Zero Dark Thirty

These are strange days for Kathryn Bigelow. Her chronicle of the hunt for Osama bin Laden is drawing Americans to cinemas in their droves, and it has been nominated for five Oscars, but at the same time, she is facing severe criticism because her film has been interpreted as an apology of torture. Zero Dark Thirty is certainly not that. Bigelow shows how in the early years of the search for Bin Laden, CIA agents tortured people, but she doesn’t adopt a clear position. This is not an essay on despicable interrogation techniques. So let us examine what Zero Dark Thirty actually is: the story of the CIA agent who located the world’s most wanted terrorist in a building in Abbottabad in Pakistan. Bigelow and journalist/screenwriter Mark Boal emphasise from the get-go that their story is based on “first-hand accounts of actual events”. More than half the film documents the concerted, ten-year effort of the CIA agent Maya. While others give up, die, or presume Bin Laden to be dead, she tenaciously persists. Even when that means she has to threaten or pressure her bosses. We are told very little about the reason for her obsession. Maya will not permit herself to feel a single emotion, and appears to have put her life entirely on hold until the hunt is over. What she does say sounds scarily missionary: “A lot of my friends have died trying to do this – I believe I was spared so I could finish the job.”

The reason the character doesn’t repel us is Jessica Chastain, a fantastic actress. The (perfectly filmed) action and the patriotism (was that really necessary?) are saved up until the last chapter. After a woman has done all the work, an American elite force flies into Pakistan without permission on 2 May 2011 and shoots Bin Laden. The tension in Zero Dark Thirty is not as good as in Bigelow’s last film, the Iraq drama The Hurt Locker, but the content is more interesting.

Zero Dark Thirty ●●●
US, 2012, dir.: Kathryn Bigelow, act.: Jessica Chastain, Joel Edgerton, 157 min.