But people can disagree on art and that’s all fine. My initial response was a bit more testy, but I’ll take it down a notch.

I do feel like asking, though – you have seen the movie, right? You do seem very reliant on the opinions of official reputable critics, as opposed to what you saw watching the movie.

They way they read it, Humbert Humbert = Nabokov. They’d made up their minds. They’d chosen to be outraged and not engage with the novel.

Again, the representation is not recommendation thing.

I also pointed out that the POV is down-on-the-ground. Some of the things you would want to be in the movie are out of the scope of this limited POV. (And this can be a problem.) Hina Shamsi from the ACLU (who does not think the film is pro-torture) made an apt observation – it’s a story about war crimes told from the perspective of the criminals.

I also questioned your reading of the ending in particular. As I’m not in a position to do a shot-by-shot breakdown, I can only refer back to the critics for close readings of the film grammar (they take notes during screenings and/or have screeners of the film). And, almost without exception, they interpreted those sequences in a way similar to mine. This ain’t no America fuck yeah movie.

Okay, that’s all I have – this is dancing about architecture, and it’s especially frustrating because I would like to give shot-by-shot examples from the film, but can’t until the thing is out on DVD.

Then, to illuminate your analysis, you consult … well, who do you consult? Knowledgable art critics, who are well-versed in the form and techniques? Or some random person who happened to check out the work? I’m not saying this random person’s emotional response is invalid – but it could well be based on a misreading of the work. 

Say the artist has employed fascist imagery or fetuses or whatever in the work. The way this imagery is framed/problematized/contextualized is key to analyzing the work. Said random person might simply ignore all of that and choose to be offended.

In the arts, “representation is not recommendation” is fundamental. If someone can’t see beyond that, there’s nothing else I can say.

No, they’re made to think “torture is terrible… but it gets results”.

Fuck this lowbrow cinema, anti-war movies have apparently been co-opted by the government.

Selection bias and appeals to false authority are just awesome.

Plenty of Americans are disgusted by our propaganda as well, especially when it comes in a “pacifist”‘s cloak.

Bullshit, you’re “supposed” to identify EVEN MORE with broken characters.

Yes, and the choice to put forth her story in such a way was fully intentional, and indicates what the director’s vision was.

Yes, because it’s the protagonist.

From what I’m seeing, I presented theories and backed them up with specifics from the film – and you’ve presented theories, I’ve challenged them with specifics, and you have responded with more theories. I don’t see that as a substantive answer..I don’t see what’s complicated about giving specifics from the movie for your theories. But that’s your choice, and that’s fine. I just think it’s quite reasonable that not answering points loses that point by forfeit.

So, leaving that but going to this supposed ambiguity. Where you are seeing ambiguity among the supposed ‘good guys’, I am seeing not enough of it. I am not seeing the supposed good guys in this film as having done *any* mixed deeds, as they are presented by Bigelow. I am not seeing any complexity in their presentation to interpret. I see only justification for doing it, and I see only up-sides shown.

Maybe your position is “Well of course we as viewers already know that torture is bad, so just showing the torture itself is enough.” Perhaps that’s the key point we disagree on.

You have a) protagonist with no real flaws, going up against b) an enemy with no presented virtues, using c) methods that aren’t even acknowledged by any one in the films as having flaws. I don’t see how you find some sort of artistic ambiguity in that.

We do have ticking time-bomb scenarios in the movie. What if Bin Laden moves before we get him? What if we don’t have enough time to track him down, now that the civilians have gone all wussy-chicken and outlawed badass torture? 

As stated in another comment, just because it’s case for torture is not as baldly stated as “24″ was, doesn’t mean it’s not making a case for torture.

1) Mainstream Hollywood films elicit identification with the hero. The arthouse mode is more complicated. You’re meant to observe a character, figure them out, watch them act in an environment. As in The Hurt Locker, Bigelow is not presenting a simple audience surrogate. She starts the movie with torture – right off the bat, you should be thinking about your relationship as a viewer to this character.

That is the key to the problem of interpretation. You divide the film into good guys and bad guys. I’m saying the moral scheme of the movie is far more complex. This is a film that is intended to be interpreted, not consumed passively.

2) Again, starting the film with torture foregrounds that. It’s right there. Bigelow is asking: how do you feel about this? This happened. The crucial question is how they’re shot (this is where a screener would come in handy) – at no point is the viewer invited to enjoy the torture. There is no invitation to enjoy it visually. The imagery is punishing, confrontational.

3) The CIA keeps torturing people. Key point: they don’t get any information that would prevent bombings. This is your downside right here. The film shows that torture does not obtain information that saves lives. That’s all in the movie. 

4) About the Bin Laden intel. Here, since I don’t have a screener to break it down for you scene by scene, I’ll quote Andrew O’Hehir:

Whether Ammar offers up any useful new information pointing toward Osama bin Laden, and what exactly Dan gets out of him through torture, are deliberately murky plot points. Some commentators have made it sound as though “Zero Dark Thirty” offers a clear cause-and-effect relationship, like an outtake episode of Fox’s odious “24”: They torture the hell out of some guy, he gives up Osama, the Navy SEALs bring death from above to that now legendary compound in Abbottabad, and it’s rah-rah USA! But the story this movie spins isn’t anything like that, and we’re a long way from idiotic ticking-bomb scenarios.

At most, Boal’s screenplay suggests that one detail emerged from this interrogation that would become important a long way down the line – but that it was actually information the CIA already possessed from other sources. Even that vague connection is contentious, since virtually everything about this story is. I suspect Boal’s intention is more like this: Torture was absolutely employed by CIA interrogators on presumed al-Qaida detainees, and the people who practiced it apparently believed it was working. Therefore it’s an important part of the story whether or not it really produced “actionable intel.” “Zero Dark Thirty”absolutely does not imply that torture interrogations led directly to the shadowy bin Laden contact who in turn led the CIA to “the Sheik’s” Pakistani hiding place. It’s just as plausible to say that “Zero Dark Thirty” suggests that torture became a grotesque and unproductive sideshow that gummed up the works and slowed down the more normal forms of surveillance, coercion and subterfuge that constitute intelligence-gathering.

“Demolished? Hardly. I believe I’ve responded to your concerns at least in part. …
For specific scene-by-scene details, I’d need access to a screener. Since I don’t, I consult the critics to jog my memory…”

I.e., as you’ve just stated, you’ve not responded to my ‘concerns’.
I don’t have access to a screener either. I just saw the movie once. I present numerous specifics for my position. You aren’t presenting much of any for yours.

Specifically, on this page:

1) When I present points re: Bigelow presenting torture as useful with no actual drawbacks for the protagonist, you state: “You’re assuming you’re meant to identify with the protagonist. ” I respond with “I’m *declaring* that”, and challenge you to show I’m wrong. You don’t answer this at all, you just continue to imply that she *may* be “unreliable”. As if that possibility means I’m certainly wrong.

2) Then you additionally claim that Bigelow is just trying to make us feel ‘complicit’. I point out that Bigelow doesn’t even say this in her excuses, and that the way she presents torture – is not presenting us with something to really feel guilty about and thus complict. You don’t respond to this argument either.

3) Then, in response to another comment of mine, you baldly state that I’m “over-reaching” and that “Torture, as presented in the movie, is abhorrent and vile.”

I point out once again that nothing bad happens to any good guys as a result of the torture in this movie, that the protagonists only benefit from the use of torture, and that torture is ONLY shown as something that produces answers and is basically presented as being key to the capture of Bin Laden – and that without torture being available, the CIA characters complain that their job is harder now. You have no response to this.

4) Then, further, after you try to dismiss those who disagree with you as being film illiterates, you challenge me to produce the “America Fuck Yeah!” moment at the end. So, I do produce it for you. You have no response to that either. Instead you fall back on how detractors must be wrong about how Bigelow treats torture, because popular film critics like the movie. Can you see what a non sequitir that is? It’s missing the point almost as much as Bigelow saying her movie can’t be too soft on torture, because she’s a pacifist who happens to make war movies.

In closing, you misunderstand me. I don’t want arguments by authority. I don’t really care how much Michael Moore loves or hates anything, I care about why – as in, for what reasons based on what evidence.You have decided to love this movie and you have decided that anyone who dislikes this movie for whitewashing torture are simply wrong. Perhaps you are simply sold on the visuals and don’t think anything else matters. If so, perhaps you should consider that other people are seeing things you do not, by going beneath the visuals to the conceptual underpinnings of the movie.

ZDT is a complex, ambiguous and problematic film (for instance, the fact that the narrative is shaped into a thriller means that the investigation takes on a seductive urgency, an amoral thrust). I don’t know what you’re after with your “downsides to torture” thing. Yes, sure, it could include a scene in which a CIA goon kills someone. It could, but it doesn’t. The lack of such a scene doesn’t mean anything. What we’re given should be enough. (Don’t forget that the POV of the film is close-to-the-ground – it’s up to the viewer to take a moral distance from the events. Which Bigelow encourages by opening the film with torture.)

For specific scene-by-scene details, I’d need access to a screener. Since I don’t, I consult the critics to jog my memory – by which I don’t mean entertainment news hacks, but people who study and write about the medium seriously, and who understand the visual grammar of film. Crucially, I can’t find a single one who says ZDT is propaganda. Nor can I find anyone who contradicts my memory about how the torture scenes were handled and their function in the narrative (you seem to be alone in thinking they’re in there to show how Maya “mans up” or something – nor can I find a single one who interprets the ending as a rah-rah America fuck yeah moment. The images tell us the story. This is dirty work, this is slaughter, you’re complicit in it). Many of the critics raise issues about the film and its aesthetics, certainly. And these WOULD be interesting to talk about. 

Eh, you want appeal to authority, I’ll give you someone who understands the power of strong, political images – Michael Moore. Here you go: ‘Moore praised “Zero Dark Thirty” both as storytelling and cinema, and told them he thought many liberals had misinterpreted it. He had recently seen the film with his wife, he said, and they “got it.” It’s “the story of what happened,” he went on, but not a story intended to be read as literal, blow-by-blow journalism. That ambiguity, he suggested, had engaged a tendency among many liberals to leap to conclusions and resist deep thinking.’http://www.salon.com/2013/01/08/hot_topics_big_stars_at_n_y_critics_dinner/

From this artist’s perspective, your resistance to this as a possibility and your rather dramatic conclusion that this is “depressing” is really just fine. No worries at all, in fact. :)

Every single person who has seen that film is 100% certified valid in having an opinion on that film. Period. 

I’m aware of no licensing requirement to officially be a “reputable” film critic. I’ll note that many film critics loved “Titanic”, which I regard as one of the most godawful pieces of shite to ever be inflicted on a  culture. And many don’t think much of “Escape From New York”, which is an utter gem.

This is a discussion about art, which is unavoidably and even necessarily subjective. But it can be discussed and points can be made and received, regarding the observed nature of the film itself. And those points and arguments can and should be weighed on the basis of their merits, and not some farcical authority based on some other peoples’ positions writing columns about romantic comedies. That’s about as relevant as some farcical aquatic ceremony.

Yes, this film presents torture as a net positive. 

I get that you don’t like this conclusion. If you disagree, please show how you think it presents torture as a negative – with concrete examples from this movie.

How is the protagonist’s life made worse because of her involvement in torture? In no way at all.
What innocents are harmed because of America’s use of torture? None.

How is the protagonist’s main goal, catching Bin Laden, made more difficult because of torture? Not in any way at all.

And HOW does the film “make clear that torture was NOT a particularly effective intelligence-gathering technique”? The sole comment of this, mentions that the CIA can’t do this any more – and that the CIA’s work is now HARDER because  the CIA can’t do this any more. 

I  get that you want to *believe* this point is clearly made, for whatever reason. What I’m telling you is that  there is no evidence whatsoever for your belief in this, from seeing this movie. 

Prove me wrong and show me concrete examples of what you’re talking about. Since I’m so wrong, that should be quite easy for  you. Right?

The point is made clearly enough. What more do you want?  Mr. Mackey to step in and tell us that torture is bad, m’kay?