Impressive and rigorous, “Zero Dark Thirty”, recounting the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, was released just ten years ago. A film which also aroused lively controversy, and which was generously supported by the CIA, even secretly…
The concept of “war on terror” or “war on terrorism”, shaped by the hawks of the Bush Administration after the attacks of September 11, 2001 to set up military campaigns, quickly led to the theorization of the concept of “preventive wars”, against States accused of harboring terrorist groups or likely to supply them with “weapons of mass destruction”, the cause of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 which was juxtaposed with the war in Afghanistan started in October 2001.
Many American films have highlighted this America at war: Green Zone, Redacted, Lions and Lambs, Battle For Haditha, The Kingdom, Lies of State and other Syriana to broaden the spectrum. We will readily cite Kathryn Bigelow’s brilliant and multi-Oscar-winning Minesweepers, a bitter and very unfair commercial failure, which very appropriately underlines the psychological effects on some of these never-ending preventive wars.
Zero Dark Thirty, released just ten years ago, closes the chapter in a way, since it evokes the very long hunt, ten years there too, of the organizer of the September 11 attacks: Osama Ben Laden, shot dead in the Pakistani border town of Abbottabad in May 2011. Carried by an imperial and formidable Jessica Chastain, the film was also called For God and Country (“For God and Country”) and even Kill Bin Laden; a title that could not be more explicit.
Even before its release, the film caused a lively controversy. Peter King, elected Republican and chairman of the Homeland Security Committee in the US House of Representatives at the time, had asked for an investigation to be opened into relations between the Pentagon and the filmmaker. Pattern ? The Pentagon would have provided him with “secret defense” information to help him make his film.
Universal Pictures International France
The director and her screenwriter Mark Boal strongly defended themselves by explaining that their project was “in development for many years and [prenait] account the collective efforts of three administrations, Clinton, Bush and Obama […]”.
It turned out that the suspicions of the elected Republican were not so unfounded as that. The film had benefited from the very enlightened advice of Leon Panetta (camped by James Gandolfini in the film), the former boss of the CIA. Secret details were provided by the latter during a ceremony organized at the headquarters of the CIA in honor of those who had taken part in this hunt. A ceremony attended by Mark Boal precisely …
Bigelow’s film was also controversial on a very specific but very important point: it gave credence to the idea that the information that led to Bin Laden’s finding was obtained under torture. At the time acting director of the CIA, Michael Morell also wanted to bring his point of view on the question:
“Zero Dark Thirty creates the strong impression that the enhanced interrogation techniques, which were part of our former detention and interrogation program, were key elements in finding bin Laden. This impression is wrong. The film takes considerable liberties in depicting CIA agents and their actions and can in no way be considered a documentary.”
Universal Pictures International France
However, in May 2013, declassified CIA documents revealed in more detail the agency’s involvement during the film’s production, pressuring Mark Boal for significant changes, because the base script showed the CIA in too much of a negative light.
We know, for example, that the character of Jessica Chastain was initially to participate in the torture sequence of the film, the so-called “bath” scene, in which the agency tries to extract information from the character played by Reda Kateb. In the final version of the film, she is content to observe the scene…
A scene also using a dog to intimidate a detainee during an interrogation was deleted at the request of the CIA. However, no invention of the screenwriter of the film. Dogs were well used during interrogations, and even during terrible photos revealing the scandal of the prison of Abu Ghraib, in Iraq.
Mark Boal had defended himself from any pressure exerted by the CIAexplaining that, “Like any publication or artwork, the final decisions rest with the makers of the films”. A somewhat short explanation that is still a contortion…
Beyond the controversies, not unfounded moreover, Zero Dark Thirty is an impressive, virtuoso, rigorous film, with a crazy intensity in the last half hour. A work far from the go-to-war clichés that some wanted to lend him. If you’ve never seen it, you know what you have to do.