5 Ways Zero Dark Thirty Criticizes Torture

So the first scenes of the movie consist of these controversial interrogations of a well-connected detainee named Ammar. The film is a little unclear about how long a period these sessions took place over, but it seems like a significant amount of time. It is, however, perfectly clear that he was treated brutally in this time: waterboarded, sleep-deprived, beaten, stripped of clothes in front of Maya to humiliate him, and stuffed in a box. It’s horrible to witness, and intentionally so. Anyone who says we’re supposed to identify with the torturers and not sympathize with this man being brutalized is simply incapable of relating to the empathetic environment movies operate in. Because let’s be real, Dan, the character played by Jason Clarke, is pretty hideous in these scenes, even moreso because he acts so familiarly with the prisoner, constantly referring to him as his “bro,” acting like he’s his friend while all the while abusing him. It’s disturbing stuff.

If you weren’t disturbed, so be it. You don’t have a soul, but whatevs. It’s not necessarily the thing people are most up in arms about regarding torture in this movie. They make the claim that torture led to information that led to Bin Laden, and this is just false, at least when formulated in such a clear cut way. And these early scenes demonstrated just how fallacious that claim is. Look at what happens when they’re torturing Ammar. He either refuses to say anything, or when he gets properly delirious he simply starts shouting days of the week in response to them asking when the Saudi attack is going to be. He gives them no useful information under duress, and they don’t prevent the attack. It happens, people are killed, and these interrogators tortured this dude for no justifiable reason. If they had tried other methods, could they have prevented the Saudi attack? This type of question becomes relevant later. What we know is that torture was the thing used here, and it was ineffective, period. It was only horrendously inhumane.

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