{"id":4056,"date":"2013-02-09T02:27:47","date_gmt":"2013-02-09T02:27:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lbpost.com\/articles\/life\/now-playing-at-art-theatre-zero-dark-thirty-2\/"},"modified":"2013-02-09T02:27:47","modified_gmt":"2013-02-09T02:27:47","slug":"now-playing-at-art-theatre-zero-dark-thirty-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/hi-lo\/now-playing-at-art-theatre-zero-dark-thirty-2","title":{"rendered":"NOW PLAYING AT ART THEATRE: ‘Zero Dark Thirty’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"PictureI don’t get it. I don’t get why anyone thinks that Zero Dark Thirty<\/em> either criticizes the United States for out post-9\/11 torture practices or glorifies the methods. I don’t get the Oscar hype. I don’t get why anyone takes director Kathryn Bigelow seriously as an artist. And I don’t get why I’m supposed to care about this “intersection of investigation and imagination” (as screenwriter Mark Boal nicely puts it) about the search for and eventual killing of Osama bin Laden.<\/p>\n

What I do understand is that all things 9\/11 seem to resonate with Americans. What Zero Dark Thirty<\/em> has going for it is subject matter that simultaneously repels and fascinates us. If it didn’t have that, I doubt this is a film that anyone would be talking about.<\/p>\n

Maya (Jessica Chastain, a nice actor who doesn’t really have a role here worthy of special recognition) is known to be a “killer” CIA agent, not because she’s violent, nor because of the fabulous pants suit she has on under the black coveralls she sports during the film’s opening scene, but because she’s got a nose for finding stuff out. Is it ridiculous that she didn’t even have time to change clothes before they whisked her into a cell to observe a bit of torture? Of course it is. But Bigelow and Boal have committed the chief venial sin of many a based-on-a-true story: punch up the script of life with whatever little details you feel like.<\/p>\n

How much of Zero Dark Thirty<\/em> is fictional is hotly debated, but that question is separate from examining its merits as a piece of cinema. On that score, at least it doesn’t go off the rails into pure Hollywood fantasyland like fellow Best Picture nominee Argo<\/em>. Both films are essentially factual stories, but you never see any major piece of action in Zero Dark Thirty<\/em> where you’re saying, “Oh, come on!”<\/p>\n

That said, it’s kina boring. Unpleasant as they are, the torture scenes (more on those below) are not<\/em> boring, but Bigelow has dispensed with those before the film is a half-hour old. Between then and the climactic assault on bin Laden’s compound, Zero Dark Thirty<\/em> is mostly one big process story. Maya looks at her computer screen, flips through manila file folders, importunes the higher-ups for more help. She talks to co-workers, then goes home and sits on her couch and sighs. Predictably, there is a big showdown between her and her boss. Every now and then we are shown a terrorist attack\u2014London 2005, Islamabad 2008, Camp Chapman 2009\u2014just to remind us of the stakes.<\/p>\n

In real life the stakes may have been high (although even a character in the film itself questions what any of this has to do with bin Laden, who is “out of the game”), but we’re talking about art, and there’s nothing very compelling about randomly cutting to a scene of a double-decker bus for just long enough for us to see it drive down the road and explode, then back to our process story. Bigelow wants it both ways: she wants us to take Zero Dark Thirty<\/em> seriously as a piece of art, but the art is wholly reliant on the viewer’s projecting value from history up onto the screen. Even a good documentary is self-contained in a way that Zero Dark Thirty<\/em> simply is not.<\/p>\n

One criticism I won’t level at Zero Dark Thirty<\/em> is for its handling of torture. It is a fact that the CIA (et al.) engaged in torture, and the film depicts this. That’s all. There is no glorification, no vindication of such barbaric practices as effective intelligence-gathering techniques; neither does the film grandstand to condemn the U.S. for engaging in such barbarism (although Boal recently said that he feels the U.S. was “dead wrong” for doing so). It’s part of the story, and it’s in the film.<\/p>\n

Boal calls Zero Dark Thirty<\/em> “disruptive filmmaking,” an example of “[a] relatively new blend of current events and creativity to make the news behind the news more accessible, more visceral, more real.” That is a fair description, so if that kind of thing appeals to you, then you may be in line with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and a host of other organizations that love the film. After all, Boal and Bigelow comprise the same writer\/director tandem that brought us The Hurt Locker\u2014<\/em>another film I don’t like. But I have to tell you: I like Zero Dark Thirty<\/em> even less.<\/p>\n

Zero Dark Thirty is playing at the Art Theatre of Long Beach (2025 E. 4th Street, LB 90804) for a one-week engagement. For info on show times call 562.438.5435 or visit arttheatrelongbeach.com<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"PictureIf Zero Dark Thirty<\/em> weren’t based on events that matter so much to most all Americans, it’s unlikely it would have received much buzz. But this fictionalization of the real search for Osama bin Laden has generally captivated critics, and now you’ve got a week at the Art to see whether they’re right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":69255,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-4056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hi-lo","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4056"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=4056"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/esd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=4056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}