Finally, the central character in Zero Dark Thirty, Maya, is an embodiment of the entire country’s complacency when it comes to torture. She can’t bear to watch the abuse take place in the opening scenes, and yet when she’s ordered to assist, she complies. She ends up responsible for abusive methods that take place. She isn’t meant to be heroic when she’s doing this. She is shown to be obsessive, combative, and detached from any emotion or sympathy. We see her demonstrate some emotion when the closest thing she has to a friend is killed in an explosion, but the interactions we see between them are awkward and while she shows she’s affected by the tragic event, she doesn’t shed tears.
This sets up a contrast with when they finally capture and kill Bin Laden. She sees the SEALs return having completed their mission, and is shocked but relatively unmoved. She looks at the body of UBL and is shaken but composed. It’s when she boards the aircraft and asked where she wants to go that she breaks down in tears. It’s a moment when everything that has led up to the completion of her mission that she is able to reflect on everything she’s done and been responsible for. People have rightly interpreted this as her asking “was it all worth it” but there’s much more going on in her face. It’s uncertain exactly everything she is thinking, but it’s quite clear that her thoughts do not consist of “American, f*ck yeah!” The movie doesn’t frame her as a heroic figure but a tragic one.
The movie is one that deserves to be discussed but is unfairly dismissed as one thing or another. It’s not one thing. It’s many things, and entails many differing views and perspectives and thoughts on what’s right and wrong. It tries to depict what actually happened as accurately as it’s able. It tries to do so in a way that’s true to the people involved. But it isn’t a propaganda film meant to rally people together in favour of or against torture. If you want that kind of movie, see something else, or make one yourself. This is a story about the complexity of certainty, of knowing and not knowing, and of the cost of moral compromises.
If you think Zero Dark Thirty is pro-torture, you’re simply watching it wrong.
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