I don't read much about current films. Don't have the stomach for it. But I get the impression there was some discussion of the fact that ZERO DARK THIRTY suggests that waterboarding led to the killing of Osama bin Laden, and that the Powers That Be say that this was not the case.
This is, as they say in Italy, bologna.
The film presents the waterboarding sessions as being obliquely connected to Osama's death, first of all. The path that the waterboarding interrogations takes leads to a dead end.
But even if it didn't lead to a dead end, the fact is that the US used waterboarding - torture - to get information. If the film had left that unpleasant detail out it would have been a big fat lie.
I heard one film critic on TV claim that Bigelow was "an amoral director." Again - bologna! She's practically the only director who cares about morality. That she doesn't shoehorn life into a comfortable moral allegory is to her credit. ZERO DARK THIRTY is just about the only film I've seen in years that asks its audience to question itself: is torture justified by the end result?
Me? I'm glad Osama got his head practically blown off, and I feel nothing for his bereaved wife and children. He's a mass murderer, and he got what he deserved.
ZERO DARK THIRTY makes me question my opposition to torture. I went into the film convinced that it was unequivocally evil. I came out wondering.
That, folks, is great filmmaking.
