Another lengthy film at this week’s Robert Burns Centre Film
Theatre Film Club, but one that certainly justified its running time. Billed as
the greatest manhunt in history for the world’s
most dangerous man and introduced by Alec Barclay to a capacity audience. The
award winning Zero Dark Thirty (2012) was a tense and exciting watch (even if
we did know the ending) that every body seemed to appreciate. It dramatizes the
USA’s decade long hunt and subsequent execution of Osama bin Laden leader of a
multinational, stateless army known as al-Qaeda who carry out a physical
struggle against those they see as enemies of Islam.
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| Kathryn Bigelow. |
The film was directed by Kathryn Bigelow, who was jointly
responsible for the production, with the writer of the screenplay, Mark Boal,
the same team that collaborated on the Oscar winning film[1] The Hurt Locker (2009). Alec explained
to the RBC audience that Bigelow and Boal were in the process of making a film
based on the unsuccessful attempt to find bin Laden, and the screenplay was
virtually complete when in May 2011 it was announced that bin Laden had been killed
in Pakistan. At first it appeared as though they had got a good third act, but
this finally became the whole story. Boal was an experienced war correspondent
before becoming a screenwriter, and the story is strongly based on his skills
as an investigative journalist. Alec went on to explain that the film opened to
very mixed responses, with some critics being very vitriolic in their
condemnation of the scenes featuring the torture of suspects. The controversy
about torture is that some critics (political as well as journalists) saw the
film as advocating the success of torture as a means of gaining useful
information. In America the hawks branded the director a traitor while doves suggest she
supports the efficacy of torture.[2] Even John
Pilger wrote that Zero
Dark Thirty promotes
torture and murder and is directed by, someone he calls ‘the Leni Riefenstahl of our time, promoting
her master's voice as did the Fuhrer's pet film-maker’
A group of senators claim that, Zero
Dark Thirty makes the ‘clear implication’ that intelligence derived from
enhanced interrogations eventually led to finding bin Laden. In a letter to
Sony they state: ‘we are fans of your movies
and we understand the special role that movies play in our lives, but the
fundamental problem is that people will believe that the events it portrays are
facts. The film therefore has the potential to shape American public opinion in
a disturbing and misleading manor’. As well as the controversy about the
films depiction of torture an Academy voter also urged fellow members not to
cast a Best Picture vote for the film (American politics!).
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| The American administration watch as the action unfolds. |
Remarking that the film reportedly appears to take a morally neutral
tone to torture, Alec told us that the director states in its defence that she was,’ trying to capture the essence of this
decade. Capturing it in a way that would stand the test of time and had we
omitted the harsh tactics that would have been whitewashing history. It was
definitely a part of that past (administration), but there were many tactics used that resulted in finding the
compound in Abbottabad’.
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| bin Laden is dead........ |
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| .......or is he? |
Personally I think that the torture scenes are an integral part of the
story, but the film makes it quite clear that the use of ‘enhanced
interrogations’ did not enable the CIA to track down bin Laden, that, if the
film is to be believed, was down to a junior assistant finding overlooked
information contained in a discarded file. If you can separate
the politics from the film, difficult I know, you end up with a very thrilling and
enjoyable movie.
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| Navy Seals storm bin Laden compound. |
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| Golden Globe winner Jessica Chastain. |
The movie received 5 Oscar nominations: Best Picture, Best Actress,
Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing and Best Sound Editing. But in the
end only shared the Oscar for Best Sound Editing with Skyfall. In The Golden Globe Awards Jessica Chastain, who plays the
CIA agent Mia, was deservedly given the accolade for being the Best Actress.
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