His own crimes pale to what he was fighting against. We don't have to agree with his fanatic Sunni ideology or his violent methods to note that he was in essence an element of resistance. His own story is just a tiny part of, and largely in response to, a bigger humanitarian catastrophe: American imperialism. I don't care that it was Osama bin Laden.įor starters, the conflict didn't begin with bin Laden and September 11, 2001. If bin Laden's criminality is the basis for hunting him down then what do you call the criminality we extended to him? Have we been conditioned to accept bin Laden as the ultimate evil so much so that his murder does not disturb us? Osama bin Laden) at point-blank range without due process is even worse.
Pakistan) to execute a detained and unarmed man (i.e. (See Michael Hastings' article " 'Zero Dark Thirty' And The CIA's Hollywood Coup" for more on the governments nefarious role in Hollywood flicks-though you will notice that Hastings too demonstrates the fixation).ĭon't get me wrong, torture is wrong and criminal.īut as bad as glorifying torture is, glorifying the illegal invasion of a foreign country (i.e.
#Why zero dark thirty meaning movie#
The thing that bothers me most about the hullabaloo that is coming out over the CIA-Hollywood movie Zero Dark Thirty is that the fixation is on torture. I will donate to the Democratic Party before I watch Zero Dark Thirty. I will donate to the Republican Party before I watch Zero Dark Thirty. I will listen to rightwing talk radio before I watch Zero Dark Thirty. This is the same boy who savaged my Lord of the Rings : The Return of the King experience a decade ago by repeatedly imploring Frodo and Samwise to get down to actual making out instead of just looking chastely into each other’s eyes.I will watch Titanic before I watch Zero Dark Thirty. Plus, watching a film with Shougat is a good way of ensuring that you spend much of your time laughing at it regardless of its overall quality. (Okay, seriously? Didn’t think the film was too bad – some good moments in the midsection along with some almost-too-conscientious non-Hollywoodising – but it got a little trite in the end. Which can only mean one thing: expect Oscars to be bestowed. I can’t guarantee that these are all accurate representations of what occurred in the film, but they w ere the interpretations my good friend Shougat and I preferred as we sat giggling through the final 15 minutes. Then she quietly weeps as classical heroes do when, having vanquished their ar ch-e nemies and fulfilled their life’s great purpose, they realise it's all downhill from here and that even the in-flight san dwiches on the trip home will be stale. Then she does an Achilles and drags him around the military camp behind her Lamborghini until his dad shows up and says please can I have his body back. The protagonist, a young CIA agent, gets so personal and obsessive about her mission that when presented with Osama bin Laden’s mutilated corpse, she does a Draupadi and washes her lustrous amber tresses in his blood (and yes, the film is generally very fond of her hair).
This makes it sound modern and topical, but I thought it most intriguing for its use of tropes from the old epics.
It is apparently a true story about the killing of a terrorist leader who knocked down some buildings in America a decade ago.
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