Whether you’ve read every essay on Zero Dark Thirty or are holding judgement til you’ve seen the film yourself, it’s certainly a movie that has inspired a lot of talk.
Talk, I find, that is difficult to keep up with.
So here are a couple of discursive highlights I’ve found in the cacophony of torture chat:
In the New York Review of Books, Steve Coll explores the ‘Disturbing’ and ‘Misleading’ charges against Kathryn Bigelow’s film, and the authorial issues that lie within.
While I agree with Coll’s assessment to a great extent, Slavoj Žižek’s Zero Dark Thirty: Ode to American Power brings up some compelling points about why casual depictions of inhuman acts are problematic.
Naomi Wolf took to the Guardian to compare Kathryn Bigelow with Hitler’s propagandist filmmaker pal Leni Riefenstahl…
Like Riefenstahl, you are a great artist. But now you will be remembered forever as torture’s handmaiden.
Which was quickly subject to a take-down from Mark Kermode, who calls her out, and revisits a greatest hits of Oscar-season press controversies. Watch below:
For further, further reading, check out some of the posts linked by Andrew Sullivan at The Dish.
What are your thoughts on the Zero Dark Thirty / torture debate?
Please feel free to share links to your highlights in the comments below.