quote: | Originally posted by WittyHandle
I don't get why Zero Dark Thirty is getting all the hype. |
Even though the film is procedural as fuck and all the mainstream film critics should be bored, it does one thing critics can always recognize: it reflects the current zeitgeist very well.
I was impressed by the film; it's very impersonal and information-driven (more like information-obsessed), but that's part of the larger point ZDT is trying to make about modern war and the system in general. We see the events mostly through Maya's POV and she's a hardcore workaholic. Everything potentially humane is reduced to data, percentage of probability, pixels on the screen. So it's not just that ZDT is almost a docu-drama, this "objectivity", or rather coldness, is also important to what it says. And the ending is great.
Of course, a case could be made that the film is strongly ideological despite, or precisely because it aims for almost journalistic objectivity and tries to avoid any problematic sterotypes (jingoism, glorification of military or torture). Throughout the filmmaking process many choices have been made and most of them carry some political attitude - even things, events that were omitted say a lot about the inherent manipulative quality of film. I guess what I'm trying to say is that ZDT is potentially dangerous because - especially in the future - it could be treated as the truth and the definitive statement on the matter.
I'd be surprised if it wins any major Oscars, though. It's too bleak for that.
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"All revolutions are the sheerest fantasies until they happen; then they become historical inevitabilities."
Last edited by GoSpeedGo! on Jan-06-2013 at 22:35
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