Processing Ghosts in a Morally Ambiguous Maze

Rating: 8/10 (6 January 2013)

In Katherine Bigelow's previous film, The Hurt Locker, a borderline mystical, obsessive outsider(Jeremy Renner) attempts to exorcise violent malevolent spirits (bombs) from within their innocuous, unassuming hosts(cars, cadavers) whilst negotiating a labyrinthine haunted house teeming with spectral enemies(post-invasion Iraq).
In this equally hauntological follow-up, a woman (Jessica Chastain), who's self seems more defined by what's absent than what's present, hunts the ultimate ghost(Usama Bin Laden) in a perhaps misguided attempt to vanquish and banish the black hole vacuum that's been feasting on the soul of her and her country since September 11th 2001 and attain a sense of, well what exactly? Retribution? Justice? Closure? Maybe she's simply trying to lay some ghosts, both public and private, to rest...
Chastain anchors the film with a controlled, subtle performance proving she has a versatility that should propel her beyond her already brilliant support slots as wife/girlfriend etc. Only Cate Blanchett, and possibly Charlize Theron, can touch her right now. Her delicate exterior of feminine porcelain fragility belies an intelligent, taught and tough core that combine to create a surprisingly believable performance. One that puts paid to the lie that women have to act like men to succeed in a man's world. This is a film driven by a female character operating in a male dominated environment that never once resorts to hitting us over the head with gender politics. She is a professional person going about her profession in a professional manner. Nothing more, nothing less. This is true equality of the sexes on screen and it's refreshing to see it handled in this way.
The supporting cast are equally as good and all give note-perfect, generous low-key performances that are entirely in keeping with the ensemble-like nature of the film. Nobody is out to steal the picture here and it's all the better for it.
Technically Zero Dark Thirty is near flawless in direction, camera-work, cinematography, editing and music. Never once are we subjected to BOOMBOOMBOOM audio cues and blaring emotional music. Restraint is the watchword here and Bigelow manages to wring tension out of every set-piece whilst keeping us guessing, which is no mean feat considering we all know the overall outcome before we've even sat down.
Sadly I don't know how popular this ambiguous and complex film is going to be with mainstream audiences. Already, a simplistic knee-jerk critique implying that the film is a justification for torture seems to be emerging and becoming consensus opinion amongst some people, most of which have not even seen the film yet. I would position myself as centrist to left-of-center/liberal politically (I subscribe to Chomsky,Klein and Zinn, but also Ferguson and Hitchens) and I find these accusations to be overly glib and analytically myopic. Whilst within the confines of the story torture does elicit useful information, the characters never seem entirely comfortable with it and it is left up to the viewer to decide whether the ends justify the means. Events are presented as they, supposedly, occurred and, I felt, served more as a jumping off point for discussion rather than a pro-torture polemic. This is not a didactic film and its ambiguity and, perhaps misplaced, faith in the intelligence of its audience could be its ultimate downfall.
There is also a refreshing lack of triumphalism and nationalistic fervour permeating the film (the stars and stripes are especially noticeable by their absence for example). At the end of the day this is a story about process. Laborious, painstaking process. About people doing a job. About that job taking them to the darkest recesses of human thought and action and trying to return unscathed. About attempting to negotiate a map-less and morally bankrupt terrain in search of answers to questions nobody's posed before. Answers they may not even really want.
It's also quite a cold film (which is as it should be given the subject matter) and many audiences may find it difficult to connect with it in an emotional way. The characters have little to no back story and relationships are more professional than personal. At one point the death of a 'lead' appears to be mourned more than a colleague. Perhaps this is what happens when humans become mere collateral in the pursuit of ideologies...?
Ultimately Zero Dark Thirty is certainly not for everybody, but if you like adult, technically adept, taut, political info-thrillers that don't lead you around by the nose and aren't afraid to leave moral spaces in place of simplistic didactic-ism then you'll find much to wrap your brain around. It poses more complex questions than offers simple answers but, as we enter the second uncertain decade of both the 21st century and its questionable 'War on Terror', this seems entirely apt.
The problem with hunting ghosts is: how do you know when you've caught them and, like memories, how can you be sure they won't simply rise again to taunt you once more?