Didn't this lady also falsely rendition an innocent guy? I'm surprised this movie is so positive on her given her reputation.Originally Posted by faina
Didn't this lady also falsely rendition an innocent guy? I'm surprised this movie is so positive on her given her reputation.
This what I'm leaning towards. Again, as a filmmaker, I can understand this position, and I'm not firmly against the idea of Maya being a hero (I wouldn't label her that way, but she is the one and only reason they got the man) in the frame of the narrative. It's just that it's such a "woohoo, yes!" moment that it clashes with my own personal thoughts on this manhunt and assassination. This is the one moment where the bloodthirst in this whole affair that I hate so much gets to flourish in the audience, that's why I dislike it.
I will marshall all the forces of darkness to hound you to an assisted suicide - Peter Capaldi, In The Loop
I don't have a problem with the "I'm the motherfucker..." line.
Maya has been working for the CIA and looking for bin Laden for years. As she tells Panetta, "I've done nothing else." She's seen men being tortured, her friend was killed, she herself was nearly killed twice, and she had to fight to get a team to search for the courier. Her superiors (Kyle Chandler, Mark Strong, etc), never commend her for her efforts. She was recruited right out of high school, and hasn't been able to live a life outside of work. After years, her hard work and determination to follow this lead finally gets her to the Abbottabad compound. Of course she's gung-ho and proud of herself. She even tells another person that she believes her life was spared so that she could find bin Laden. She also says, after Ehle dies, that she wants to track him down and kill him. I think her excitement when she says, "I'm the motherfucker who found the place" is completely organic and believable. It's awkward, yes, but it's supposed to be.
"I'm a firm believer in karma, and I think this situation is a huge learning lesson for me.
To grow and expand as a spiritual human being. I want to lead a country one day for all I know".
I also thought the line (and Chastain's reading of it) is meant to reassert Maya's dominance in this room full of men who are barely even deferring to her as the 'motherfucker' who put this whole Osama/compound theory in motion. There's this passive assertiveness and strength that Chastain/Mark Boal exerts with Maya and most definitely with lines like the aforementioned.
I'm not sure I buy that Maya is being portrayed as a hero in all of this. Protagonist of the story? Sure. She's aggressive and suffers no fools, but for Maya to be a "hero", the film must operate on a level of celebration of bin Laden's death, something I think it decidedly is not. The final shot would not be Maya crying after the operation has finished if that were the case.
I thought this was really, really good.
"This is not your daddy's HBO version of Mandela," said Weinstein. "This is the kickass version of Mandela."
This is indeed why I said that final scene turns the 'hero' narrative around, and I don't think Maya is constantly portrayed as the hero of the story. Except for that line, where we are manipulated into doing a mental fistpump for a woman who I don't actually want to do a fistpump for. Again, from the film's point of view I can understand it, but from my political point of view I don't like it.
I will marshall all the forces of darkness to hound you to an assisted suicide - Peter Capaldi, In The Loop
I didn't read it so much as a fistpump moment and instead more of a moment that showcases Maya's frustration -- basically what guany said earlier.
That said, I don't think the film does a great job of building up to that moment and the line does kind of ring hollow.
"This is not your daddy's HBO version of Mandela," said Weinstein. "This is the kickass version of Mandela."
It's Hollywood!
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I actually hated this
The script doesn't work at all for me. The problem with this film is that it aims for a "real" and "natural" feel, but to me the dialogs undermined it all. The dialogs felt stagey and from Hollywood and stuff like Kyle Chandler, other CIA guys, etc. really did not come off as real people to me. Neither than Chastain though that seems more intentional, that terrorist catching has taken the life out of her
Very poorly edited IMO. Too long, lots of drawn out scenes, lots of back and forths that didn't add anything to the movie to me.
The manhunt itself - I don't know how much of it came from true fact, but mehhhh. Like the tortured terrorist suddenly saying everything he knows, just because JC told her he already caved in the night before? Would that really cause him to spill his guts? Or Ehle letting the terrorist into the base just because she's smiley and "doesn't want to scare him away" (and lolll at how drawn out and predictable that scene was, compare that to the terrorist bombings in Hurt Locker - Bigelow is playing at a totally different level in THL IMO) Or the detainee saying "here's a picture, he's dead, I buried him" and everyone just accepting it as fact? And everything from that point on in the hunt is a yada yada yada blur to me, they kind of just found the guy and followed him. I didn't really buy into the plotline - which with the IMO TV caliber dialog, really sunk how much I could believe the film's events
Most of all though it just felt boring and without a pulse. This movie has no hutzpah or charisma. You know how Lincoln was a mini miracle for making a mundane few days (the passing of an act) seem exciting... Well ZDT is the complete opposite to me. It fails to bring any heartbeat to its dull plot. That would be fine if it did well at its docu-drama/realist side, but to me... it doesn't. It neither has its cake or eats it. To me it's all of poorly written, poorly edited, unbelievable, lacking depth and boring at once. In other words, pretty much unwatchable
Last edited by MVP of West Hollywood; 01-07-2013 at 01:09 AM.
He hardly told them everything he knew, lol. He gave them one name. I much prefer this film to Lincoln (since you compared them) since it manages to make things we already know the outcome to suspenseful without silly things like Sally Field keeping a tally of the votes and cross cutting, but to each his own.
One of the most idiotic hyperbolic opinions I've read on here in quite some time. Well done.
T E A M R I V E T T E
No...?
"Keep yoah paint outta my pahhking spot aaaahhhht depaaahhhhhtment!!!"
I thought the film was really really good, but that final shot (and Chastain's crying in that final shot) made it great. I also don't buy the notion that Maya was portrayed as being a "hero" here, like at all? I'm not sure how the real CIA agent is, but I feel like Maya's characterisation (despite the fact that she's our protagonist, her character is oddly cold, robotic and in many ways, we are kept from a distance and never let into her character's inner thoughts or feelings). I don't think we audiences are supposed to identify with her. We aren't even supposed to sympathise with her (like even when she's almost killed twice). So no, she's definitely no "hero".
Cate Blanchett
The Beautiful and Talented Godgend Seņor El Diablo Blanchitto
Returning to Hollywood with a Vengeance in 2013
I agree that the film doesn't really present Maya as a hero. But it presents her as a nuanced, complicated, ambiguous, inscrutable, etc. cipher, which is sort of the thinking person/film critic's version of what a "hero" should be, so I think it amounts to the same thing (I think it's a bit of a stretch to say that we aren't supposed to sympathize or identify with her at all, lol). And as with most things about the film, it would have been much harder for it to be so nuanced, complicated, ambiguous, inscrutable, etc. if it didn't have a very skewed perspective and if it didn't omit and misrepresent a lot of pertinent facts.
Isn't it possible to be annoyed or bothered by the fact that this film is such a cipher without being scared by it?
This and also all these men were kind of dismissing her: by talking about her work, using her mockup without letting her be part of the conversation, they even didn't let her sit in the same table so that's why when she hear an non accurate answer, she had to intervene so when Leon Panetta questions who is her? I found that answer fit with the character and the situation.
I watched yesterday and I think it was the best film I've watched since Tree of Life.
Mark Boal's screenplay is really good. Take such a dense and long material with so many characters and be able to put together a narrative so well articulated is something really deserving of all the accolades is receiving. And although many actors hardly have screentime I loved the supporting actors' work, specially Jason Clarke and Mark Strong.
The same can be said with both Editing and Direction. Everyting works for the film purpose like a swiss clock. No shot or scene is vacous and it's brilliantly made. The scene of the hunt is simply mind-blowing.
Jessica Chastain made an outstanding performance, from the vulnerability of the beginning to the powerful presence in the end, she really made a very realistic portrait of Maya and she is easily becoming my favorite actress.
10/10.
I was sort of skeeved out when that Jason Clarke character said that he needed to get a new line of work because he had seen too many naked bodies and it was messing him up. It felt like the film was taking away his agency. That dude was a PHD, a child of privilege, and he chose that line of work. PSYCHOPATH.
I feel like this movie being wrong about torture is kind of a deal breaker. However, I got the sense from the movie that the raid was an idiotic idea and also that the US gave too much up (both in terms of its values and in terms of money and manpower) to capture Bin Laden. I cringed when that helicopter crashed. That thing was fancy.
The movie may be morally dubious, but it was entertaining, suspenseful, and it moved around at a pretty fast clip.
Exactly. That's why I think the line didn't work; not because it was inappropriate or awkward in itself, but the films deals so little with Maya as a character, a person instead of a tool or 'the mind' that that line stand out as the moment when Boal couldn't resist but put her personality, so it's a bit inconsistent. If the film dealt more with Maya than the actual hunt for Bin Laden (and I highly respect them for not going there), the line wouldn't stand out, so I don't find it bad per se, just out of context.
I know I've got a big ego, I really don't know why it's such a big deal, though.
Sure, and by "scared" I don't mean to suggest something like "intimidated," just more "worried" or "concerned" that people will take a message from this movie we'd find morally repugnant. The fact that its a cipher allows for both the best and worst reactions, though I'm not sure that means it could "go either way" with equal probability and I feel that the whole "connection between torture and Osama" concern may be missing the forest for the trees a bit; I can't believe that anyone who walks out of this movie feeling good about the torture could have ever been convinced any differently, anyway.
As it is I think the lack of an explicit political argument is largely what makes this movie work so well. In a lot of ways I feel Bigelow is dealing with the same sort of project here she was in THL; she's dealing with perspective and the paradigm within which our war machine operates and the vast disconnect between that and how any civilian might approach these situations. The most important scene of THL is that short cut of him standing in front of the cereal boxes at the grocery store. The entire movie sets up that moment and how you react to it I think will largely determine how you react to the movie as a whole. But while THL largely deals with the psychology of one soldier, ZDT just takes it to a broader level, and it doesn't need to show us that cereal scene to demonstrate the disconnect, because we've all already lived that disconnect. We all know how we felt and how we reacted the moment we heard Osama was dead, we all know the political landscape that brought us to that moment, and we all watched the rabid celebrations on CNN and we all watched Obama's approval ratings skyrocket while Cheney's team took to TV trying to take credit. And for me that moment is now forever juxtaposed with a story that begins with torture and ends with a broken Maya crying. That's ZDT's version of bombs and cereal boxes.
I'm not sure if I'm making any sense, but I feel like any explicit political or moral arguments would have cheapened the effect of the movie, because the entire movie relies on putting us into this perspective where Maya's obsession is the sole paradigmatic touchstone. The detainee program is important to that because it was the paradigm, and how unquestioning and standardized it all is is some seriously upsetting banality of evil shit.
The worry has always been "does the movie draw a connection between torture and the capture of Osama." And yeah, it does. Manohla Dargis is wrong. And it draws that connection much more explicitly on a thematic level than it does in terms of story or information. But for me and basically everyone I've spoken to, that connection has the exact opposite effect the critics seem to be saying it does.
ETA: I also think it's interesting that the big "controversy" is about how the movie begins, and how it supposedly justifies torture by showing how important it was to the "mission," when the movie and mission end with a raid that was basically insane and in which they more or less got lucky. I think that goes more against popular perception than anything else in the movie.
Last edited by Sage; 01-07-2013 at 01:09 PM.
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