Anyone who did not see “Zero Dark Thirty” on its opening night was smart, as it was mayhem in theaters everywhere. The film shot to #1 at the box office overnight and is there still, for the plain and simple reason that it’s a must see (no spoiler alert here because we all know at least a little about eliminating Osama bin Laden). Zero Dark features a razor sharp screenplay by Mark Boal, top form directing by Kathryn Bigelow, and higher than high stakes drama from start to finish.
This film, however, is sufficiently controversial that there may soon be Congressional hearings about it–Sen. John McCain and Sen. Diane Feinstein had it in their sites by day one.  The charge is that Bigelow and Boal depict torture in a manner that glorifies it, by way of a plot that allegedly portrays the U.S. government/military eliminating OBL only via intelligence gleaned from full on, no holds barred torture. In my view they are innocent of this charge. The raging debate over the film is misdirected and could do better to be debating this country’s torture legacy rather than a film that deserves serious consideration for a best picture Oscar.
But hell hath no greater fury than the movement against this abhorrent method of gathering intelligence, which is why the debate could hardly be more fast and furious at the moment. True enough, torture is not only morally and legally wrong; it is also unreliable and rarely effective (see below). But this film is being unfairly tarred and feathered, its first casualty the denial of an Oscar nomination for Bigelow’s directing. Members of the Academy are protesting the film instead of voting for it. And critics beyond the industry are already massing, only their fire is not friendly.
What the filmmakers Bigelow and screenplay writer Mark Boal actually do is what all good artists do: present their subject in beautifully rendered form and let the viewer decide on its ultimate meaning or wider importance. They expressly do not glorify torture, which was rightfully ended by our government (at least in its harshest forms). They depict the post 9-11 torture that has been widely documented in a straightforward, fairly shuddering manner. It disturbs the viewer because it should; it is pretty unsettling stuff.  Bigelow and Boal don’t shirk from showing it straight up for what it is: harsh violence intended to force uncooperative detainee combatants to offer details that will help the U.S. to roll up al-Qaeda and its affiliates.
However, for the chief charge to be true, the film’s plot would need to show an unbroken chain of intelligence, from the waterboarding and beating of detainees to the name and location of OBL’s personal courier and the location of OBL himself. But the chain in the film is broken. This is what the vast majority of viewers are missing. True enough, the name of OBL’s courier is given up by Ammar, the detainee in the film who is subjected to the most on screen torture. After being subjected to a form of the rack and being kept for an unspecified amount of time in a small wooden box, Ammar gives up three names–including OBL’s courier’s name–and immediately the scene is cut.
But Maya, the lead OBL analyst from the CIA, already had the courier’s name prior to this scene. What is more, the trail soon goes dead. Maya and her fellow analysts cannot find this guy. In the plot it doesn’t pick up again until, in flukish old-fashioned terms, another analyst digs up on old paper file that to her and Maya’s amazement had gone missing. In it are not only the courier’s name but additional information that soon allows then to start to pinpoint his location in Pakistan, crucial additional links in the chain. The pace of the film quickens from this point on, as the CIA rapidly finds him, locates OBL’s house in Pakistan, determines that he is there, and mounts the operation that eliminates him. In pure cinematography terms it is a wild ride.
As such the crucial links in the chain that lead to OBL’s elimination do not come from intelligence gleaned from torture; they come from boring, bureaucratic mistakes as well as mundane analysis and a fair amount of basic putting two and two together. So why are so many viewers of Zero Dark fully fixated in their viewpoint that it glorifies torture? Well, in a sense no one can be blamed for getting the plot wrong; it is highly complex and comes at the viewer rapid fire. The film is long and at times confusing, partly because it tries be as realistic as possible. Rashamon like, people who see the movie together tend to discuss it afterward but find themselves not only disagreeing about the meaning but also crucial plot details.
Technically speaking, torture is illegal–in violation of the U.S. Anti-Torture Act, the Geneva Conventions, and the Convention Against Torture–but is it effective? If it were, in these times it might be worth violating said law.  It could lead to saving lives. That is certainly the view that the Bush Administration infamously took, from Dick Cheney’s 1% doctrine to the decisions and policies that put in place the black sites and confirmed sites where the torture of detainees took place, like Abu Ghraib, Bagram Air Base, and Guantanamo Bay. But a vast array of non governmental experts and the new Administration took a different view, and the harshest methods were ended. Yet, without question the practice of rendition, with all its negative implications, continues. And Guantanamo Bay still exists, despite President Obama’s promise to close it down. Opponents to these ongoing policies also fault this Administration for taking the use of drones to an unprecedented level.
In effectiveness terms, torture is hit or miss at best and most of the time not very reliable. The definitive investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee remains classified, but its authors have informed the public that it finds that none of the critical intelligence that led to OBL’s elimination came from torture (former CIA Director Leon Panetta informed Sen. McCain of this very fact). As Jane Mayer and Adam Zagorin have reported, the FBI concluded that torture is ineffective and removed all their agents from any participation in or association with “enhanced interrogation.”  The top lawyer in the Defense Department took great risks in his successful attempt to keep U.S. armed forces from continuing to engage in it. The original bombers of the World Trade Center were all arrested and convicted using standard law enforcement and judicial techniques in New York.
For example the CIA waterboarded al-Qaeda’s top operational commanders Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 83 and 183 times respectively, yet KSM after all that told his torturers that OBL’s courier was not important (we now know, as Zero Dark depicts, that he was the crucial link in the OBL chain). It was FBI agent Ali Soufan’s work via traditional interrogation techniques on Zubaydah that led to information about KSM and his eventual capture in the first place; yet advocates of enhanced interrogation continue to cite Zubaydah as the arch example of how effective torture is. KSM’s false testimony under torture was costly as well, leading the CIA on a series of resource consuming wild goose chases until later when OBL’s courier was identified.
The most important detainee at Guantanamo, Ibn al-Sheik al Libi, offers another case in point. At first he was being interrogated by the FBI, which was proceeding apace when top Bush Administration officials demanded the CIA take charge. The CIA tortured him in full, from transport in a small wooden box to a series of waterboardings. What happened? Al Libi coughed up bogus intelligence about the possession of weapons of mass destruction by Saddam Hussein, subsequently used by Colin Powell in his seriously flawed and inaccurate presentation of U.S. intelligence about Iraqi WMDs at the UN. Only later, after the invasion of Iraq that it led to, did the CIA confirm that al Libi’s information was useless and costly. It subsequently ended enhanced interrogation because it feared it could constitute a war crime.
The main dynamic animating all the opposition to Zero Dark is that to this day there has been no public accounting for the ill-conceived policy of torture, no consequential reckoning or complete disavowal. For example, former CIA agent Jose Rodriguez destroyed the 80+ tapes the Agency made of its enhanced interrogations, and Rodriquez has used the advent of Zero Dark to go public with his seriously flawed view that torture is effective (neither he nor anyone else has been held accountable). In the absence of any sort of public reckoning, opponents of torture have latched onto Zero Dark to press their case.
It is a shame, because the film in fact is a testament to the inefficacy of torture. The only thing Bigelow and Boal can be rightfully accused of is being perhaps a little too subtle. For example a lot is being made of the facial expression of the CIA agent listening to President Obama speak against torture on a TV she is watching in Afghanistan; she isn’t happy and shakes her head at his words. But that is not a device in the film for advocating torture, as many of the film’s critics have alleged; in fact it’s the opposite. It shows that the CIA really did believe in the efficacy of torture, which is true; but in light of what we now know, the film depicts the Agency in a poor light. I highly doubt today’s CIA views this film as supporting its previous policy and applauding its legacy.
https://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-january-16-2013/jessica-chastain
The latest facet of the controversy involves the comments Jessica Chastain made last week on The Daily Show. Torture and Zero Dark opponents are accusing her of lying and even a cover up for telling John Stewart that Bigelow and Boal “decided not to work in cooperation with the government,” as full cooperation would have given the film makers access to U.S. military aircraft and battlefield equipment but also given the U.S. military power over Zero Dark’s script, even a veto power. True enough, Mark Boal did get incredible access for preparing his script, including interviews of Seal Team 6. This was necessary to get the details and gist of the film right in accuracy terms. But Bigelow did not sign any agreement with the Department of Defense to enact the aforementioned exchange. She wanted to keep full creative and editorial control, and we the viewing public are the direct beneficiaries of this decision.
This is what Chastain was referring to, so again the criticism is off base. Critics are raking Bigelow over the coals for claiming her film is “based on firsthand accounts of actual events.” They say she can’t have her cake and eat it too, or claim the film is practically a documentary but also a piece of entertainment art. She and Boal do not actually try to make a film that is 100% accurate in terms of real life, but they do succeed in making one that is accurate in meaning terms. What needs to be evaluated is the very meaning imparted by the film; this is what they are accountable for. In my view they accomplish what they set out to accomplish and should be applauded for it. As Bigelow herself said recently, “depiction is not endorsement.”
When you see this film be prepared to be hugely entertained but also prepare to pay close attention to what actually leads to the ultimate elimination of OBL. If you watch closely you’ll catch the critical nuance; if you don’t, the mishmash of plot intricacies will likely cause you to draw the wrong conclusion that so many already have. I’m betting you’ll give both the film and the filmmakers two thumbs up.
I think the main cause for concern in ZD30’s portrayal of torture is that it is seen to elicit reliable information, whether ‘in the moment’ or as resulting from its lingering threat in future interrogations. Even if in this particular story that information didn’t lead to the Big Bad, the simple fact that the information was successfully educed in this way in the story is bad.
Most people, except those on the real fringe, don’t believe that anyone deserves to be tortured, nor that torturing is anything less than a severe violation of human rights. However, I’ve also found that many people – myself included – are swayed by the hypothetical ‘ticking time-bomb’ scenario. Hypothetically, we would see the harm of torture, though great, as justifiable if it prevented the otherwise imminent deaths of some sufficiently large group of people. And some of the ‘ticking time bomb’ parameters do show up from time to time in reality.
So the fact that the scenario, as a whole, is a red herring – the fact that torture is basically never more reliable than alternative methods in the best of cases and probably not reliable in general – is one of the most morally salient pieces of information in this debate. The fact that there is no utilitarian negotiation, that we are never actually balancing harms but simply choosing to amplify them, is the knockdown argument that makes torture illegitimate to people like me who believe that security issues demand a prudential logic.
ZD30, by clouding the relatively solid – to my knowledge – expert consensus that torture doesn’t work, probably should be criticised as naive and irresponsible given its possible influence upon the larger public discussion of torture. Target of hate and source of outrage? Maybe not. But I think it’s a bit less ambiguous than you seem to think.
I saw this film. I was not “hugely entertained,” and I found your a bit piece too flip with the film’s critics. Entertainment is a matter of taste and other people’s ethical concerns don’t disappear because a film was well-directed. I, like many of the other substantively interested viewers I know, paid perfectly fine attention, and I reject the idea that most of the film’s critics are just confused about its narrative structure. In fact, I paid close enough attention to know that the torture portrayed in the first half of the film did not lead to OBL’s location, and was therefore even more non-plussed by its portrayal of enhanced interrogation without the attendant underlining it had failed. But backing up, does it really matter whether the relationship between the information received through torture and the ultimate location of bin Laden is presented as an unbroken chain, or if it’s actually a broken chain if you just pay close enough attention? Or if you just look at that agent’s face when President Obama’s denouncing the use of torture? The question at hand isn’t whether the movie is too subtle for viewers too appreciate its stealth-criticism of US practices. As others have noted, it is how it structures the terms of debate. When you write “in the absence of any sort of public reckoning, opponents of torture have latched onto Zero Dark to press their case,” you are identifying precisely what makes film a valid flashpoint. As others have noted over the weeks, it will BE the public reckoning because its makers decided, just a few years after the actual events have taken place, to craft their own narrative of events; to offer this narrative to a public that has comparatively little information about the practices in question; and to do so with criticism that is infinitely more subdued than the US government’s internal own criticism of torture.
A bit too flip, excuse me.
This notion that somehow art is apolitical, or non-political, or whatever, is an approach toward art/literature/any cultural text which was almost entirely repudiated about 50 years ago. The only reason that it was ever useful to make this ‘art is beyond politics’ claim in the first place was in the context of censorship, and thus was a contention about free speech, NOT the political relevance of art.
Furthermore – you give the authors of this film far too much leeway when it comes to their statements about the film’s accuracy. Unless they are going line by line telling you which elements are historically accurate and which are not, the suggestion at the outset that the events of the film are based on good US intelligence gives a level of credibility to EVERY event in the film. Again, it is in their rights to do that, but it is irresponsible to make that claim when there are elements of your film which A) are highly politically relevant, B) are not based in fact, and C) are liable to be mis-interpreted in such a way which informs political debate in a problematic way.
The statements of the authors themselves as to what the film argues for/against, (or this idea that ‘depiction is not endorsement’) are largely irrelevant at this point. The film has already been shot, edited, and sent out to the theaters. Whether or not they come out and say X or Y on torture, the film is now independent of their views and making its own claims. We have to interrogate it on its own terms, not those set out by the director et. al. I think it would be an interesting question to determine what impression, re torture, viewers are coming away with after seeing ZeroDark. Another important question, IMHO, is the issue of the virulent anti-muslim sentiment stirred up by this film.
And that last piece raises an whole other set of questions – which I am sure you would argue are irrelevant but which anyone with more familiarity with textual criticism would recognize as central to the debate about this movie. Those questions are: what are the sentiments, beliefs, etc etc, which prepare for the widespread positive reception of this movie? Im sure you will argue all day about direction, screenplay, etc, but there are plenty of movies with great care given to all of those more technical elements which do not come anywhere close to Zero Dark in terms of popular reception. Perhaps, yknow, the whole killing Osama, jingoistic patriotism, celebration of the eventual success of the WoT, the feeling of redemptive violence at the end of this long period of war, all of these elements contribute as well. Insofar as the film draws upon this long cultivated group of WHOLLY POLITICAL popular sentiments/anxieties/etc, it is indisputably a political work.
Thank you for your comments. I do not argue that the film is apolitical at all, in fact. It certainly is, for example moreso than The Hurt Locker, which itself was considered by many to be apolitical but of course was also political. My major point was instead about torture and the highly contentious debate this film’s depiction of it has set off. That is the primary issue, not textual analysis or criticsm. The psychology of the film’s viewers naturally matters a great deal.
I haven’t seen the film yet, but I’m not sure how this:
‘After being subjected to a form of the rack and
being kept for an unspecified amount of time in a small wooden
box, Ammar gives up three names–including OBL’s courier’s name–and
immediately the scene is cut.’
Fits with this:
‘The film is long and at times confusing, partly because it
tries be as realistic as possible.’
Afaik no information vis a vis Osama came from torture, so
why include that scene if your intent is to be ‘as realistic as possible?’
I have also heard Pakistanis in it speak Arabic, can anyone
tell me whether this is true? It doesn’t really reinforce the position that
Bigelow et al were committed to accuracy and deep research if so.
‘attention to detail’ was the phrase I wanted to use rather than ‘accuracy and deep research’..not that it matters, tbh
If torture is morally and legally wrong, why do you say “it might be worth violating” the law, if torture were truly effective?
And why do you privilege the filmmakers’ viewpoint while accusing viewers of “getting the plot wrong” due to their “fixated” viewpoints? If so many viewers are getting it wrong, maybe they are not wrong?