I finally caught up with Zero Dark Thirty. In ordinary circumstances I would have been in two minds about seeing it: on the one hand, a movie about the hunting and killing of Osama bin Laden would have been of interest to me, especially with the successful outcome of that enterprise; on the other hand, the advance publicity had made it clear enough that scenes of torture were prominent in the early stages of the film, and the graphic representation of physical cruelty is not something I have a stomach for. In this case, however, I was also interested in the controversy the film had generated, with many saying that Zero Dark Thirty condoned the use of torture by the CIA after 9/11, and others – including Kathryn Bigelow, the film’s director – denying this. Having missed it when it was showing in cinemas here, I recently got hold of the DVD.
My own verdict on the controversy? It corresponds with that of Brooks Barnes in the New York Times:
The brutal scenes are presented with no obvious political tilt, creating a cinematic Rorschach test in which different viewers see what they want to see.
I watched Zero Dark Thirty twice within a short period, in an effort to make sure that I didn’t miss what it showed about evidence regarding Bin Laden’s whereabouts secured through torture and evidence secured by other means. Here, as it appears to me, both sides can cite something in support of their view. So, as Steve Coll wrote in the New York Review of Books:
The easiest question to consider is what Zero Dark Thirty actually depicts about the part torture played in locating bin Laden. As best as is known, the CIA’s crucial discovery was to identify a courier, who was known to al-Qaeda colleagues by his nom de guerre, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti. Agency officers then traced the courier to Abbottabad. Many detainees and other sources contributed information that confirmed the courier’s identity and importance. Ultimately, in the film, Maya [a CIA operative whose role as presented in the film is central – NG] tells one detainee that twenty sources have helped to describe al-Kuwaiti’s role.
There can be no mistaking what Zero Dark Thirty shows: torture plays an outsized part in Maya’s success.
At the same time, as several commentators – including Mark Strong, a British actor who appears as one of Maya’s colleagues – have pointed out, in the movie the key piece of evidence was discovered already on file. Alan A. Stone writes in the Boston Review:
Ironically the clue that leads to Bin Laden has been sitting in a file for years. A young woman who admires Maya’s dedication and emulates her diligence identifies the courier through a systematic search of old files. Chastain [who plays Maya – NG] has emphasized this fact in interviews, pointing out that torture did not lead directly to Bin Laden in the film. Yet Zero Dark Thirty tells a story about a CIA operative and her colleagues who believe, as CIA officials of that era still believe, that torture is justified and effective.
Stone’s conclusion regarding the way the film ends, with Maya in tears after the mission is all over: ‘She has lost her way and some of her humanity, and so has America.’ (See Philip French in the Observer for a similar view.)
When all is said and done, therefore, the arguments about what Zero Dark Thirty shows with respect to the gathering of evidence don’t settle the question of interpretation. Some have been categorical that it does, amongst them Slavoj Žižek, who says that Bigelow is ‘on the side of the normalisation of torture‘ – because Maya and her CIA colleague most involved in the early torture scenes regard it as a normal part of their job. But Žižek treats this as if it were part of a debate, rather than a film, about the use of torture. He doesn’t meet Bigelow’s point that ‘depiction is not endorsement‘. Naomi Wolf for her part went further, in an open letter charging Bigelow with being an apologist for evil – like Leni Riefenstahl.
My own judgement on the movie is that by showing the use of torture in this context as quickly having become a routine matter – though there are several signals that political assumptions in Washington are changing and that this will cease to be so – Zero Dark Thirty places some of the burden of interpretation on the viewer. Those who find the use of torture horrifying will find it horrifying here, and its treatment as a professional routine the more so. Those, however, who insist that the movie willy-nilly justifies torture, even against the weight of such contrary reactions, try to impose an aesthetic judgement as obligatory despite the evidence of responses which are more varied, testimony to the fact that, though there are limits to persuasive interpretation, there is rarely only ever one interpretation possible of a given piece of work.