This isn’t a full-blown review, more a quick post just looking at one aspect of Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty - the idea that this is an “adult” movie.
By “adult”, I’m not talking about its rating, I’m talking about the various reviews that have lauded the film as “grown-up” or even “sophisticated”. Such examples can be seen here, and in Rotten Tomatoes’ summary, where the film is described as “intelligent”. Of course, if some monkeys in a zoo figure out how to distract the humans and steal their food they’re “intelligent”, but there’s no doubting that here it’s used in a snobby, almost elitest fashion. Critics seem unanimous in their assessment that Zero Dark Thirty is an adult film.
Having watched the film, I cannot fathom where this idea has come from, other than perhaps a couple of rogue, early reviewers inadvertently setting a bandwagon in motion. It seems to be that the following string of spurious logic has been followed in order to reach this conclusion:
- War/ action films tend to be a bit formulaic and over the top
- There is no subject more rife for a hyperbolic and hysterical treatment than the international manhunt for the most wanted man in the world, Osama Bin Laden
- Zero Dark Thirty isn’t hyperbolic and hysterical
- Therefore it must be “sophisticated” and “adult” and “grown-up”
In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. The torture scenes are certainly problematic, but due to their ambiguous nature – ambiguity does not equal intelligence, it merely means the film is leaving it open-ended and resisting falling on either side of the fence. The debate around the controversial scenes can be boiled down to “is it right or wrong?”. In the same vein, the fact that the film never resorts to any fist-pumping, “America, fuck yeah!” style nationalistic sentiments is apparently a sign of its educated approach. Just because a film isn’t stupid doesn’t make it smart, either.
Going back to the second point above, it’s very clear that Zero Dark Thirty could have been a ridiculous, testosterone-fuelled, triumphalist wild goose chase shoot-’em-up, but the fact that it isn’t shouldn’t mean that it’s immediately held up as a bastion for grown-up film making. Clearly, the critics have landed on this idea based on the fact that much of the film focuses on Maya (Jessica Chastain) efforts to chase (often false) leads in order to track down Bin Laden, rather than dramatic raids and explosions. Ironically, many of the critics have focused the highest praise on the final sequences of the actual mission, and rightly so. That this section, by far and away the most interesting and exciting of the film, is also the most “juvenile” (to appropriate the language of the film’s advocates) is an irony that seems to have escaped many commentators.
Ultimately, many of the things I’d associate with an intelligent, adult piece of film making – measured character development, a knowing command of the audience – are distinctly absent from Zero Dark Thirty. Maya is little more than a cipher for general American frustrations at the length and futility of the search, and appears to have little motivation other than being a textbook workaholic. I mention the film’s knowledge and use of its audience’s emotions because the fact was, personally, I found myself constantly glancing at my watch throughout its gargantuan 2 hour 50 minute run time. I doubt I’m alone in saying I was bored by the first two hours of the film. If that makes me unworthy of such a grown-up film, then so be it. The brilliant Argo allocates similar portions of time to its planning and execution stages as Zero Dark Thirty, and yet maintains a taught, gripping effect throughout, something that Bigelow’s film can only dream of.
What do you think? Do you think Zero Dark Thirty is a grown-up way of looking at the issues it raises, or do you think it’s getting undue praise?
4 comments
Matt
January 20, 2013 at 10:49 pm (UTC 1) Link to this comment
You raised some good points in your assessment.
However, I rather liked how they handled the torture scenes. They scenes themselves just showed things as they are/were and by not putting any kind of message (condone/condemn) behind it, the filmmakers are asking you to draw your own conclusion. To me that is a sign in favor of this being a grown up film.
I would agree that it’s funny the most praised scene of the movie is the conclusion, which features a very different feel than the rest of the film. As a side note, I’ve read that the filmmakers opted for a “journalistic” approach to the story, and while I’ve heard a lot of the “first hand accounts” depicted in the film were questionable on their reliability, I feel like it was handled in a very objective manner.
With all that being said, I am very interested in seeing Argo and being able to get the chance of comparing the two films.
Matt Clough
January 20, 2013 at 11:10 pm (UTC 1) Link to this comment
Thanks for the comment Matt! Yeah I think the torture scenes were well handled, and there’s definitely something to be said for the ambiguity. I just felt that on a subject where there’s so much discourse already, some reviewers went way over the top praising the film for not taking sides when all it really did was remind us of the debate.
Obviously it’s got some obscene rating on Rotten Tomatoes (like 96% or something), so I’m in a tiny minority who didn’t like the film – for my money Argo is ten times the film, in some ways very similar (political context, a sort of 80-20 split in favour of preparation over execution) but Argo definitely has a more light-hearted feel, which I much preferred.
Matt
January 21, 2013 at 1:10 am (UTC 1) Link to this comment
I can understand prefering the more light-hearted route. I think the issue comes to the approach the filmmakers took in each respective film. As a director, Ben Affleck has a great eye for narrative and weaving in traditional story elements (which are much easier to watch). Kathryn Bigelow on the other hand, has shown she prefers a more objective, “this is what happened” style. Which compared to what I assume Argo is like can come across as very dry.
Her previous film, The Hurt Locker (which granted I’ve only seen once), was pretty similar in tone to Zero Dark Thirty. Going back to your thoughts on the film, I can see why it seems as if the main character in Zero is just a cipher. Again, it just comes back to style. In this case, I’m starting to think it might be hard to compare Zero to Argo. While I haven’t yet been able to see Argo, I can say that I think Zero Dark Thirty was a great success in the type of film it wanted to be.
Matt Clough
January 21, 2013 at 1:25 pm (UTC 1) Link to this comment
All fair points. I much preferred The Hurt Locker to Zero Dark, as it was a bit more action-orientated, which is what I think Bigelow really excels at. I found much of Zero took an awful long time saying very little. Each to their own, though!