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Given its scope and undulating feelings, “Zero Dark Thirty” takes into account a series of shifting temperaments. Lacking certainty about bin Laden’s whereabouts even in the moments leading up to that famous assault, Maya’s persistence involves an aspect of religious conviction that puts a human face on the confidential processes driving modern warfare. “I’m the motherfucker that found this place,” she says, indulging the aggression she’s so frequently forced to keep pent up. From her routine insistence that “I’m going to kill bin Laden,” she eventually gets the money quote when she speaks up in a strategy discussion about the possibilities of a raid. Her burgeoning confidence is a realization of the John Wayne fantasy that the Bush administration constantly reached for. We only know enough about Maya in the moment to watch how her anger over each subsequent failure makes her stronger - and potentially more dangerous. Rarely smiling or seen in repose, she’s a menacing figure of determination. Boal’s screenplay encompasses years of events by boiling them down to Chastain’s commitment to her task, which evolves past the dissolution of the U.S.’s detainee program to a diversification of the strategy that eventually allows her to drop a pin on bin Laden’s whereabouts. Maya, initially shocked by the situation, manages to funnel that frustration into a cunning strategy as she grows into the role of mission leader. “This is what defeat looks like, bro,” he tells the helpless prisoner while grasping at straws. His brazen show of hostility toward the Al Qaeda operative in their possession mirrors the empty “America, Fuck Yeah” attitude that defined immediate post-9/11 temperaments. Set at a series of “black sites” in Pakistan and Iraq, where American intelligence subjected prisoners to waterboarding and other violent means of obtaining whatever intel they could, the story begins with Maya’s arrival as a new recruit trained by a jaded interrogator (Jason Clarke) who quickly shows her the violent ropes. READ MORE: ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ On Criticwireįrom its pre-credits prologue, “Zero Dark Thirty” jumps ahead to 2004, during a stage of investigation fraught with uncertainty, when American intelligence still relied heavily on brash interrogation techniques. Instead, it’s an opportunity to sober up. With ambitious young CIA agent Maya ( Jessica Chastain) embodying the mixture of thrill and fury driving the hunt for bin Laden, Bigelow’s engaging nail-biter avoids the pratfalls of “spiking the football,” as the President described the danger of celebrating bin Laden’s death.
Movie zero dark thirty meaning movie#
At the same time, the movie questions the certitude of the transition from despair to triumph, enabling “Zero Dark Thirty” to realize the power of its immediacy while giving the proceedings a lasting value.
Movie zero dark thirty meaning full#
“Zero Dark Thirty” tracks a full range of emotions associated with the proverbial war on terror, from the naivete of its earliest stirrings to the spirit of vengeance that gave its apparent victory such a vital quality in the Western world. Given the chance to give her story a happy ending, Bigelow smartly blankets it in shades of ambiguity. With bin Laden still on the loose, it would remain thematically rooted in the darkness of the movie’s opening moments. In an alternate reality where bin Laden remained at large, the filmmaker would have made “Kill Bin Laden,” the earlier version of “Zero Dark Thirty” still in production when Barack Obama announced the Al Qaida’s chief’s death at the hands of Navy SEAL operatives in May 2011. Bigelow, a subtler filmmaker less driven by ideology than instinct, applies a similar approach to convey more complex reactions driving the weighty historical drama about to unfold: The utter chaos of fighting a losing battle and then clawing back to the top.įeaturing another team-up with “The Hurt Locker” screenwriter Mark Boal, Bigelow’s taut depiction of the decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden is a true movie of the moment. In that context, the intimation served to resurrect the anger and shock later appropriated to start a war. The last time such a device was used to evoke that tragic day without relying on explicit images of burning buildings was Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11,” which utilized reaction shots to underscore the human element of the devastation. “ Zero Dark Thirty” fills its first minute with a harrowing black screen set to the screams of panic from distress calls during 9/11.