On Zero Dark Thirty

Before I left for my trip to Asia I went to see Zero Dark Thirty, the movie about the hunt for, and ultimately killing of, Osama Bin Laden. Before, and after, seeing it I had read quite a bit about the raid, the movie and the controversy around both. I thought maybe it would be worth collecting all this stuff into a post, so that's what I'm doing. First, on the movie itself. A lot of people really like it (the most interesting point Denby makes in this podcast is the idea that this and Lincoln spell the end of auteur theory as they show the power of the writer/director combo). I thought it was pretty okay. In reading around, I think Roger Ebert sums up my opinions best in his review of the film:

My guess is that much of the fascination with this film is inspired by the unveiling of facts, unclearly seen. There isn't a whole lot of plot -- basically, just that Maya thinks she is right, and she is. The back story is that Bigelow has become a modern-day directorial heroine, which may be why this film is winning even more praise than her masterful Oscar-winner "The Hurt Locker." That was a film firmly founded on plot, character and actors whose personalities and motivations became well-known to the audience. Its performances are razor-sharp and detailed, the acting restrained, the timing perfect.

In comparison, "Zero Dark Thirty" is a slam-bang action picture, depending on Maya's inspiration. One problem may be that Maya turns out to be correct, with a long, steady build-up depriving the climax of much of its impact and providing mostly irony. Do we want to know more about Osama bin Laden and al Qaida and the history and political grievances behind them? Yes, but that's not how things turned out. Sorry, but there you have it.

One thing that I found particularly interesting in the film was the very short sequence on the doctor who had gone around Abbottabad under the cover of vaccination who was actually collecting DNA. I remembered reading about him in the original New Yorker account of the raid and thought that had made clear he had been successful in collected DNA evidence (it turns out the article says he wasn't, the same way it's presented in the film). January's GQ has a longer account of what happened to the doctor who helped the CIA and tries to get at whether he was successful in his mission. (The answers: He was tortured/imprisioned by the Pakistani government for assisting the Americans and, as to whether he got evidence, it's still unclear.) If you're interested in more reading on the subject, No Easy Day, an account by a Navy Seal on the mission is a fast and interesting read. And although I haven't read it, my friend Colin Nagy highly recommends The Triple Agent, which covers what happened at Khost, where a Jordanian triple agent beat CIA intelligence and security to bomb a military base and kill a sizable group of CIA operatives (there's a scene in Zero Dark Thirty about it, though the film offers no real depth on what happened).