Surface readings don't do Zero Dark Thirty justice

Rating: 7/10 (27 December 2012)

"Zero Dark Thirty" is a cinematic masterpiece and a fantastic examination of the post-9/11 era in America. Just like Bigelow's last work, "The Hurt Locker," most of the film is presented without commentary; a nearly documentary account of the hunt for bin Laden, starting from the nascent days of the Bush-era War on Terror, to the more recent and more surgical approach of the Obama administration. But, in the same way as "The Hurt Locker," the film builds to a climax where the main character - seemingly underdeveloped and superficial - comes to represent something greater than herself: potential and innocence consumed and slowly corrupted by the hunt that offers no meaning at its termination.
The raw nature of the cinematography is to be commended. Even the most difficult to watch scenes, the famed torture scenes, are presented without commentary, without music or any particularly fancy effect. Realism is emphasized. Hand-held cameras are used whenever possible. This realism builds to an amazing 30-minute climax at bin Laden's compound that brings the event back to life.
Surface readings of the film don't do it justice. The torture, while questionably successful in the film, does not serve to glorify the practice, but builds toward the film's greater point. Complaints about the one-dimensional and unexplained obsession of the main character fall under the same category. A deeper reading, more evident when the ending is taken into account, reveals the futility of the enterprise of the hunt for bin Laden in the same way Hurt Locker's final scenes revealed the obsession with combat and danger that had beset the main character throughout the film. It is not relevant that torture had "worked" if the end that it worked toward was never worthwhile in the first place.
Among the best films of the year and well-deserving of Best Picture.