The great bin Laden raid movie Zero Dark Thirty has come under fire lately for its torture scenes. Apparently some people are upset because the movie appears to suggest that torture works in getting accurate, actionable intelligence in a timely manner. (Even the CIA has made public criticisms of this point.) But is this really true? I have seen the movie three times, and I can say that during the first viewing, it gave me that impression initially; but in the subsequent viewings, it became clear that the movie was showing mistreatment of detainees producing no useful information whatsoever, and useful, accurate intel was only procured through other means, especially kindness. (You could argue that the kindness appeared to work only in conjunction with an implied threat, but that is a different argument.) But it seems to me that this whole issue is completely missing the point of what this movie is trying to do: document history, albeit in a condensed narrative for cinematic consumption.
Sure, this movie represents years of work by scores of people, and as such it had to be boiled down and reduced to a minimal account for cinematic purposes. But in essence, it attempts to depict, in a nutshell, as it were, the overall picture of the efforts to find and eliminate the world's most notorious terrorist leader and mastermind, and the overarching journey from start to finish. And it is based on true history, regardless of how reductive it must be to get it all down to a comprehensible narrative with relatable and recognizable characters running just under three hours. So, seeing as how it is a historical movie, trying to be accurate as much as possible, why is there this condemnation of the interrogation torture scenes? (And more to the point, why bash the filmmakers for including historical facts into a historical movie?) These scenes are shocking and distasteful, yes; but stuff like this occurred. Should they have edited history to remove the objectionable portions, and essentially lie by omission? And if they did that, would it really be historical anymore? Whether the "enhanced interrogation" stuff worked or not is pretty much irrelevant here: it happened, and it was a very high-profile policy debated by everyone, so they included it. But that doesn't mean they enjoyed including it.
Yes, America engaged in some unsavory behavior in a misguided attempt to fight terrorism, making America appear oppressive and lowering our moral position, and this policy likely led to even further terrorist recruitment. It was a mistake. But it happened. And we cannot make it un-happen. And scrubbing its existence from a historical movie about the hunt for Osama bin Laden would be inherently dishonest. And I will go even further than that to say that if we edit out the unacceptable bits of our past, removing and sanitizing our history, then how do we learn the errors of our ways and pass these lessons on to further generations? In our Constitution, we never remove anything: we repeal parts with other new parts, but we always leave everything we have passed as constitutional policy in the Constitution so that we can see our past mistakes, learn from them, and hopefully not repeat them. Papering over our sins does not remove them, it only seeks to hide them from view so we can deny them and act as if they never existed. And to do this is to learn nothing. Torture is ugly and inhuman, and this movie reminds us of this; it does not celebrate or condone it, and neither does it show it to be effective. This movie includes it because it happened, not because it works.
Are we really in such an age of political correctness that we cannot tell the truth anymore? Do people really want us to scrub out the unpleasant aspects of history in an attempt to propagate some utopian mirage of the past just to make everyone feel better? And if so, what historical movies will Hollywood make next? Will we see a Henry VIII biopic where he doesn't divorce and behead Ann Boleyn because it seems too misogynistic? Will Sir Thomas More escape imprisonment and execution because he seems like such a nice guy?* How about a JFK biography film where he doesn't get assassinated? After all, that's such a downer, and he was such a great American! Not all of our history is pretty (see Oliver Stone's Untold History of the United States for confirmation of this {but take it with a tablespoon of salt when he starts editorializing about hypotheticals}), but it is our history, and we can only learn not to repeat it if we remember it.
Now, I believe Zero Dark Thirty is the best picture of the year, and as such, I think it deserves the Academy Award for Best Picture. But if it doesn't get it, I think it will most likely be due to the inclusion and depiction of the "enhanced interrogation" scenes, and the fact that some have the incorrect impression that the movie is saying torture works. And that would be a real shame, because the only way this film could have not included those scenes would have been to eschew the unsavory aspects of the "War on Terror"; and to do that would have been intellectually dishonest and historically inaccurate. And if they were going to do that, then why not just fictionalize the whole thing and call it Star Wars: The Hunt for Darth Vader?
* (Amusingly, movies about Sir Thomas More as a heroic martyr, like the multiple Oscar-winning A Man for All Seasons, completely eschew the fact that he used to love to burn Protestants at the stake for heresy, and that almost seems like condoning his torture and murder of many others just because he wouldn't bend to the king on the divorce issue. See what happens when you pick and choose what to remember about history? Murderers can become saints. {He is a saint. Even though he killed many people horribly due only to their religious views. Yuck!})
P.S.: Hey, look: Michael Moore agrees with me about the Zero Dark Thirty torture controversy! (This is from an entertainment news story from Jan 10, 2013):
http://movies.yahoo.com/news/controversial-director-defends-oscar-nominated--zero-dark-thirty--230958126.html
