Given everything that has been written or stated about the scenes in question, I have little hope that it is wrong but I cannot know it for myself until I see it. One thing is for sure: This year's Oscars already have the ready-made controversy they so greedily crave. Perhaps they can even get a repeat of the 1979 ceremony honoring the 1978 nominees that included The Deer Hunter and Coming Home, with Jane Fonda yelling "The Deer Hunter is a lie!" as it won its Oscar. Will someone yell the same of Zero Dark Thirty? And will they be right? We shall see.
2 comments:
I managed to read your piece before you pulled it. Still haven't gotten to Greenwald's because of his douche-like refusal to back off his way-off secondhand statements: I just don't want to give him another traffic hit.
Obviously, you already know how liberal I am. I am also anti-torture. I saw ZERO DARK THIRTY, and it doesn't advocate for torture as having been a reliable source of information so I'm surprised Bigelow and Boal are dancing around that question (where did they address this?). If anything, the torture scenes are ambiguous in this regard.
I believe the scenes point to a corruption of the naive heroine, Maya. As I state in my review, if one views Maya as a metaphorical stand-in for America itself, then the early introduction of Maya to such maltreatment of our enemies--on her first assignment as a CIA analyst right out of college--immediately stamps a blemish on her soul as deep as the one staining America's reputation because of the use of such tactics. It's a bruise the end of the film indicates she never seems to recover from.
See the movie first, then I encourage you to read my take on it. (Feel free to disagree then.)
Tony, this comment is very encouraging. I had a few people message me that the impression of the movie showing torture giving up vital information might be erroneous and your take seems to confirm that. Unlike Greenwald, once I received this information I felt it only responsible to remove my post. I may have strong opinions based on my political attitudes but I pride myself on never digging in. If someone can show me I'm wrong, and it appears here that I was (so far, at least until I see it to be sure), I can't continue to make the argument.
I now look forward to seeing the movie to get to the bottom of this. I have gotten enough info from other people, you included, to indicate that the story floating around the press right now - that it endorses torture - is wrong. In fact, it feels like a lot of misinterpretation more than anything else.
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