Originally posted by WittyHandle
I don't get why Zero Dark Thirty is getting all the hype.
Even though the film is procedural as 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.
Chris Crossland
quote:
Originally posted by Blue Neptune
This comes out today. Can't wait!
Epic.
Christoph Waltz steals every scene he's in, as usual. :) One of my favorite actors.
What was also nice was I had no idea what the movie was about before seeing it, thus I was pleasantly surprised.
WittyHandle
quote:
Originally posted by GoSpeedGo!
Zeitgeist is the only thing it had going for it imo. Like Hurt Locker, it banked on a topic relevant to the (somewhat current in the case of Osama) time, but that's all it did imo. For me, Maya's character is much better expressed through Carrie in Homeland, so I felt that I had already seen that.
kadomony
I saw Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away in 3D on my acid comedown last weekend. It was pretty great.
Halcyon+On+On
GoSpeedGo!
quote:
Originally posted by WittyHandle
Zeitgeist is the only thing it had going for it imo. Like Hurt Locker, it banked on a topic relevant to the (somewhat current in the case of Osama) time, but that's all it did imo.
That may be true, but they're both different movies. Even when you look at them very briefly, The Hurt Locker says that war is an adrenaline drug (and the action there is tense and thrilling), Zero Dark Thirty portrays war as a very long process full of exhaustive, highly professional work (and the film again ajdusts its storytelling and style to that).
I'm not saying that this difference somehow makes the films automatically more interesting than what you mentioned, it's just that there are so many different layers in each of them (including formal qualities and treatment of genre) that to talk about them simply in terms of "zeitgeist" is to grossly oversimplify what the movies represent.
zGoogleman
quote:
Originally posted by WittyHandle I don't get why Zero Dark Thirty is getting all the hype. Nothing special imo, although I hear it's by some of the same people behind Hurt Locker and I felt the same about that.
I liked Django, but I din't love it. Too long, and I'm really tired of Tarantino's soliloquies he writes in to every movie. It's cliche now, and especially in this one, it doesn't add much.
Because America finally got one of their own!
MSZ
Bronson (2008)
Pretty decent movie, going to check out the rest of Refn's work this weekend. Pusher trilogy looks interesting.
