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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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 Posted - 12/23/2012 : 12:05:07
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I suppose you'd have had to have been on a pee-break on the moon to have missed when news of the capture and death of Osama Bin Laden pushed every other story clear off the page & airwaves.
Prior justification for the assassination rarely if ever went much detail about why he became the target, or the intimate relationship between his Saudi family and oil-friendly US politicians for over forty years.
But I'm going to try to put aside my questions about the whole idea of the nature of terrorism, and how it's been used by all sides in a political game. This film itself doesn't actually address that.
Instead it concentrates on process given most of the widely accepted premises.
To that end Bigelow has created a stunning film, which - if a tad long at 157 minutes - clarifies a decade of cat and mouse on an international scale. A hunt primarily strategized and funded by the CIA to the tune of billions of dollars and involving covert black ops and torture.
The culmination came on 2 May 2011 in a President Obama sanctioned attack on a Pakistani compound by Navy SEALs in Operation Neptune Spear.
While mostly admiring of Bigelow's film, there've already been dissenting voices, condemning the film's allegations of veracity. Particularly they want to deny that anyone was tortured. This despite the film-makers' contention that incriminating incidents were based on actual interviews and extensive research.
Above all, Bigelow is concerned with process.
Bigelow's cast serve her well, particularly Jessica Chastain as Maya, an ultra-level-headed and supremely informed operative who becomes obsessed by finding Bin Laden, seeking information to that end in some quarters which her bosses prefer not to explore.
That her journey covers so many twists and turns yet is so focused even as new threats demand attention provides the backbone of the film. Verbally fencing with her over the years is a handful of outstanding supporting actors, some, like James Gandolfini, appearing in significant cameos.
The film contends that Maya seems to have been right all along, providing American audiences at least some sighs of closure. And the film is certain to garner awards, not least for its superb technical work behind the camera.
But perhaps some day there will be an equally important film about why Bin Laden's body was whisked away to Afghanistan for identification, then buried at sea within 24 hours after his death.
Questions have ever since been subject to debate from many quarters which at least in part challenge the official reports. Was it really him? what was the proof? and why was the body so swiftly destroyed?
But none of this is the province of Bigelow's film.
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Edited by - BaftaBaby on 12/24/2012 09:48:28 |
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Zero Dark Thirty
