Amour (Michael Haneke), Holy Motors (Leos Carax)

Love Never Dies

Amour feels like a film Michael Haneke has been aspiring to do, a Bethlehem he has been slouching towards for years. From the pressure-cooker tactics he applied in Funny Games he has refined his technique to what we see here--two people trapped in a large apartment, struggling to survive.

The style in Funny Games was severe, the story confined mostly inside a spacious vacation house with few exterior scenes, a largely unflinching (if often coyly oblique) camera peering into the different rooms with (except for one brief and startling exception of a gimmick) little comment or fuss. The style in Amour is if anything even more spare, the camera locked down for most of a scene, unwilling (unlike the one in Funny Games) to look away, the staging calling for very little camera movement  or cutting and (again save for a brief sequence) even less fuss.

That exception I feel is unfortunate--Haneke seems to have perfected his grindingly claustrophobic style; to indulge in fantasy no matter how inventive or restrained or even relevant (it's a metaphor for escape, or its impossibility) seems superfluous, even disruptive. The interruption lets us off the hook for a moment, relieves the oppressive atmosphere.

This is a horror story, of course; think of a man torturing his captive wife to death and there's really little difference save this: the torture in my example would have gone on far longer. Haneke has finally come around to telling a story about recognizably ordinary (if affluent--that apartment is huge) people, in this case an elderly married couple; aside from the aforementioned brief flight of fantasy the whole film could be happening to your neighbors in the apartment next door. And instead of anger or sadism the driving emotion here is the eponymous one, expressed in the somehow more appropriate French. 

Much has been written about Emmanuel Riva's performance as Anne, the eloquent depiction of her character's gradually decaying body. I say this is not so much a solo as it is a duet--crucial is Jean-Louis Trintignant's Georges, with his intelligent, all-too-aware eyes. He knows what's happening, he knows what is to come, and the knowledge threatens to overwhelm him. 

Might as well note that Haneke doles out plenty of suffering for both actors--Riva sits in a bathtub naked,  scrubbed vigorously by an unpleasant nurse; Trintignant huffs desperately (not to mention suspensefully and  hilariously) after an intrusive pigeon. You don't know if he is only acting his arthritic limp, or his excruciating attempt to get up off the floor; you only know that it's almost too much to watch. Is the scene necessary? I think so--it shows Georges still able to care for a living creature, though you wonder if perhaps what he really wants is to twist the bird's neck (with Haneke both are possible, perhaps even inevitable)

There is no escape here; no puncturing the plausibility of Haneke's scenario (unlike fellow shockmeister Lars Von Trier, whose scenarios (save in The Idiots) have almost always been implausible, and hence easy to dismiss). This is easily Haneke's most horrifying film because it says that love that is selfless and passionate and enduring is also monstrous. The film shows you (step by step, moment by moment) the how and why of its monstrosity and you can't contradict the case being made, you can only agree with it--perhaps pray it doesn't happen to you.

It's Haneke's best work to date, I think; possibly Haneke's terminal work...after a film like this, what else does he have to say, really? 

Big Wheel


Unlike Amour which lends a kind of stripped-down finality to Haneke's career, Leos Carax's Holy Motors seems more like a thrown-together, extravagantly appointed photo album of all the films he's seen and all the films he's made and all the films he's likely to make--the picture hurls allusions and ideas at you like sparks off a Catherine wheel. It's brilliantly unhinged, liable to go any direction like a runaway horsecart, yet still you sense the presence of the director at the reins, maintaining the illusion of complete abandonment (or is it an illusion of complete control?).

The film can be a metaphor for any number of things: the Shakespearean notion that life is a performance we're always trying to rehearse for (but end up improvising); the conceit that higher powers (Oscar's chauffer Celine (Edith Scob, the mad doctor's disfigured daughter in Franju's Eyes Without a Face) calls a fellow driver "Ectoplasm on wheels!"--are the drivers ghosts or spirits?) manipulate our destiny; the sense that life is a neverending job from which we long to punch out. 

Bits seem contradictory, if not confusing--Celine mentions that Mr. Oscar (Denis Lavant) has nine appointments, nine encounters (if you like) in which he participates, responds to or initiates, either alone or with others. I counted thirteen 'episodes,' not nine: man in 'forest;' banker; beggar woman; motion capture; Monsieur Merde and model; father and daughter; entr'acte with accordion; assassin and double; street shooting; dying old man; Jean; home; limo garage. 

 Celine tells him about the appointments when he's playing a banker so the first two are out; the entr'acte I take to be an entr'acte--outside the narrative; the street shooting is (or so Celine claims) an accident, and so (it's implied) is the encounter with Jean; Oscar confirms that the next appointment after the dying old man is his last, so the garage should not included, which leaves us with--what, seven episodes? Do we consider Monsieur Merde and model two episodes (first half in the cemetery, second in the sewers)? Do we include the entr'acte? Adding to the confusion, the credits have Lavant playing eleven roles (we can take out Mr. Oscar as his meta-persona and the accordion player, but do we count killer and killed?).

Kylie Minogue sings heartrendingly in a vast space that recalls Orson Welles' The Trial and the climax of Jean-Jacques Beineix's Diva, both shot in the Gare d'Orsay, both filled with a dark opulence that seems to have inspired this film (her scene was actually shot in the abandoned La Samaritaine department store near the Pont-Neuf bridge, Carax having used store and bridge in his previous Les Amants du Pont-Neuf). Minogue calls herself Eva but her real name (as much as we can ascertain anything in this picture is real) is Jean. When the man she is to meet runs up the stairs he calls out "Jean!"--does this signify that what happens to Jean and her partner is real and not staged, hence Oscar's anguish? 

All very mysterious; doesn't help that one has the nagging feeling Carax is chortling at all the effort being expended on unraveling his tangled web (for the record I believe Oscar's appointment list went something like this: beggar woman; motion capture; Monsieur Merde; father; entr'acte; assassin; assassinated; dying man; home). More profitable, I suspect, to simply sit back and have fun free-associating the metaphors as they flash across the screen--to sit back, in effect, and enjoy the ride. 

Perhaps the closest we come to an explanation for everything (an explanation for anything?) is when Michel Piccoli--in a role Carax wanted to (ah-ha!) play himself--asks an obviously exhausted Oscar: "What makes you carry on?" Oscar's answer: "What made me start. The beauty of the act." 

"Beauty?" Piccoli's Carax-like figure can't resist musing. "They say it's in the eye of the beholder." Pause. Then in a worried tone: "And if there is no beholder?"

3.13.13  

Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey (Ramona Diaz)

Cinderella man

Ramona Diaz's Don't Stop Believin': Everyman's Journey is possibly everything you're afraid it's going to be: an unabashed promotional documentary about the American arena-rock band Journey; a wall-to-wall concert of '80s pop-rock ballads; a retelling of the rags-to-riches story of Arnel Pineda, arguably the most popular of recent Filipino vocalists working in America.  

Mind you, Diaz doesn't hide the fact that Arnel is actually the second replacement of the band's most famous vocalist, Steve Perry; nor does she hide the fact that many of the most popular songs Arnel sings were written and composed over twenty years ago. To his credit, Arnel doesn't gloss over this either; when during an autograph session he's asked point-blank about Steve Perry, he says "Without him I wouldn't be here."

That awareness saves the film from falling into a vat of its own cheesiness. Arnel knows he's not doing entirely original music; he talks about it at length at one point. But he's not bitter--he is and always will be grateful for being chosen to be the band's vocalist, and he sings the songs in Perry's voice and style without a trace of irony, or self-parody. If anything, that's the film's single most unsettling image: Perry's power-belting tenor pouring out of a frail little dark-skinned Asian with flowing long hair (it's like listening to the voice of Pavarotti pour out of Pocahontas).

I'd say the film wisely takes its cue from Arnel's attitude: it knows it's an instrument for the glorification of its patrons, but does its work well and refuses to act like an ingrate towards the hand that nourishes it. Along the way it manages to tell Arnel's story in some detail, from his humble beginnings as member of a fractured family eking out a living in the streets of Manila to his career as vocalist in a small-scale rock band.

Diaz doesn't gloss over and Arnel doesn't hide the fact that he used drugs, and was at one point alcoholic; unlike some reformed rockers, he doesn't wear the fact on his chest like a hair shirt--perhaps Arnel's most appealing quality is his groundedness, the way he modestly admits to his failings, and casually refers to his achievements without making too much fuss either way (it's a Filipino trait that on one hand keeps slowing down his ascent up the ladder of success, on the other keeps him balanced enough to avoid prematurely falling off that ladder).

The film of course ends with its eponymous song, and Diaz manages to play with some of the high-definition digital cameras and swooping crane equipment filmmakers enjoy using when creating documentaries of big-time rock bands (either playing with them or cutting in footage that uses them). Hard to begrudge her, though--like Arnel, she's only too aware of the once-in-a-lifetime chance to play with big toys; the temptation is naturally too much to resist.
  
Is this cause for celebration? Yes, I think so; a kind of gentle applause, that someone with talent has for once landed some kind of happy ending, that Filipinos are somehow inching forward in the vast American media landscape, conquering territory any way they can. 

(The film will open on March 8 Friday in fifteen cities across the United States)

3.3.13

Hooray for Hollywood! (the infamous Snow White and Rob Lowe video)

We doan need to watch no stinkin Awards show; we need only watch this.

Arguably the highest, most glorious point in Oscar history--the very epitome of artistic Hollywood achievement and good taste. 

The moment poor Eileen Bowman opens her mouth as Snow White (possibly the most irritating of all Disney characters) the number drops straight down the toilet bowl and starts spinning; her chirpy whine (you have to work to acquire a voice like that) playing delicately on the eardrum like an icepick.

Love her foray into the audience. Always found the smiles on Oscar night plastic--here they look positively quickset, and cracking under the hard sun. Caught poor Dustin Hoffman (is that him? video's so blurry) doing his best Benjamin Braddock grin ("I want to say just one word to you, just one word: Plastics"). 

Bowman goes back onstage, then babbles a bit Norma-Desmond style before going into a Tropicana-style nightclub number complete with dancing coconut drinks and tango.

They wheel out a few of the living dead--Dorothy Lamour, Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, Vincent Price, Coral Browne. Always happy to see these people, though I wonder if they were happy to be seen in this.

Then the host (Merv Griffith) delivers the zinger: "Isn't it exciting Snow? Isn't it thrilling? It gets better." Look of disbelief on Bowman's face. "Meet your blind date--Rob Lowe!"

He steps onstage, takes a mike, and the moment he opens his mouth--oh yes, it got much much better, a stretched out, agonizing rendition of "Proud Mary." The dancing coconut drinks come back and kick the energy level so high the nightclub tables themselves get up and start dancing. 

Pause; you wonder if the number's over. A drumroll--apparently not! Cut to the audience, where Gregory Hines looks as if he's asking himself "can I stop bending over now?"

They come to the Grauman's Chinese Theater number, and as Lowe and Bowman pull aside the sliding flats, you swear you could hear the strains of "Springtime for Hitler" play for a moment.

Pfft. Brooks can only wish he achieved something as tasteless; compared to this, he's fucking Vincente Minnelli. A high-kicking chorus line of theater ushers and usherettes follows, then Snow White appears center stage with a crown of stars planted in her hair, wearing a huge diaphanous gown studded with lightbulbs that recalls the abdomen of the Queen Mother in Aliens. They do a dramatic reprise of "Hooray for Hollywood."

The stairs close on this monstrosity, we see at the apex of the stairs a doorway done Chinese Theater style, the door opens, and out steps--Lily Tomlin?

But why not Tomlin? She steps down and for the first time in lord knows how long gives us a dose of sarcastic sanity. "I told them I'd be thrilled to do the Oscars if they could just come up with an entrance," she begins. "Think of it, more than a billion and a half people just watched that!" Funny, only she's temporarily upstaged by a final bit of madness--a man crawling head-down the stairs, flinging shoes offstage. "What," you wonder--"are loose footwear forbidden? After all that just transpired, unworn shoes onstage are in bad taste?!"

"I knew it was going to happen one day--the whole planet has gone Hollywood," she continues. "Welcome to the shoe!"

Oh yes. Makes one almost want to watch the upcoming shoe.

Almost. 

I'm ready for my cigarette now, Mr. DeMille.

2.24.13

Zero Illuminated, Django Unzipped

Zero Illuminated

After writing extensively on Zero Dark Thirty and the literature surrounding it, I'm struck by one other article that ingeniously and even brilliantly squares away its lack of context or characterization, pointing an accusing finger at the film's true antagonist--not UBL or Osama Bin Laden, not the American industrial-military complex and its complementary intelligence organizations, but something much bigger, the forces of history itself. 

If we take this essay to have finally solved the riddle of Bigelow's film and its ambivalent (some would say confused) stance towards torture, then Bigelow's persistent apolitical posture turns out to have been a prescient aesthetic choice, one consistent with her film work since she met Susan Sontag back in the '70s. As the article puts it, the film is not postmodern, but post-postmodern, where it puts out a view, a sensibility, a story that competes for legitimacy in the public mind. 

The article even puts to rest the suspicion that the film endorses torture--not really according to Rombes; it merely suggests that history itself demands the torture of suspects, with all the attendant consequences to be paid for and endured (the delays, the subsequent fall from moral grace). The film in effect notes that history itself is responsible, not us--I suppose as big a cop-out as any I can think of ("The Devil (history) made me do it!"), unless the film makes this statement in a state of dismay, not mere resignation or relief, and here (again) the film remains stubbornly silent. At this point Bigelow's narrowly focused POV starts to look less willfully ignorant and more heroically honest--when one character in the film profanely demands targets to eliminate, Rombes writes: "his words ring with a hot, burning truth about power rarely spoken in American mainstream films."

Like I said, brilliantly put; it actually made me pause to try rethink my thoughts about the film. 

Maybe the biggest problem I have with Rombes' thesis is that looking at Bigelow's other work I don't quite see consistent aesthetic choices: just a lot of stylistic ones that help prop up a usually muddled script, Hurt Locker included (as I pointed out in my earlier article it's excellently made, but the central character doesn't make much sense). Strange Days begins with a fantastic single-shot action setpiece that runs for around ten minutes and says--I don't know what, exactly; the rest of the picture is far less coherent. Blue Steel is full of dread and cool metallic blue imagery that in retrospect feels ridiculous; Near Dark--arguably my favorite of her early work--is compellingly violent vampiric poetry that sometimes contradicts its own rules. Give me a more consciously nihilistic pessimist like late Bresson (Lancelot du Lac and L'Argent comes to mind)--he's every bit as deadpan and ambivalent, but you at least get from him the sense that he knows what he's doing; this stumbling along in the murky waters of political controversy clouds the waters more than clears them, and really doesn't help anyone much, least of all Bigelow.

Django Unzipped

(Warning: plot of several Tarantino movies discussed in explicit detail)

I'd already talked about how I think Tarantino's Django Unchained was sexist; now I've been asked to explain why I think the movie's racist.

I thought just linking a few perceptive articles would be enough; but just to humor those in question, I'll point out the highlights, and add a few thoughts of my own:

Keli Goff's Huffington Post article questions the violence--why, comparing this to his previous pictures, did he feel the need to amp up the overall suffering of African Americans in his picture? Why, for example, does he show Jews killed in Inglourious Basterds and Uma Thurman suffering in the Kill Bill movies but not in such voyeuristic length and with so much creative detail? Why single out black slaves, hm? As a kind of stinger finale, Goff also points out the telling detail that in his most famous film, Pulp Fiction, the black man is raped, and saved by a white man.

Don't totally agree with Ms. Goff in everything; she professes to be a Tarantino fan, and thinks the violence in Kill Bill "on par with watching ballet"--so speaketh an otherwise thoughtful writer unfamiliar I'm guessing with the works of Liu Chia-Liang and Johnnie To (In my book the first Kill Bill is Tarantino's amateur stab at the martial arts epic, its sequel only marginally better).

More damning I would say is Jelani Cobb's article, which begins by showing the injustice inflicted on the Russians by Tarantino's previous picture (I personally thought it oververbose and less than inventive myself).  Cobb goes on to discuss both the use of the "N" word and the depiction of a black hero in the movie, noting that while the word in question was used during the time, here it's used so excessively, unconvincingly often it has practically been raised to "the level of a pronoun;" he goes on to talk about how the slaves offered continued resistance against their white masters to the point that the "slaveholding class existed in a state of constant paranoia about slave rebellions, escapes, and a litany of more subtle attempts to undermine the institution"--a reality that Tarantino not only ignores, but overturns with the notion that Django is the only non-passive slave out there. In effect, Tarantino reinforces the myth, the stereotype--and, Cobb insists, it is a myth and stereotype--that the slaves never fought back; they mostly shuffled along clad in their leg irons and esoteric metal neckware.

I'd go further on this: with all the suffering endured onscreen and in reality, with the wide variety of experiences and stories to tell, with all the strength and intelligence the enslaved can muster--is bloody payback the only response Tarantino can have them take? I'd like to ask African-American filmmaker Charles Burnett his reaction to the Tarantino flick, only I suspect it isn't necessary; he's already done his take, and a subtler, finer, more nuanced response I doubt can be found. 

I'd especially point to a key dialogue that takes place between two slaves, concerning the power and importance of reading and writing and, beyond that, knowledge (a discussion I'd have with my students, many of whom seem unaware of this aspect of history and their ancestors' role in that history). At its lowest level, that of reading words, an educated slave can help his flight by reading maps and street signs. When a slave learns to write words he can forge a day pass (a note authorizing his passage through public roads)--allowing the runaway, oh, at least a day's head start. If said slave could read, write, and compose, why he could actually begin to strike at the heart of the institution itself, which is basically a set of laws printed on paper. So when I say "is that all Tarantino can think for them to do?" I'm serious--the fight against slavery took many forms, and that of blowing a white man's head away with a shotgun is the least imaginative I can think of.

2.3.13

Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow)

Torturing a point

(Warning: plot discussed in close detail)

For the record I think Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty is a terrifically made film. It's perhaps not quite entertainment (as Mr. Ebert points out), and as real-life depictions go perhaps not as entertaining as say Ben Affleck's Argo. But I like it all the more for that; there's a stubborn integrity to Bigelow's pacing of the film and staging of the attack itself that reflects something of her overall concept of the picture. 

Mind you, I do think Affleck has a concept: to tell in as widely appealing a fashion as possible the improbably true story of a rescue mission in Iran. I don't on the other hand think mass appeal was Bigelow's priority; Chastain's performance as Maya--the CIA agent who pursues Bin Laden (or UBL, as he's often nicknamed)--gives us a clue as to the nature of those priorities. 

We never see Maya watching the video footage of 9/11 or listen to the audio recordings, as Bigelow makes us do in the film's opening; that she saw and was shaken by the event the film treats as a given. When we do first see her, she's taken to one of the CIA's 'Black Sites' to interrogate a detainee, and you can see from her gestures and body language that she clearly doesn't want to be there, that she's forcing herself to watch the procedure; when asked for help, however, she gives the approved textbook reply: you can help yourself by talking. Her distaste is palpable, but the telling detail that stays with you is that she'll do her job, despite her lack of enthusiasm. 

For the next two hours she shows us two faces: the efficient, hyperintelligent CIA officer collating and interpreting data, the lonely young woman who mostly keeps to herself and confines her trust to a few co-workers (mainly Jennifer Ehle's Jessica, an unsung but finely crafted supporting performance). On one hand she's all business; on the other--well, you don't get much else. Jessica is Maya's 'confidante' only in that she relaxes before her friend, but doesn't really open up to her. Even to her closest friends--acquaintances, really--she keeps herself a cipher.


To paraphrase something the filmmakers have said in defense of the film: just because a character comes across as a cipher doesn't mean she is a cipher. Chastain's Maya is arguably the tensest, most compact, most tightly wrapped character I've seen in recent movies, a coiled spring that doesn't release its energy--not even when she's barking at her superior officer--for the majority of its hundred and fifty minute running time. She's closed off; she doesn't give us an ounce of warmth, nor ask for an ounce of understanding--when she's forcefully explaining why this or that isn't a good idea it's just the exact amount of force needed to sell her case. She gives you the impression of someone constantly holding back, holding back--mainly (you sense) because she's saving herself for her objective, for someone far off, not easily seen. If there's a passion in this film it's Maya's for UBL--and she never even lays her eyes on him till the very end.

Maya does confront a superior officer and it's her showiest moment, the one time when she yells at the top of her voice. But her response partly arises out of frustration: the man is standing in the way when she can smell that the objective is near. When Maya doesn't get what she wants, she gives loud information (it's also the film's least persuasive moment--as if the desperate threats of an underling could actually affect a superior's decision positively).

This I submit is the movie: not the attack itself, but the hundred and thirty or so minutes leading up to the attack. It has been pointed out how seemingly pointless and meandering the first half hour was; I thought the pointlessness was also the shape of the manhunt at the time--a lot of flailing about, a lot of groping in the dark (metaphorically and literally). Bigelow wanted to give us the flavor of the manhunt, a sense of how helpless they were at first, even to the point of almost losing us or boring us at various points in the film. 

The attack itself? Plenty of action setpieces this year--Affleck's nicely done airport chase in Argo; Tarantino's fairly competent bloodbaths in Django Unchained (inspired, I suspect, by the less bloody if wittier climactic massacre in Johnnie To's Exiled, among others); Whedon's exhilarating alien-army beat-down in The Avengers; Nolan's glummer, more drawn-out confrontation in The Dark Knight Rises; Paul Anderson's (W.S., not Thomas) balletic hijinks in Resident Evil: Retribution. Bigelow leaves them all in the dust--her considerable filmmaking chops make her one of the most visually intense filmmakers working in mainstream Hollywood today.  

Coming in I'd been given the mistaken impression that the assault would be seen entirely through the ghastly green of night vision goggles; actually it's a mix of POV footage and free-floating (like an anxiety) shots that follow the soldiers into the compound and up the stairs. The lighting is pitched just so: dark enough that you feel you need to squint to be sure of what you're seeing, bright enough that you really don't. The action only seems confusing; actually it comes together readily in your head, like a Steuben crystal shattering in reverse.

And tension--Bigelow stages the assault as conducted, with mostly the soldiers' voices and the occasional gunfire interrupting the eerie silence. Everything happens in real time, with little emphasis, ellipsis, even fuss; you have this sense of events held barely under control, careening just this side of the track.

Talking about Zero Dark Thirty strictly as an action thriller pretty much ignores the eight hundred pound anthropoid in the tent, namely the controversy about its depiction of torture. Reactions range from Glen Greenwald's indignant harumph that the filmmakers aren't being run out of town (the article having been written before he's seen the film ((to be fair, he's written more since)) to David Edelstein's more nuanced position that as "a moral statement, Zero Dark Thirty is borderline fascistic. As a piece of cinema, it’s phenomenally gripping—an unholy masterwork."

Somewhere in between it must be mentioned, if only because he's such a respected critic, is Slavoj Zizek's. Zizek is a brilliant thinker and wonderful writer but at times inconsistent, and I'd say this essay was written on one of his off days--instead of penetrating insight we have strident insistence, instead of inspired originality we have intoned principles about what one should or should not depict on film. Comparing torture to rape, he writes: "Our guts tell us that there is something terribly wrong here; I would like to live in a society where rape is simply considered unacceptable, so that anyone who argues for it appears an eccentric idiot, not in a society where one has to argue against it. The same goes for torture: a sign of ethical progress is the fact that torture is 'dogmatically' rejected as repulsive, without any need for argument."

The quotes suggest his view is more nuanced than the word 'dogma' suggests, but he doesn't elaborate; he mostly insists "there is only one answer." He doesn't help his cause by ignoring the possibility that perhaps the film does possess an anti-torture stance, and proceed from there; no, this is a problem that he insists must be nipped from the bud--no ifs, buts, or maybes.

Taking a cue from Zizek and his response, I can't help but notice that the film's loudest critics begin from the impression that the film depicts torture as a harsh but necessary step in finding UBL--which I find problematic; if you watch the film the issue doesn't seem all that simple.

The film's first interrogation scene, for example, involve a man named Ammar (Reda Kaleb). CIA officer Dan (Jason Clarke) subjects the man to hunger, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, close confinement, waterboarding; the man weakens, but doesn't crack. Later, Dan and Maya devise a trick that convinces Ammar that he did crack, and the man unwittingly gives up the name Abu Ahmed--UBL's trusted courier. The name is tricked not tortured out of the man.

 Edelstein doesn't buy that excuse. He clarifies that "it is only through waterboarding, sleep deprivation, etc. (as well as a bit of trickery made possible by torture), that the CIA operatives learn of Bin Laden’s courier’s existence." The parenthetical phrase doesn't quite do justice to the scene's focal point--waterboarding doesn't get us the courier's name, subterfuge plus a plate of hummus does. Well, to be fair, a combination of torture and subterfuge does (an assertion Senator Diane Feinstein denies). If the film's critics have a case, it's strongest here.  

Then there's the film's second interrogation scene where Maya--this time lead interrogator--questions Abu Faraj (Yoav Levi), Al Qaeda's third most important officer, about Abu Ahmed. Faraj doesn't crack; Maya's next lead involving Abu Ahmed has to come much later, through other, non-torturous means. If the film is meant to follow Maya's growth into full-blown espionage warrior, with the skills and determination to take down UBL, one might say she has just learned the lesson that torture doesn't always get results.

Arguably the strongest, most explicit statement made against torture in the film is given during Maya's confrontation with her boss, Pakistan bureau chief Joseph Bradley (Kyle Chandler). He tells her that 1) the information she got from the tortured detainees is suspect, and 2) No one is interested in Bin Laden anymore.

Bigelow's critics would probably be less critical if Bradley's words were given greater weight--if, say, Bradley clarified why the information is suspect (people will say anything to stop the pain), or why Bin Laden is less relevant (Al Qaeda has grown beyond the man into a multifranchise, semiautonomous entity). Maybe it would be too much to expect the film to stop and ponder America's loss of moral stature for indulging in torture--but such a scene would have helped. 

Every day Maya writes a number on his office window--a number representing the days they have waited for their superiors' decision to move on UBL's presumed hiding place (a compound in the suburbs of Abbottabad, Pakistan); every day Bradley could have (but doesn't) point out that the delay is partly caused by doubts about the evidence she collected, partly through torture. Again, the point could have been made more explicit--but Bigelow was apparently avoiding explicit political points while not stinting on the pain and violence. 

Then the ending: the soldiers come back from the attack to a large tent and lay out their booty of computer disks, manila file folders, and a single body bag. They're in a subdued mood, as if not quite believing what they've just accomplished; one of them whoops in triumph, and the sound almost sounds sacrilegious. Maya walks past them, past the goodies being spilled out of sacks, past the smell of testosterone and triumph, towards the single body bag lying on a gurney in one end.

It's possible to read the tear on Maya's cheek two ways: a Rolling Stone writer dismisses it with a comparison to the ending of The Princess Bride ("I've been in the revenge business for so long...I don't know what to do with the rest of my life"); it's also possible to read it--and yes, I'm aware I can be accused by Rolling Stone of 'reading it in'--as an unworded rebuke of her goals, of the whole 'revenge business,' a perhaps more muted version of Kurtz's reaction in Conrad's Heart of Darkness ("The horror! The horror!"). She looks at what she's done, at all the years and effort expended, at all the faces who suffered before her, and she feels regret--involuntary, as tears often are; she feels regret despite herself. The End--no inspiring music, no waving flag or hint that the world has been bettered or improved by the killing of a great evil; just a black screen, and credits.

By way of comparison, if I find the business far less palatable in Tarantino's Django Unchained it's because of this: considering all the suffering slaves have endured, the only response Tarantino can think up for them is revenge? Kicking redneck ass--that it? If--if--we can read Maya's tears to signify the second meaning, then Bigelow's film at least acknowledges the possibility that there's more to life than this revenge business.

 Interesting to compare Maya to Sgt. James in Bigelow's previous The Hurt Locker. Both take an unholy interest in their careers; both are profoundly empty without their careers to define them. I liked The Hurt Locker a lot (better than her ex-husband's work that same year), but as I note in my own article Sgt. James simply doesn't make sense. If Maya's a more persuasive character than James that's because Bigelow makes her even more of a cipher than our EOD expert (She says she has no friends or boyfriend but does she at least have family? A one-night stand she can call up occasionally?), and we can read all kinds of useful things into her tabula rasa character.

There are two reviews I find especially useful in thinking about the film--or at least, two reviews with especially interesting views: Ignatiy Vishnevetsky's thoughtful meditation on the film as a thoughtful meditation on representation--how an image or digital recording is often taken as the object or person himself, and how the film really depicts a self-perpetuating process that gathers data by a variety of means, both low and high tech. "Bin Laden..." Ignatiy writes, "is the last real-world foe, and he is defeated by being turned into abstracted data." I don't know about 'last,' but that 'abstracted data' bit has a chillingly prophetic air. 

David Phelps' take not only digs deeper into Vishnevetsky's ideas, but also manages to implicitly criticize the article. He asserts that while Bigelow's film talks a lot about process and shows much of the surface workings, it doesn't give us a real understanding the way Roberto Rossellini or Otto Preminger does. If anything Bigelow presents the story as being less about the CIA and more about Maya, about her need to get the job done; the director focuses on the human-sized drama, with humans doing the heavy lifting; government organizations mostly get in the way--are good only for the goodies they bring (stealthy attack helicopters, SEAL specialists) to the table. It's an old-fashioned action-movie trope, one Bigelow has used in many of her films (The Hurt Locker being the first title to come to mind). Phelps also points out that for all the intensity and realism of the torture sequences (a realism some have questioned (though their own motives have also been questioned)) it ultimately soft-pedals the horror: Jean Luc Godard's depiction in Le Petit Soldat is easily worse. 

So--the torture question? Which I trust I've tortured past point and patience with links and consideration of as many views as I can collect? I'm unsurprisingly somewhere in the middle: I think the film isn't as clueless as to believe torture is crucial to the hunt, nor do I think Bigelow endorses it as such; on the other hand I do think she was caught flatfooted by the controversy, that it wasn't her intention to have the interrogation scenes be the target of so much scrutiny, that she was and is unaware of the larger implications her film represents. If she had to do it all again, she would probably make her stance more explicit the way she does in her article, allowing us to focus on the rest of the film as was intended. 

Perhaps Phelp's most potent questions ask Zero Dark Thirty's real relevance to the larger issues: was Bin Laden such an important target (the ghost of Bradley's assertions, resurrected)? Should we be content with this shallow depiction of war, without casting a more critical eye on the processes and institutions behind (Bigelow being no Rossellini or Preminger--come to think of it, who is?)? Doesn't the film's real story go something like this: that enhanced interrogations involving physical and psychological (though no less concrete) torture have given way to the high-tech collection of Big Data, and the idea that this development is the answer to all our problems is possibly the most falsely comforting and hence most dangerous idea of all? 

1.26.13 


Afterword: Let's be clear--I'm not warning people away from Big Data towards more primitive techniques (am not advocating enhanced interrogations at all!). Big Data has after all solved quite a few recent problems for quite a few people--a baseball team comes to mind, and an incumbent president. What I do think we should watch out for--and what I think Phelps warns us about--is putting complete faith on Big Data, the way say the Bush Administration put much of its faith at one point on enhanced interrogation. We should handle any new science with caution and not a little skepticism, keeping in mind that any relatively new science--and scientists themselves due to the nature of their profession are mindful of this--will have flaws and blind spots. Fools rush in...you know how it goes.

(reedited 1.28.13)

The Juniper Tree (Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm)

 Posting this, one of the loveliest, most horrifying stories I have ever known. Don't know why, it just captures how I feel nowadays

The Juniper Tree

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm

Long ago, at least two thousand years, there was a rich man who had a beautiful and pious wife, and they loved each other dearly. However, they had no children, though they wished very much to have some, and the woman prayed for them day and night, but they didn't get any, and they didn't get any. 

In front of their house there was a courtyard where there stood a juniper tree. One day in winter the woman was standing beneath it, peeling herself an apple, and while she was thus peeling the apple, she cut her finger, and the blood fell into the snow.

"Oh," said the woman. She sighed heavily, looked at the blood before her, and was most unhappy. "If only I had a child as red as blood and as white as snow." And as she said that, she became quite contented, and felt sure that it was going to happen. 

Then she went into the house, and a month went by, and the snow was gone. And two months, and everything was green. And three months, and all the flowers came out of the earth. And four months, and all the trees in the woods grew thicker, and the green branches were all entwined in one another, and the birds sang until the woods resounded and the blossoms fell from the trees. Then the fifth month passed, and she stood beneath the juniper tree, which smelled so sweet that her heart jumped for joy, and she fell on her knees and was beside herself. And when the sixth month was over, the fruit was thick and large, and then she was quite still. And after the seventh month she picked the juniper berries and ate them greedily. Then she grew sick and sorrowful. Then the eighth month passed, and she called her husband to her, and cried, and said, "If I die, then bury me beneath the juniper tree." Then she was quite comforted and happy until the next month was over, and then she had a child as white as snow and as red as blood, and when she saw it, she was so happy that she died.

Her husband buried her beneath the juniper tree, and he began to cry bitterly. After some time he was more at ease, and although he still cried, he could bear it. And some time later he took another wife.

He had a daughter by the second wife, but the first wife's child was a little son, and he was as red as blood and as white as snow. When the woman looked at her daughter, she loved her very much, but then she looked at the little boy, and it pierced her heart, for she thought that he would always stand in her way, and she was always thinking how she could get the entire inheritance for her daughter. 

And the Evil One filled her mind with this until she grew very angry with the little boy, and she pushed him from one corner to the other and slapped him here and cuffed him there, until the poor child was always afraid, for when he came home from school there was nowhere he could find any peace.

One day the woman had gone upstairs to her room, when her little daughter came up too, and said, "Mother, give me an apple."

"Yes, my child," said the woman, and gave her a beautiful apple out of the chest. The chest had a large heavy lid with a large sharp iron lock.

"Mother," said the little daughter, "is brother not to have one too?"
This made the woman angry, but she said, "Yes, when he comes home from school."

When from the window she saw him coming, it was as though the Evil One came over her, and she grabbed the apple and took it away from her daughter, saying, "You shall not have one before your brother."

She threw the apple into the chest, and shut it. Then the little boy came in the door, and the Evil One made her say to him kindly,  

"My son, do you want an apple?" And she looked at him fiercely.

"Mother," said the little boy, "how angry you look. Yes, give me an apple."

Then it seemed to her as if she had to persuade him. "Come with me," she said, opening the lid of the chest. "Take out an apple for yourself." And while the little boy was leaning over, the Evil One prompted her, and crash! she slammed down the lid, and his head flew off, falling among the red apples.

Then fear overcame her, and she thought, "Maybe I can get out of this." So she went upstairs to her room to her chest of drawers, and took a white scarf out of the top drawer, and set the head on the neck again, tying the scarf around it so that nothing could be seen. Then she set him on a chair in front of the door and put the apple in his hand.

After this Marlene came into the kitchen to her mother, who was standing by the fire with a pot of hot water before her which she was stirring around and around.

"Mother," said Marlene, "brother is sitting at the door, and he looks totally white and has an apple in his hand. I asked him to give me the apple, but he did not answer me, and I was very frightened."

"Go back to him," said her mother, "and if he will not answer you, then box his ears."

So Marlene went to him and said, "Brother, give me the apple." But he was silent, so she gave him one on the ear, and his head fell off. Marlene was terrified, and began crying and screaming, and ran to her mother, and said, "Oh, mother, I have knocked my brother's head off," and she cried and cried and could not be comforted.

"Marlene," said the mother, "what have you done? Be quiet and don't let anyone know about it. It cannot be helped now. We will cook him into stew."

Then the mother took the little boy and chopped him in pieces, put him into the pot, and cooked him into stew. But Marlene stood by crying and crying, and all her tears fell into the pot, and they did not need any salt.

Then the father came home, and sat down at the table and said, 

"Where is my son?" And the mother served up a large, large dish of stew, and Marlene cried and could not stop.

Then the father said again, "Where is my son?"

"Oh," said the mother, "he has gone across the country to his mother's great uncle. He will stay there awhile."

"What is he doing there? He did not even say good-bye to me."

"Oh, he wanted to go, and asked me if he could stay six weeks. He will be well taken care of there."

"Oh," said the man, "I am unhappy. It isn't right. He should have said good-bye to me." With that he began to eat, saying, "Marlene, why are you crying? Your brother will certainly come back." Then he said, "Wife, this food is delicious. Give me some more." And the more he ate the more he wanted, and he said, "Give me some more. You two shall have none of it. It seems to me as if it were all mine." And he ate and ate, throwing all the bones under the table, until he had finished it all.

Marlene went to her chest of drawers, took her best silk scarf from the bottom drawer, and gathered all the bones from beneath the table and tied them up in her silk scarf, then carried them outside the door, crying tears of blood.

She laid them down beneath the juniper tree on the green grass, and after she had put them there, she suddenly felt better and did not cry anymore.

Then the juniper tree began to move. The branches moved apart, then moved together again, just as if someone were rejoicing and clapping his hands. At the same time a mist seemed to rise from the tree, and in the center of this mist it burned like a fire, and a beautiful bird flew out of the fire singing magnificently, and it flew high into the air, and when it was gone, the juniper tree was just as it had been before, and the cloth with the bones was no longer there. Marlene, however, was as happy and contented as if her brother were still alive. And she went merrily into the house, sat down at the table, and ate.

Then the bird flew away and lit on a goldsmith's house, and began to sing:

My mother, she killed me,
My father, he ate me,
My sister Marlene,
Gathered all my bones,
Tied them in a silken scarf,
Laid them beneath the juniper tree,
Tweet, tweet, what a beautiful bird am I.
 
The goldsmith was sitting in his workshop making a golden chain, when he heard the bird sitting on his roof and singing. The song seemed very beautiful to him. He stood up, but as he crossed the threshold he lost one of his slippers. However, he went right up the middle of the street with only one slipper and one sock on. He had his leather apron on, and in one hand he had a golden chain and in the other his tongs. The sun was shining brightly on the street.

He walked onward, then stood still and said to the bird, "Bird," he said, "how beautifully you can sing. Sing that piece again for me."

"No," said the bird, "I do not sing twice for nothing. Give me the golden chain, and then I will sing it again for you."

The goldsmith said, "Here is the golden chain for you. Now sing that song again for me." Then the bird came and took the golden chain in his right claw, and went and sat in front of the goldsmith, and sang:

My mother, she killed me,
My father, he ate me,
My sister Marlene,
Gathered all my bones,
Tied them in a silken scarf,
Laid them beneath the juniper tree,
Tweet, tweet, what a beautiful bird am I.

Then the bird flew away to a shoemaker, and lit on his roof and sang:

My mother, she killed me,
My father, he ate me,
My sister Marlene,
Gathered all my bones,
Tied them in a silken scarf,
Laid them beneath the juniper tree,
Tweet, tweet, what a beautiful bird am I. 


Hearing this, the shoemaker ran out of doors in his shirtsleeves, and looked up at his roof, and had to hold his hand in front of his eyes to keep the sun from blinding him. "Bird," said he, "how beautifully you can sing."

Then he called in at his door, "Wife, come outside. There is a bird here. Look at this bird. He certainly can sing." Then he called his daughter and her children, and the journeyman, and the apprentice, and the maid, and they all came out into the street and looked at the bird and saw how beautiful he was, and what fine red and green feathers he had, and how his neck was like pure gold, and how his eyes shone like stars in his head.

"Bird," said the shoemaker, "now sing that song again for me."

"No," said the bird, "I do not sing twice for nothing. You must give me something."

"Wife," said the man, "go into the shop. There is a pair of red shoes on the top shelf. Bring them down." Then the wife went and brought the shoes.

"There, bird," said the man, "now sing that piece again for me." 

Then the bird came and took the shoes in his left claw, and flew back to the roof, and sang:

My mother, she killed me,
My father, he ate me,
My sister Marlene,
Gathered all my bones,
Tied them in a silken scarf,
Laid them beneath the juniper tree,
Tweet, tweet, what a beautiful bird am I.
 
When he had finished his song he flew away. In his right claw he had the chain and in his left one the shoes. He flew far away to a mill, and the mill went clickety-clack, clickety-clack, clickety-clack. In the mill sat twenty miller's apprentices cutting a stone, and chiseling chip-chop, chip-chop, chip-chop. And the mill went clickety-clack, clickety-clack, clickety-clack.

Then the bird went and sat on a linden tree which stood in front of the mill, and sang:

My mother, she killed me,
 
Then one of them stopped working.

My father, he ate me,
 
Then two more stopped working and listened,

My sister Marlene,
 
Then four more stopped,

Gathered all my bones,
Tied them in a silken scarf,
 
Now only eight only were chiseling,

Laid them beneath
 
Now only five,

the juniper tree,
 
Now only one,

Tweet, tweet, what a beautiful bird am I.
 
Then the last one stopped also, and heard the last words. "Bird," said he, "how beautifully you sing. Let me hear that too. Sing it once more for me."

"No," said the bird, "I do not sing twice for nothing. Give me the millstone, and then I will sing it again."

"Yes," he said, "if it belonged only to me, you should have it."

"Yes," said the others, "if he sings again he can have it."

Then the bird came down, and the twenty millers took a beam and lifted the stone up. Yo-heave-ho! Yo-heave-ho! Yo-heave-ho!

The bird stuck his neck through the hole and put the stone on as if it were a collar, then flew to the tree again, and sang:

My mother, she killed me,
My father, he ate me,
My sister Marlene,
Gathered all my bones,
Tied them in a silken scarf,
Laid them beneath the juniper tree,
Tweet, tweet, what a beautiful bird am I.
 
When he was finished singing, he spread his wings, and in his right claw he had the chain, and in his left one the shoes, and around his neck the millstone. He flew far away to his father's house.

In the room the father, the mother, and Marlene were sitting at the table.

The father said, "I feel so contented. I am so happy."

"Not I," said the mother, "I feel uneasy, just as if a bad storm were coming."

But Marlene just sat and cried and cried.

Then the bird flew up, and as it seated itself on the roof, the father said, "Oh, I feel so truly happy, and the sun is shining so beautifully outside. I feel as if I were about to see some old acquaintance again."

"Not I," said the woman, "I am so afraid that my teeth are chattering, and I feel like I have fire in my veins." And she tore open her bodice even more. Marlene sat in a corner crying. She held a handkerchief before her eyes and cried until it was wet clear through.

Then the bird seated itself on the juniper tree, and sang:

My mother, she killed me,
 
The mother stopped her ears and shut her eyes, not wanting to see or hear, but there was a roaring in her ears like the fiercest storm, and her eyes burned and flashed like lightning.

My father, he ate me,
 
"Oh, mother," said the man, "that is a beautiful bird. He is singing so splendidly, and the sun is shining so warmly, and it smells like pure cinnamon."

My sister Marlene,
 
Then Marlene laid her head on her knees and cried and cried, but the man said, "I am going out. I must see the bird up close."

"Oh, don't go," said the woman, "I feel as if the whole house were shaking and on fire." 

But the man went out and looked at the bird. 

Gathered all my bones,
Tied them in a silken scarf,
Laid them beneath the juniper tree,
Tweet, tweet, what a beautiful bird am I.
 
With this the bird dropped the golden chain, and it fell right around the man's neck, so exactly around it that it fit beautifully. Then the man went in and said, "Just look what a beautiful bird that is, and what a beautiful golden chain he has given me, and how nice it looks."

But the woman was terrified. She fell down on the floor in the room, and her cap fell off her head. Then the bird sang once more:

My mother killed me.
 
"I wish I were a thousand fathoms beneath the earth, so I would not have to hear that!"

My father, he ate me,
 
Then the woman fell down as if she were dead.

My sister Marlene,
 
"Oh," said Marlene, "I too will go out and see if the bird will give me something." Then she went out.

Gathered all my bones,
Tied them in a silken scarf,
 
He threw the shoes down to her.

Laid them beneath the juniper tree,
Tweet, tweet, what a beautiful bird am I.
 
Then she was contented and happy. She put on the new red shoes and danced and leaped into the house. "Oh," she said, "I was so sad when I went out and now I am so contented. That is a splendid bird, he has given me a pair of red shoes." 

"No," said the woman, jumping to her feet and with her hair standing up like flames of fire, "I feel as if the world were coming to an end. I too, will go out and see if it makes me feel better."
 
And as she went out the door, crash! the bird threw the millstone on her head, and it crushed her to death.

The father and Marlene heard it and went out. Smoke, flames, and fire were rising from the place, and when that was over, the little brother was standing there, and he took his father and Marlene by the hand, and all three were very happy, and they went into the house, sat down at the table, and ate.

Text taken from this website