| The lawsuit blew his cover, leading to protests in Islamabad. The dogma of ambiguity infects much of the so-called art cinema, a talking-points cinema that passes for cinematic art, such as Michael Hanekes films (including Amour, coming out December 25th) and Christian Petzolds Barbara (coming out December 21st). Yes, Zero Dark Thirty is based on a true story. Zero Dark Thirty is a 2012 American thriller film directed by Kathryn Bigelow and written by Mark Boal.The film dramatizes the nearly decade-long international manhunt for Osama bin Laden, leader of the terrorist network Al-Qaeda, after the September 11 attacks.This search leads to the discovery of his compound in Pakistan and the military raid where bin Laden was killed on May 2, 2011. Notes - Delivery *Estimated delivery dates include seller's handling time, origin ZIP Code, destination ZIP Code and time of acceptance and will depend on shipping service selected and receipt of cleared payment. Answer (1 of 3): Towards the end of the movie Maya is eating in the CIA cafeteria and the head of the CIA joins her. - Top Rated Plus - opens in a new window or tab, - eBay Money Back Guarantee - opens in a new window or tab, cleared payment - opens in a new window or tab, - for PayPal Credit, opens in a new window or tab, Report this item - opens in new window or tab. She is a reluctant participant in extreme duress applied to the detainees, but believes that the truth may only be obtained through such tactics. Rated R. Our ratings: V -7; L -7; S/N -2. Told from the perspective of the CIA agents trying to track him down, the narrative takes a detailed look at the convoluted espionage process that went into finding the real-life terrorist. The usual advantages of portraying an actual living person didn't apply to Jessica Chastain with her role as Maya in " Zero Dark Thirty ." The woman responsible for . The Hurt Locker functioned at two levelsit depicted a mission that targeted the perpetrators of monstrous deeds but that had a terrible effect on the soldiers who took part in it; it was both ambiguous and not. Washingtonian magazine has suggested that Tom Donilon may also have partly inspired this character. In 1996, the CIA started a unit specifically to target Osama bin Laden, who was emerging as a new phenomenon in extremism. Edit, Awards Theres nothing radical about the movies aesthetic; exactly the opposite: its conventionally vigorous, action-centered realism wouldnt be out of place in a movie by Sidney Lumetor Ben Affleck. She has experienced violence, witnessed violence, been the target of violence, lost friends to violence, abetted violence. agent, Maya (Jessica Chastain), whose . Boring, tedious and excessively attentive to minutia details while ignoring the main theme of the movie. U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta by Alex Wong/Getty Images. After September 11th 2001, CIA rookie agent Maya is assigned to Pakistan to learn how to torture and seek out Osama Bin Laden. Black Hawk Down author Mark Bowden also calls him a composite, and links him with a source named Mohammed al-Qhatani. It seems almost uncoincidental? The narrative centers on the elusive al-Qaeda head, Osama bin Laden, in the aftermath of the September 2001 terrorist attacks. When Alec Stations first chief, a man, left in 1999, all of his 14 targeters were women. (A targeter is an analyst who pores over grainy drone footage and sorts through phone intercepts and other fragments of intelligence to find the exact location of terrorists, drug traffickers, or arms dealers.) So the producers of Homeland likely could have had any number of women in mind when they were dreaming up their hero. Here is a look at the teams recent highlights and its portrayals in pop culture. For several years, she is single-minded in her pursuit of leads to uncover the whereabouts of Al Qaeda's leader, Osama Bin Laden. The scene where the CIA agents in Pakistan are accosted by two armed men on motorbikes is based on a genuine incident, but in real life the CIA officer killed them both. The resulting so-called realism is always on the verge of becoming a grotesque lie, because of filmmakers unavowedly ideological assumptions regarding the depiction of physical action as more unimpeachably real than states of mind, regarding the selection of certain actions rather than others as constituting a storyor a film. User Ratings The FAQ items below may give away important plot points. The operative, who remains undercover, was passed over for a promotion that many in the CIA thought would be impossible to withhold from someone who played such a key role in one of the most successful operations in agency history. Edit, That's probably poetic license on the part of the screenwriter. Maya is a CIA operative whose first experience is in the interrogation of prisoners following the Al Qaeda attacks against the U.S. on the 11th September 2001. The CIA ended up pulling him from the country. writing about the films depiction of torture, all of the characters in the film are based on real people, published the book under the name Mark Owen,, Jens reaction when they brought back bin Ladens body, the character of Maya was inspired by a woman, named in a lawsuit brought by a Pakistani journalist, The heated topic of the ethics of torture has spilled over into the, upcoming confirmation hearings for current White House anti-terrorism chief John Brennan, denies that Brennan had anything to do with the techniques, Tom Donilon may also have partly inspired, James Gandolfini would play the role of Leon Panetta, Im very sorry about everything. | By accepting all cookies, you agree to our use of cookies to deliver and maintain our services and site, improve the quality of Reddit, personalize Reddit content and advertising, and measure the effectiveness of advertising. Over the course of a decade, hundreds of analysts, operators and many others played key roles in the hunt, said agency spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood. Hollywood Catches Zero Dark Fever. Stills from Zero Dark Thirty by Jonathan Olley / 2012 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All rights reserved. Zero Dark Thirty. Clarridge would go on to face a perjury indictment for his testimony about the Iran-Contra affair. She told Reuters she joined Alec Station in 1999, after Michael Scheuer had left as chief. In the book, former Navy SEAL Matt Bissonnette, who published the book under the name Mark Owen, says that Jen was recruited by the agency out of college, had been working on the Bin Laden task force for five years, and that shed worked to put all the pieces together in tracking bin Laden to Abbottabad, Pakistan. Ten years is a very long time. I can see why she won so many awards for this movie. According to news reports, the suicide bomber was a trusted source who turned out to be a double agent working for al-Qaeda. Now out of the CIA, Scheuers career has taken a turn: She is a life coach, running a business called YBeU Beauty, focusing on helping women look good, feel good, and do good. non-mutilation torture, e.g. However, with her follow-up to her Oscar-winning classic, Bigelow has delivered what will . Its constructed like a roller-coaster ride, with its thrills and scares, which the viewer knows will result in successat least, success as defined by those who are involved in the mission. By policy, the CIA doesnt discuss individual employees or confirm whether they worked at the agency. Running time: 157 minutes. After Obama took office, CIA operatives reexamined several potential trails, including al-Qaedas use of couriers to hand-deliver messages to and from bin Laden. So I'm watching Zero Dark Thirty for about the fifth time and I'm at the part when the head of the CIA (Gandolfini) sits down at the lunch table with Maya. One of the last bits of casting news revealed ahead of the release of Zero Dark Thirty was that James Gandolfini would play the role of Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA who oversaw the Bin Laden raid. Silhouette of a dog by iStockphoto. He argued for reality apart from filmmakers interpretations of events depicted, argued for real time, in which things exist, against mental and abstract time.. She is soon in the "group of " CIA types who use torture, deprivation and just about any means to get info on their quarry Osama. Edit, CIA operative Maya (Jessica Chastain), assigned to Pakistan to learn how to apply "enhanced interrogation" (i.e. One of the shibboleths of the modern cinema, of the liberal cinemaand of critics who endorse itis the ostensible merit, aesthetic as well as moral, of ambiguity. If you saw Argo and loved it you'll love this. Its important to note that high-ranking female CIA officers are no longer an anomaly. Edit, SSE is sensitive site exploitation. Why were there four men in the house while CIA confirmation spoke of three male targets living in the house? The compound where UBL was found was rebuilt in a different Middle East country, and the details were totally spot on and believable. Back in September, the Daily Mail wondered whether a female CIA operative referred to as Jen in No Easy Day, the book about the Bin Laden hunt by one of the Navy SEALs who carried it out, was the inspiration for the character played by Danes on her hit Showtime series. (His marriage to a Muslim woman was the catalyst for this conversion.) It might qualify as a spoiler to mention that in a dramatic scene about halfway through the movie, Jessica is killed by a suicide bombing at Camp Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan. By accepting all cookies, you agree to our use of cookies to deliver and maintain our services and site, improve the quality of Reddit, personalize Reddit content and advertising, and measure the effectiveness of advertising. The report also notes that, prior to 9/11, she supported the decision of a subordinate to withhold from the FBI the fact that two of the 9/11 hijackers, who were on an FBI watch list at the time, had entered the country. Ad Choices, as reported in the magazine by Dexter Filkins. about one hour too long. 1. Alternatively, she could have joined the armed forces straight out of high school and then joined the CIA from there.For the position 'Maya' held in the agency (a Targeter), it's extremely unlikely a high school student would be recruited. Unlike the NSA, the CIA has more diverse assets that function in broader spectrums. There is a very clear line between an interrogator and a debriefer, she said. The movies pseudo-objectivity is a willful ambiguity of a very distinct sort; its willful rejection of the inner life is a posturing stance of cool, an attitude of no attitude. Why did the SEAL team destroy the downed chopper? Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. Or is she luring viewers to make the same association and assumption, to put the viewer into complicity with those in the C.I.A. the SETS were incredible. Its an exciting, skillfully crafted, vigorously realized film, but also a renunciation of the fuller possibilities of cinema in favor of a dully narrowed, debased op-ed political discourse of pros and cons, that enters the public debate by the rigorous exclusion of sex and ideology, intimate desires and grandiose dreams, family and friends, secrets and lies, the constantly streaming phantasmagoria of inner life. In 2010 he was named in a lawsuit brought by a Pakistani journalist whose relatives were killed by U.S. drone strikes. Zero Dark Thirty question. By contrast, Zero Dark Thirty offers no ideological context for Al Qaedas attacksno statement of principles from jihadi sites, no religious exhortations, no practical demands or litany of complaints. There is such a thing as radical realism, as in the films of Robert Bresson, Carl Theodor Dreyer, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Abbas Kiarostami, which stick all the more obsessively to the physical in order to reveal the spiritual, the metaphysical, the abstract, the symbolic, in order to create a cinema of truly radical affirmations. Why are the SEALs rifling through the house after killing bin Laden? Jessica Chastain in Zero Dark Thirty, and Claire Danes in Homeland. Zero Dark Thirty is the story of the hunt for bin Laden, as told from the viewpoint of Maya (Jessica Chastain), a woman in the CIA. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. 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2022-11-07