americans did not, we were better than that.
Suddenly, it had all turned around. Torture was suddenly a necessary evil.
I then realized that “24” was an insidious, evil show – I don’t care how silly or entertaining it was – it was bad.
I came onto this site looking for a review of this film to see if it was true that this movie rationalizes torture. Thanks to you I see that it does and I absolutely will not see or patronize it.
I don’t care how excited or emotionally engaging you or anyone else finds it to be. The Constitution does not outlaw torture – it outlaws “cruel and unusual punishment’ – which covers a LOT broader scope of actions than ‘torture’.
The founding fathers knew what they were doing when they outlawed cruel and unusual punishment. Those that think they know better and betray their oath to uphold the constitution do not.
Torture was the norm throughout much of history – tens or maybe hundreds of thousands of people were burnt at the stake because people were tortured and confessed to consorting with Satan. Torture is a lousy way to elicit the truth but a great way to get false confessions and use these to strike fear into the hearts of the public.
It’s really sad to see people rationalizing putting their own sense of entertainment above expecting people to uphold some basic standards of common decency.
Craig Kennedy:
“the torture sequences are disturbing as hell and they’re meant to be.”
The objection to the film would not be that it presents torture as a nice thing, its that it presents it as a legitimate means to gather accurate intelligence.
It is argued among many that the better way of obtaining intelligence is to befriend a suspect, and that torture is really only useful in gaining false intelligence or false confessions.
“The objection to the film would not be that it presents torture as a nice thing, its that it presents it as a legitimate means to gather accurate intelligence.”
It does not do that. Torture takes place in the film (as it did in real life) but information was culled about OBL was obtained by other means. Everyone has been pointedly ignoring this key plot point because they’re so hung up on striking “moral” poses over torture.
LOOK AT THE DAMNED FILM!!!!!!!!
I did. Glennzilla didn’t – then under widespread protest (torture to him I expect) he saw it. With blinders on of course, as I am at pains to point out here:
http://fablog.ehrensteinland.com/2012/12/19/dancing-in-the-zero-dark/
“information culled about OBL was obtained by other means”
Unprovable. I trust US senators to know or tell the truth about what happened as much as I do the Drone Master’s Administration.
I am late in replying to your piece so my comment probably won’t be read. I am not a regular reader of this blog and only just discovered this piece on Greenwald’s commentary on ZDT. Warning: I strongly agree with most of what Greenwald writes generally (no, not everything).
I also have seen ZDT.
You make a strong case that the film’s depiction of torture and the people who engage in it are far murkier than how Greenwald depicts it in his 2 articles.
I agree, and was surprised after having read not just his 2 pieces but other critics’ as well (they praised the film but pointed to the same principle criticism Greenwald makes of it).
However…what struck me about your piece is that you totally ignore Greenwald’s NUMBER ONE, main criticism of the film-the NUMBER ONE reason he has attacked it. I understand why you do that-it’s not your expertise.
But you spend all your time trashing Greenwald and never engage in the very reason he is so exercised about the film. And he’s certainly not the only one-you mentioned Jane Mayer as well.
The reason Greenwald attacks this film is that it inaccurately portrays torture as the method by which Osama bin Laden was discovered and killed.
That’s it. That’s his entire argument.
And, sorry, but that is exactly what I saw in the film. That is exactly the assumed message I saw in the film. (I saw it at a special pre-general release screening last week in NYC thru my employer).
And on that point, Greenwald is NOT a liar. He’s telling the truth about what the film dramatizes and allows the audience to believe–inaccurately.
And yes, it is perfectly valid to condemn an artist’s choice to portray such an incendiary contemporary political subject–one that has political consequences on our military policy–in such a way that popular audiences come away believing something that simply is not true.
He’s telling what at best might barely qualifies as a “half truth.”
We see torture executed in the film. We also see a lot of detective work separate from said torture.
The way some people have been talking about the film you’d swear that the guy being tortured gave directions to Osama’s hideout. He supplies a name that proves to be generic and therefore misleading. After a lot of investigation, requiring a sifting though of information of all sorts “Maya” comes up with a theory of where Osama might be. It’s not at all a one-to-one of Information-gsrnered-by-torture = Osama-gets-found.
I would appreciate it if those willing to read a film (ANY film) with care, apply the rigor they would expend on say “Vertigo” to ZDT.
You might learn something.
Glennzilla is beyond learning anything.
Mr. Kenny is most disingenuous. Someone who is a professional film critic can play with the idea that the film was a “fiction” but the average film-goer has such a poor understanding of the “war on terror” that they will assume a cause-effect relationship between torture and bin Laden’s execution. Most people would not know, for example, that Iran and al Qaeda were mortal enemies. (The US relied on military intelligence from Iran in 2002 in order to attack the Taliban.) For that matter, documents released from bin Laden’s compound indicated that he knew nothing about the abortive bomb attack in Times Square. Nor would you know that he was angry about the attack on a Catholic Church in Iraq as well as many other terrorist attacks carried out by al Qaeda in Iraq, a group that had no ties to bin Laden for all practical purposes.
The problem with the film is that it tries to have it both ways. When they get attacked for peddling CIA talking points, Boal and ad Bigelow say that they were only “making art”. It is regrettable that Mr. Kenny would serve as their accomplice.
Louis Proyect, NYFCO
@Tom Carson: Greenwald does provide the relevant links in his article. Comments to his earlier article on the film included the following:
“Of course, there are those with political agendas who will determinedly attempt to find reasons to criticise it, given its subject matter. For the rest of us, this is another powerful film from this extraordinary woman.”
“It’s just a story and they can say what they like. There’s no connection with with really happened. Have a coke and some popcorn.”
“The going on about how such a picture of torture is false and so on is irrelevant because the movie is not a documentary as Bigelow has made clear.… But even more ludicrous is the insinuation Greenwald is making that unless the movie is acceptable from his ideological point of view ( some sort of loony left conspiracy truther view of the social universe to boot ) or expresses his ideological point of view it has to be flawed.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/10/zero-dark-thirty-torture-awards
I actually think the principle of aesthetic indifference (as I’ve called it) isn’t the simple refusal of ideological critique that Greenwald makes it out to be; it could be more accurately thought of as calling into question the efficacy of ideology as an explanation of power or domination. But that’s not an idea either Greenwald or his detractors seem to have much interest in exploring.
MH–
1. “Where’s your moral outrage at the Transformers films for creating a world where women are sexual objects and nothing more, where the military is fetishized to an incredible degree, and where consumerism is lauded as the greatest of all virtues? And those films are seen by a huge number of people compared to those that will likely see ZDT, and a lot of them are impressionable kids. Should they not be allowed to be made because they’re damaging to the morality of the planet?
Maybe the most asinine response I have ever received. Newsflash: I don’t believe I have ever said anything praising the Transformers or Michael Bay or any of that crap. This is the best you can do? But, by your logic, I should be defending those Transformers. After all, it is art. And “most audiences” will in no way be adversely affected by watching them over and over. Who is judging the masses now? At least be consistent. If the Transformers has the power to do what it does, think of the power ZDT has when Scarborough and company are bellowing how it affirms that “they” were right. Or is ZDT art and Transformers not? Says who? An artiste such as yourself? Should we all bow down and have you lecture us on what is art and what is Hollywood trash? One thing is certain: no one denies Transformers is fantasy. But Zero Dark Thirty is “the story you thought you knew” or some bullshit like that.
2. Arguing for censorship? Don’t tell me what the hell I am arguing for when I am not arguing any thing of the sort. Let Sergeant Bigelow make whatever the hell she wants. But that doesn’t mean she shouldn’t be called out on Bullshit. I repeat what I said before: You would be blasting people who rightfully shamed Griffith for Birth of A Nation or called Triumph of the Will what it actually is. You would have to by your logic. No one is saying ZDT should be “torture free”. The point, AGAIN, is simple. Either torture led us to Bin Laden or it didn’t. If she is making that claim, then have the guts to say so and not hide behind “it’s only a movie.” That isn’t art, that is cowardly propaganda. Filmmakers should be cogent, and I am sure Bigelow is. She had to go out of her way to make her statement.
Pseudo-artists can’t have it both ways: Either “art” is incredibly powerful or it is just a pleasant pastime. You are describing audiences as how YOU think they should be. The Last Temptation is still not a strong argument. The movie actually affirms Christ as messiah. A huge difference between imagining what a MYTHIC figure might have done while then making it clear it is nothing more than a flight of fancy and saying “Torture got us Bin Laden”. The critics were wrong about the Scorsese flick on basic fact. ZDT is doing something very, very different. If you can’t see that difference, then there is no point in continuing.
@Glenn Kenny
Comrade Walter?!?! How witty! I thought you might be a pretentious prick when reading your article. Thanks for confirming it. Policy implications? The first step to a solution is admitting there is a problem. I find it laughable that a majority of Americans will admit to a broken educational system, that study after study shows just where US students place compared to other industrialized nations, and fine, pretentious thinkers will lambast the current state of things; yet, when someone points to just why a lie such as ZDT can and will affect students (as well as others), your inner dork has to come out and pretend to actually have wit. Yes, we have to refer to the people when nitwits such as yourself claim audiences will not be led to believe anything about torture, that they will view the movie as I think they should, a work of art. The people contradict you time and time again. This is not some academic snobbery. It is a basic understanding of film.
The only difference b/w the show 24 and the movie ZDT is that many, if not most, of my students will say the latter is a “true” story. But, hey, both the show and movie have protagonists that are “troubled” by torture. So that makes both brave and insightful and complex. Such utter bullshit.
Let’s see: Taxi Driver: Fiction. Catcher in the Rye: Fiction. The Bible: maybe the most overrated work of fiction in the history of man. Again, if MH can’t see the difference b/w them and a movie that claims to be journalism, a new kind of film based on the most in-depth research, then I suggest he/she stick with Michael Bay.
Finally, I can’t seriously take any argument that proclaims Hurt Locker wasn’t praised for being accurate. Just read any glowing review. Again, what color is the sky in your world?
I was aware of this debate before walking into the theater tonight to watch the film, and I kept that awareness during my viewing. This is what actually happens in the film:
The first dramatized scene in the film is the brutal torture/interrogation of a prisoner.
A few scenes later, but still in the first act, the key info that sets off the chain of narrative events that lead directly to the eventual success of the mission at hand is attained from this same prisoner. This takes place over a nice lunch. Before this lunch it’s made clear that the prisoner has been excessively sleep deprived and will be vulnerable to concession. Also during this lunch, and before the info is attained, more torture is threatened.
Period. Those are the events as they occur in the beginning of the film. I think what I find most frustrating about this debate is that some have construed that the film doesn’t posit torture as being the key tool in the attainment of the key lead. The threat of torture that occurs in that scene and the sleep deprivation torture that occurred right before that scene are effectively just the good cop section of an interrogation process built around torture. That is a literal event in the plot substantiated by multiple lines of dialogue and screen action, and in my eyes isn’t up for debate. It just is what it is: The film clearly paints torture as being a key component to the cause and effect of the eventual success of the mission. From there I think Mayer and Greenwald’s arguments have a foundation to build on that is valid.
I have other opinions about the unavoidable intersection of cultural thoughts derived from both art and politics and the aesthetic/formal just-a-piece-of-art value of this film in particular (not much), but most of all it just seems insane to me for anyone to say ZERO DARK THIRTY isn’t clearly positing torture as a (if not THE) key component in the eventual success of the goal of the characters. From there, argue as you may.
Re. the Updates – thoughts on Brody’s piece? It’s kind of a doozy, but a good doozy, for Brody, I thought. He doesn’t mention Greenwald or Mayer, but he does confirm some aspects of their critiques.
Here’s the link to Richard’s piece: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2012/12/richard-brody-on-the-deceptive-emptiness-of-zero-dark-thirty.html
Klawans’ review is now available on line: http://www.thenation.com/article/171594/glamour-suits
David Thomson’s review can be found here, for the time being at least: http://www.tnr.com/articles/film
I’m late getting back to this. One of the better internet arguments I’ve seen. Many good points made rationally and with respect to others with different viewpoints. It’s not a movie that I ever would have desired to see, but this debate is interesting, so I have read a lot of reviews. Here I sin, having not seen the movie, but the reviews are diverse enough to suggest that the film presents significantly more complexity than cartoonish propaganda. Apparently it’s such that different people see different things in it. Perhaps not, and I won’t be judging for myself. Still, the arguments surrounding it are fascinating and give insight to larger issues.
Take Comrade Walter’s comments. Sure, it’s not nice to label someone like that, but he’s earned the moniker and it’s an effective shorthand rebuttal to his, and Greenwald’s arguments which are as old as they are elitist. The purpose of art should be the socio-political enlightenment of regular people. Art is bad if it’s constructed in such a way that regular people might take the wrong message from it. From there it’s a short intellectual step to the concept of a vanguard.
Sorry if I’m missing the context or intent of this sentence I’m about to quote from CW. My take on this conversation doesn’t depend on it, but if it is as straight forward as it seems, it bolsters my point:
“Pseudo-artists can’t have it both ways: Either “art” is incredibly powerful or it is just a pleasant pastime.”
That’s the kind of Manichean thinking that is such a staple of the totalitarian mindset. There is no either/or. Art can be incredibly powerful. It can be a pleasant passtime. What it can be is only limited by your imagination. And one of the things that sucks most about humanity is that those with the most limited imaginations all too often want to impose their limits on the rest of us. Seems like it would be against some law of the universe, but it’s true that those who travel as far as it is possible to go either to the left or right end up in essentially the same place. And when they get far enough along, art is always seen as a threat from which regular people need to be protected.
Hey, Zach: If you’re still reading this, since you claim Greenwald has mentioned his support of Bush’s wars on his blog, please point out a single example on any of them: Unclaimed Territory, Salon or the Guardian. I’ll save you the Google search and tell you you can’t. If he had, he would have already launched broadsides (with links, of course) against the people who’ve reported this fact. But the only rebuttal he offered was that we wrote about in the preface of his first book. And if you don’t want to take Glenn’s word for it, or mine, knock yourself out. and come back with the proof.
ZDT does not propose that torture directly resulted in the capture of bin Laden. However, torture is alluded to having happened in such a way to terror suspects that it remains enough of a threat that the suspects decide it is best to give info so they won’t be tortured again. Therefore the message is that torture can work. Bad message in my view. Especially if it did not work in real life.
Here’s the thing. We pretty much know torture was used at black sites by the CIA. What we are told by the CIA is that torture was not used in getting info leading to the capture of bin Laden. The movie plays it many ways trying to cover all [narrative and historical] bases with regards to what may have happened, which may be a mistake and may be incorrect. Bigelow is very smart about movies but maybe not so smart about the affect her message may have on people. I will say I wish the movie had explicitly told us that is was fictionalizing real events. [And by that I mean the story it tells – not just the actors in front of a camera part]. The movie is in no way ‘pro torture’ but the message it conveys might be historically incorrect. The movie takes itself seriously and therefore I do think the filmmakers owe it to the audience to try and get it right.
Well, the CIA says they didn’t use torture to get information. You’d have to be crazy not to believe everything the CIA says, especially when it’s about something that could possibly embarrass them, or show them guilty of crimes against humanity.
I had always admired Greenwald before I started paying attention to this issue. The way he obsessively retweets anyone that agrees with him while totally ignoring, if not viciously attacking, any counterargument is bad enough, but he’s supposed to be some kind of über-government watchdog yet his entire argument rests on the assumption that the CIA, yes the CI fucking A, is telling the truth about something that would get them in trouble if true. In this matter at least, Greenwald has made a total ass out of himself and I find it very disheartening that such an egomaniacal retard has been one of the better spokesmen for doing what’ s right in the world. I bet someday he pulls a Hitchens and can’t lick enough sweat off the balls of some future Dick Cheney, albeit with significantly less than half the élan.
Saw Django Unchained today, btw. Found your revue insightful, but the movie was enjoyable enough. I was never bored for long and it had a few laughs. Far from great art, though I was truly knocked out by Samuel L. Jackson’s performance which may actually have been great art. Can’t recall hardly ever seeing SLJ play a character other than SLJ, but he sure as hell did it in that movie.
Erin Brockovich for Fascists
I’m unable to judge the film as a whole – it’s not out over here – but this trailer supports my worst suspicions of it being a big steaming pile of machorevengepropagandadreck :
“Can I be honest with you? I am baaad news. I’m not your friend, I’m not gonna help you. I’m gonna break you! Any questions?”
“10 years – 2 wars – 1 target”
“Nothing else matters.”
I mean, come on, please …
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-kelly/erin-brockovich-for-fasci_b_2334324.html
Link messed up above
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/zero_dark_thirty/trailers/
Link to trailer, sorry
I am reminded of a line from “Ted:” “Great story, man, I felt like I was there.”
I can’t wait for Kathryn Bigelow’s next movie: “Penn State 30” ‑a film about how the Nittany Lions won won the Sugar Bowl because Jerry Sandusky raped little boys.
If I want to watch torture porn I’ll stick to the “Saw” movies. Chris Kelly was right: Zero Dark Thirty is Erin Brockovich for fascists.
Bravo. Just that: bravo.
The link is incorrect (it links to MSN) for the NYT review in the sentence: “Manohla Dargis makes some salient points beautifully, as she always does, in her NYT review.”
Link now fixed (hopefully). Thanks Andy.
Goodness, okay: Greenwald is a liar. But listen to yourself: it takes far more effort to prove he’s lying about the nature of the film than it does to prove the film lies about recent history. Would that you applied that rigor to the story, not your favorite still frame. You can talk about the tones and moods of the film all you like, but its point-by-point plot and story are simply wrong – and not artfully so. If someone made a film in which, say, Al Gore orchestrated 9/11 … but they tempered it with affecting tones and moods and scores, you wouldn’t be outraged at someone else’s outrage over that film’s ridiculous lies. Bieglow has plenty of admirable craft, but not art here. And she asks us to pretend past a lot of horseshit along the way. The story is too important for that. It’s a bad movie.
Torture is part of the bin Laden story. And so is bureaucratic resistence. But not the way Bigelow structures it. What we get is another maniacal heroine and the absurd moral that one can only stop psychotic behavior with … more psychotic behavior. None of that is factually, artistically, or emotionally true – at least not for anyone who actually had to live through this awful decade.
If you’re saying that the film’s overweening affectlessness and indifference to basic fact is itself some kind of statement about our soul-less prosecution of the war on terror … knock yourself out. But you must also accept the artistic and historical lies necessary to create such an abject worldview. I don’t think the film makes that statement; it think the film is itself a symptom and a product of the numbness to which we’ve been driven over the years. Who needs it? Especially when there are better stories to tell about bin Laden, torture and Terror?
I understand that at this point in the virtual conversation, which is restarting with a boost from Andrew Sullivan, who I hereby thank, much of the commentary is going to new readers getting in their points rather than anything resembling a back-and-forth in which some persuasion or other is possible. But, and I say this not so much in the spirit of provocation so much as a further declaration of principles, if your argument is “the story is too important” for whatever aspect of the treatment you’re objecting to, that’s where I check out, because honestly, it’s like we’re not even sharing the same planet any more. The one conviction I share with Kingsley Amis when it comes to art is “Important isn’t important.”
Okay, Glenn, so the story isn’t “important.” 9/11, torture, the bin Laden hunt … away with all that. I would love some back-and-forth on … everything else. I confess I didn’t make it through every page of reader comments, but I wanted to at least reply to your original post.
For what it’s worth, I’m not trying to defend Greenwald’s aesthetics, such as they are; I just think he’s too easy a target and you’ve tackled the man and not the ball here.
My hunch is Bigelow wanted to include torture in her story but didn’t know how, except to imply it’s as regrettable as it was necessary. I guess compared to mainstream torture porn in Hollywood, that’s an accomplishment, but what a standard! That doesn’t add up to tragedy or art in my book; it’s too cynical. It also happens to rewrite history along the way, so it’s falsehood in service of cynicism. Most defenses and praises of the film I’ve heard usually say something like, “yes, it’s false, but at least it’s cynical!” Well, what kind of accomplishment is that?
Bigelow knows how to establish mood and tone, yes, but are plot mechanics off limits here? Plot choices are even more explicit than framing, subtext, scorning, etc. I maintain that the film drapes itself in amorality, but that it does have a moral: psychotic behavior à la bin Laden could only be stopped by psychotic behavior à la Maya. I don’t think that’s very artful or even interesting. It also happens to be false history. I grant Greenwald’s an ugly spokesperson for this argument, but I would still love to be persuaded otherwise.
Well, Karl, thanks for being a good sport, and sorry to be so snippy. I’m going to be brief as my day as it’s progressed so far isn’t going to allow me much time to engage (I know, that’s pretty Jonah-Goldberg-lame of me) but I also think if we get down to brass tacks maybe our differences are gonna boil down to taste. What initially impressed me about “Zero Dark Thirty,” putting aside for the moment its representations of history, is the deft way it upends a lot of expectations concerning espionage thrillers and their ethics. As I mentioned in my review, it initially introduces Maya as an audience surrogate and then portrays her going along with the thing that the conventions of the ostensibly socially-responsible espionage thriller (as in the “Bourne” series) would have its hero/audience surrogate reject, that is, torture. This threw me off, and eventually it made me feel that the movie was as much about playing off of our expectations not just pertaining to ethics in life but to ethics within this representation. I agree to a certain extent with you about the movie’s “cynicism” but I see it more as a mordant irony, which also comes through in Maya’s “I believe I was spared” spiel, which has uncomfortable relative resonances of Bush’s rhetoric throughout his Presidency and the war he initiated. So I’m not, as you see, on board with quite as much of a tit-for-tat reading of its cynicism w/r/t “psychotic behavior;” I think the movie’s playing with a whole lot more, and pretty deftly so.
Many thanks, Glenn. And I’m sure Jonah would be dodging a whole other tack entirely!
You make an interesting point about audience expectations. I haven’t seen the Bourne films, but hasn’t spy fare like “24” shaped expectations just as much? I would love to have my expectations subverted on that one.
Also, the film relies on something more than expectation when it comes to 9/11; it relies on our outright experience. It’s a moment we only hear. We are trusted with our own memory on that one. But then our memory of what followed is rewritten … and I’m still not sure why. It’s hard for me to be asked to rely on my own experience and then shove that experience aside in the next moment. Yeah, you could say my expectation was subverted, but to what end?
I can see how one man’s cynicism is another man’s deft irony with a wide enough lens, perhaps. As a critic, you’ve seen way more spy movies than I ever will. Maybe it’s a matter of taste, as you say, and maybe it’s just a matter of professsion. I was in DC for 9/11. I remember with great shame and rage the Abu Ghraib scandal and Cheney’s torture ambitions. And I remember that dull, overdue pang of relief on May Day 2011. ZDT strings those events together in an utterly bleak and bonkers way to me, and along the way it ennobles torture. What can I say? I’d love to know why it does these things or what makes that good film-making.
As an ironic departure from certain genre conventions, maybe it’s interesting? But what besides filmic or genre convention (or, again, the factual record) is being subverted and why?
That’s a lot to ask and you’re busy. Maybe one of the other commentors can help with that one. In any case, thank you for keeping the thread alive and open.
Finally saw ZDT; some thoughts about it and the conversation that has ensued:
1. First, it struck me as a film divided against itself. I noticed right off the affectless aspect that Glenn noted, but immediately afterward I got the sense of a tightly scripted/crafted narrative. As Glenn said, Maya is introduced as an audience surrogate, but then the film seems to lose sight of her, then she pops up again, but each subsequent appearance felt more and more forced, as if the movie wanted to get away from her, but Screenwriting 101 forbade it. ZDT suffers from Chinatown Syndrome: “Maya is the surrogate; Maya is not the surrogate.” Maya writing the numbers on the glass wall is Norma Rae holding up the sign “Union”; the rivalry of the two women is out of OLD ACQUAINTANCE; and the final shot of Maya is a (negativized) lift from the end of STELLA DALLAS.
2. Does the film endorse torture merely because it shows it? No. No work of art endorses anything simply by depiction/representation. The film does, however, show torture to have been part of the chain of events that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden. From the statement in the beginning about “first-hand accounts” to the use of actual 911 calls, the film presents itself as representing events that did occur – dramatic license in depicting these events may have been employed, but wholesale invention, i.e., adding never-happened scenes to the chain of events, did not occur.
As for the attitude of the film toward torture, these are my speculations on how the film wished to present itself: torture played a role in bringing about the desired end. I do not think the film wanted to raise the question about whether or not torture is wrong within the film itself, but rather to allow the viewer to raise the question within herself as a result of her engagement with the movie. ZDT set out to simply state that torture occurred and was useful in obtaining a specific result. Again, these are my speculations about the intended goal of the film.
I think the film sabotaged its own intentions by giving Maya the hint of a narrative arc (and sometimes more than a hint). That arc messes with the neutral approach the film wants to take. ZDT never finds a way to be affectless and narrativized at the same time as, for example, the Dardennes brothers’ films can be. Maya’s having an arc (and a conventional one at that when all is said and done) imparts a sense that the film does have an attitude toward what it portrays since the main character changes over the course of the work. Maya’s arc poisons the film’s attempt to be neutral.
Also, the film’s mise en scene displays Bigelow’s training at the San Francisco Art Institute – the shots have an “attitude” (so to speak) to what they depict visually, which can lead a viewer to look for the “attitude” the film has toward its content as well.
Brian Dauth
Thank God for Bigelow and Tarantino. Without them, what would we have to talk about?
An interesting musing on this morning’s news in the “Best” Director category:
http://scottalanmendelson.blogspot.com/2013/01/why-kathryn-bigelows-oscar-snub-is.html
Pretty good damning of ZDT from the political angle by Steve Coll. The first half of the piece is the meat of the objection with which I most heartily concur.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/feb/07/disturbing-misleading-zero-dark-thirty/?pagination=false
All that outrage from greenwald and not a word about, say, Malala Yousafzai?
I guess now that Al Jazerra owns Current he can get his own movie review show where he can review movies BEFORE seeing them and rate them as to how much they promote American Imperialism on a scale of 1 to 5 Dick Cheney’s.
Glenn Greenwald is the most hateful, hypocritical and deluded man in media.