You wouldn’t think that the CIA could affect an Oscar race, but the denial of a best director nomination to Kathryn Bigelow for “Zero Dark Thirty’’ probably has less to do with the film’s aesthetic merits than with the controversy that has been swirling around it. Bigelow and screenwriter Mark Boal, who were both responsible for 2009’s Oscar-winning “Hurt Locker,” open their tale of the decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden with a scene of excruciating torture, after which the detainee spills a drop of information that later helps lead to bin Laden’s death. This has sent some critics of the film into paroxysms of anger. They fume that the movie is factually wrong when it shows the efficacy of torture and that it winds up celebrating waterboarding. Dan Froomkin on The Huffington Post called the movie “despicable.”
This certainly isn’t the first time that a movie has gotten clobbered for seemingly playing fast and loose with facts, though it may be the first time that an acting director of the CIA and three members of the Senate Intelligence Committee — Dianne Feinstein, Carl Levin, and John McCain — scolded a film for doing so. Even Oliver Stone, who has been accused of playing with facts in his own historical films, chided the film for its historical inaccuracy, which certainly seems to be a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
Comments
Very interesting reflection on a very important topic. I have specifically chosen to not see a number of films because of concerns about the treatment of history. Stone's work is high on that list. So is Zero Dark Thirty. Granted, everyone can see different angles on any story. Granted, facts are often unverifiable. And also, there are universal truths that are useful to highlight. To the extent that Shakespeare did that, his work has offered lessons to many generations. But I suspect that Shakespeare was not hampered by the level of monetary oversight that is present in the modern day film industry. A cynical view sees investors and studio execs pressuring to have certain dynamics thrown into the film to raise box office receipts. That same view sees a pressure to play to the titillation of the most prurient tastes, despite what it may do to the veracity of the story. At that point the movie has been dominated not by artistic integrity, not by a staunch desire to tell a story that is truthful to the history, but is dominated by a desire to raise revenues. Or, in the case of Stone's repetitive pattern of imposing his own reality on a story, some other, personal desire to express his own inner world.
In fact Shakespeare's work was affected by both financial and political concerns. After all he did have to get his plays produced and even then The Globe Theater was in the business of making money. Shakespeare also had to be concerned with the official censors. A play that met with disapproval from the crown could be bad for both a playwrights finances as well as his longevity.
Hollywood has no interest in historical accuracy. Hollywood is eager to rewrite history in the name of art in order to push a contemporary political agenda.
The idea that Hollywood is pushing a politcal agenda swirls around. It's easier to see an economic agenda than a political one.
Interesting comment. Does "Hollywood" represent a monolithic political point of view? Isn't "Hollywood" always being accused of being ultra liberal and out of touch with the american street? Haven't seen the film, but doesn't the criticism of the film have to do with the suggestion that torture worked and achieved something strategic? Most progressives, and some conservatives, are opposed to torture for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that the intelligence gained is useless.
My wife and I went to see Lincoln. We don’t go to the movies often. The coming attractions, including some of the movies mentioned here, showed so much gratuitous violence, mostly by handsome young men, that it was unsettling. What is being taught here? Neither facts nor truths. Handsome, swaggering young men do not commit the vast majority of the killings we read about in the Globe. But we feed the fantasy that, if you want to be like Brad Pitt or Jamie Foxx, grab a gun and release all that energy. Or, if you have more time and no access to a gun, go online and play “Torture the Prisoners.” About a half million people have done so. But spare me notion that all this is about “truth.” It’s about making money by whatever violent manipulation works.
Of course there have always been segments of society that believe anything put infront of them on TV or film and even in the paper to be true. For them there is no art, there is only face value.
Why is there such a rush to provide explicit details and information about special operations capabilities to Hollywood? There seems to be something unsettling about this. Isn't best to keep these capabilities vague and obtuse? Even if the real secret stuff is left out, these films depict enough reality That it doesn't take much to arrive at operational conclusions. This administration exhibits an interesting dynamic with the military; they are not hawks, but at the same time are eager to help promote military actions that leave them open to critics who say they want to politically benefit from them. As for playing fast and loose with facts, Oliver Stone made that a moot issue when he released his first movie.
This Gabler article is a tautology. No kidding movies are not literally the truth---and that their quality depends on their proximity to transcendent truth. But when a movie is about a recent event and purports to be the story behind the story, the lie that torture succeeded in procuring justice when it did not, is not only bad movie making, it is immoral. Many many many people will come of age under the mistaken and evil-inducing assumption that torture can lead to justice, when in fact it does not and did not.
As the New Yorker recently wrote, this movie and its focus is like making a movie about the days of slavery and focusing on the cotton crop. There is an elephant in the room during Zero Dark Thirty, and it is NOT Osama Bib Laden. It is the failure, moral and literal (despite the lies of the film) of torture, that has been documented so well in The Dark Side by Jane Mayer and The Ballad of Abu Graib by Philip Gourevitch. The Americans who thought torture was OK and committed it, despite all evidence that it does not work and makes us become our enemies, and now the Americans who will come out of this film thinking that torture is, at worst, a necesary evil, are the bad guys. That is why this movie is wrong...it abets past evil, and fosters future evil.
We are all human, and like it or not, when our hearts rule our heads, we revert to the Old Testament, where an eye for an eye equal justice. I was listenening to a discussion today about how, at the end of WWII, upon liberating a concentration camp, a group of GIs lined up and summarily executed17 German guards. Then point? War is a dirty, ugly, dehumanizing business, and one we must prevent at almost any cost. Waterboarding, Abu Ghrarib may have been abberations, but they are not exceptions. Zero-Dark-Thirty is a work of art, with no responsibility to 'the facts', but like all great art, it must be faithful to 'the truth', and that it is.
I'm confused. Does the CIA deny torture is part of the bin Laden story, or do they say torture is just a tiny part of the story? If the CIA denied torture was used then we are being lied to by someone and quibbling about facts, their scope and portraits of truth really misses the point. If there is a lie on the table the author needs to come back to the core issue, the lie. If the CIA admits torture but qubbles aboit its scope in this particular case, then I'm comfortably with the author.
I do wish this missing detail were part of this story.
I agree with you totally. Instead of water boarding suspected terrorists, we need to continue the Obama policy of blowing up suspects (and sometimes their families) with drone strikes. That's much more humane and perfectly legal under the International Drone Strike Treaty.
Oh god, for once, please, just try to stay on topic. Sheeesh.
False or inaccurate history does not necessarily make for bad art. If cinematic art is the only standard by which to judge a film, then Bigelow should not be denied an Oscar or any other award. But here is the problem with films like Zero Dark Thirty: If you use the cache of investigative journalism to sell a film to the public and critics, you invite fact-based criticism. Oliver Stone has been slammed as a left-wing paranoiac for a movie about the investigation of JFK's killing. and deservedly so. If you insist that you are telling a true story, and not simply making a proposition regarding historical events subject to corrections or counterproposals (see Hilary Mantel), or spinning a romance peopled by historical figures, then fact-checking is perfectly legitimate. Whether or not water-boarding played a crucial role in locating Bin Laden is not a trivial matter. The CIA does not deny that it water-boarded individuals suspected of involvement in the 9/11/01 attacks. It denies that the US got Bin Laden based mainly on information obtained by water-boarding. If Bigelow is wrong, she mistaken about a very serious matter--not just the subject of a Holywood cocktail party debates.
If you make the claim, even implicitly that historical veracity is at the core of your film, you better get the history right.
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It's a movie with actors that are faking it and getting paid alot of money. If we get our history from Hollywood then we deserve a heap of criticism - here's another one to add to the pile - what makes Clooney, Pitt, Damon , Afleck et all think we care about their polital views. they should shut up and act