Affirmation

The fleeting moments of life’s affirmations can occur so seldom that sometimes you forget they exist at all. They come at moments unexpected. It might be a word, a gesture, a look, a touch. And although often small, they can be as bright shining as the Sun. In that moment, your life can flash before you like a film playing in your own personal cinema. But you are watching from the seats. You see yourself in your own film....the directions you’ve gone in….and the choices you’ve made. You see yourself up there on screen and you think to yourself…."Is that me? Did these things really happen?" And in the moment of affirmation you are given the courage to say yes; that is me. I am me. These moments occur rarely, but they are needed in order to keep going….even if just for another day. They cannot be planned, earned, or bought. They are given as gifts. Enjoy them….whenever they may reach you.

Street Angel (1928) - Directed by Frank Borzage

A few weeks ago I went on a Frank Borzage binge, a deep dive into 7 films of his that I’ve never seen before. In fact, until that week, somehow I had managed to never see a Frank Borzage film…..ever. This was the list of films I watched: 7^th Heaven, Street Angel, Lucky Star, Bad Girl, After Tomorrow, and The Shining Hour. Borzage represents a style of filmmaking that would seem to me to have almost been completely eliminated from our consciousness. Here we have a director who pulls together some fantastically staged visual themes of love and sexuality, complete with some wonderfully expressive use of atmosphere: streets, apartments, rooftops. Yet he throws in heavy doses of wild melodrama. Now melodrama, in the hands of Sirk, tends to be something that modern audiences have received well. There’s something about Sirk’s use of color and tone that adds a layer of subversion to his melodrama. But Borzage tells his stories with a straight face, in black and white. There’s really nothing inherently funny or campy per se lurking beneath the surface. Borzage’s version of melodrama is irony free, and I don’t think today’s viewers know what to do with that.

Although 7^th Heaven gets most of the attention, and Lucky Star is a hidden gem, Street Angel is Borzage’s best film of the bunch that I’ve seen and is a romantic masterpiece, standing with the greatest love stories of all time. It is the story of a woman named Angela (Janet Gaynor), who in need of some money to purchase medicine for her mother, attempts to prostitute herself on the street, and winds up getting arrested for robbery and sentenced to a year in a work house. She runs off before being imprisoned, and escapes to find her mother dead at home. She avoids the cops and runs off to join the circus, where she meets a painter named Gino. They strike up an awkward friendship, but soon bond and fall in love. Their blossoming love, and impending marriage is threatened when the police find her again. She is taken to prison while Gino is unaware. He thinks she is lost forever, and things get really interesting when she is released a year later.

Janet Gaynor won the first Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayals in three films: Sunrise (1927), 7^th Heaven (1927), and Street Angel (1928). AMPAS first designed these awards to be based upon an actor’s body of work for that entire year. If you had to ask me, I think her performance in Street Angel is the best of the three. I don’t think Sunrise capitalizes on her sincere and varied emotional qualities as well as the Borzage films, and in fact Borzage makes far greater use of melodramatic elements than Murnau ever did. She has a girl next-door quality about her and also a burgeoning sexuality that was not an easy combination to pull off for other actresses in this era like Garbo, Brooks, or Gish (all of whom were either too beautiful or too saintly for those descriptors to match up). She has great chemistry with her leading man, Charles Ferrell, whom she appeared with in a total of 12 films together! His performance here is very solid, and much more understated than in 7^th Heaven. Her character hovers in the realm of the Madonna/Whore complex, which is used here to illicit some specific choices that Ferrell’s character must make regarding his view of her. She is in fact, neither all good nor all bad, but in fact, a real woman whom he must decide if he can love her the way she is.

Borzage’s use of wildly ridiculous melodramatic elements is to my mind, highly entertaining and emotionally satisfying, and part of what Borzage is all about: the obstacles thrown in love’s way forces us to sacrifice, make tough choices, and is a true test of how devoted one really is to one's lover. Love is not proven true, until it perseveres beyond adversity, and this is most apparent in his silent films especially: 7^th Heaven, Street Angel, and Lucky Star. His emphasis on depth of field, set design, and lighting were also great choices. Street Angel includes some fantastic tracking shots and pans, use of silhouette and shadow, and of particular note, the intense scene among the thick fog along the docks at the end of the film. This is a spectacular shot, filled with suspense and romantic desperation that then culminates in a perversely emotional climax that finishes in a church. It is one of the greatest romantic endings to any film I’ve seen and caps the film with a feverish pitch. I wish that audiences of today could appreciate this stuff more, but we’ve been so trained to snicker and doubt the sanity of films like this. Street Angel is too well made, and too spectacular to be left by the wayside though. It’s a masterpiece to my mind.

The Fire Within (1963) - Directed by Louis Malle

Louis Malle tends to be somewhat chameleonic. Perhaps to his own detriment among auteur theorists. He doesn’t get mentioned with the likes of other auteurs from his era and yet I continue to find more and more films from him that are so elegantly crafted and intensely felt, even though they occur within a wide range of film styles and genres. Last year I watched his final film he made, which was Vanya on 42^nd Street, basically a stage play, which was just fantastic. He made all sorts of films….drama, neo-noir, comedy, surrealist…..just about everything. He in fact made challenging work for the better part of 4 decades. That’s not something many directors can claim. He continues to gain my respect, even though it’s hard for me to quantify and categorize his work. I just know that I really enjoy them. The Fire Within is no exception.

One of 2012’s most acclaimed films was Joachim Trier’s Oslo, August 31^st. However, many essays on the film fail to mention the fact that this film is basically a re-working of Malle’s The Fire Within. They are essentially the same stories (both based upon the book Le feu follet by Pierre Drieu la Rochelle), except Malle’s original work regards the addiction to alcohol whereas Trier’s work looks at heroin. The fact of the matter remains that these particular stories are not really about the addiction per se. These are not works that address the clinical aspects of the addiction, rather the aftermath of individuals who reached rock bottom, who entered rehab and who came out on the other side in a deep depression. We get the sense that in fact, though, the depression has always been there, it’s just that the addiction was a way to cover it up for awhile. Without the escape of the drug of choice, the hopelessness and despair becomes something of a siren song leading these men toward suicide.

For me, Malle’s work is an underrated gem in his canon, and an uncompromising masterpiece of elegiac minimalism and despair, filled with the perfect balance of character and situational context, psychological examination, and propulsive, focused writing that allows us to at least understand and comprehend the man’s situation, even if his situation appears irrational from our perspective. What I struggled with in Trier’s modern interpretation, is that the choice to have the man named Anders (played by Anders Danielsen Lie) released from re-hab and set-up with an interview felt like an institutional reintroduction of him into society as an aspect of his re-hab. The fact we realize early on in Oslo that the man is not cured, and yet is essentially patted on the head and told to go on his way, leaves an implication of irresponsibility on the part of the “institution”, which in the case of the Norwegian medical insurance structure, is a government subsidized entity. This failed aspect of “society” to reintroduce Anders and “heal” him leaves the film with an oddly manipulative feel, as if there is a blame aspect to be placed somewhere through this association with the medical irresponsibility and the failed recognition of this man’s intent. It felt hollow to me. It wasn’t a clinical study. It wasn’t an examination of suicide either. I felt manipulated by the fact that the man is shown to perhaps have a way out of his depression and MIGHT just be able to move on. The film has moments toward the end where there is a suspense as to his outcome. But, when the outcome comes to light in the final passages, it revealed how hollow this film was and what a despicable exercise in audience manipulation it was. I realize many saw something else in this film, but I feel something important was missing…..the sense of internal responsibility for one’s actions and the sense that there’s no one else to blame for this.

Malle’s film is another thing altogether. It is a clear-eyed examination of a man named Alain Leroy (played brilliantly by Maurice Ronet) who has a clear intent to kill himself. From the get-go, we see him planning and prepping for the day of his own execution. He goes through the motions of finding brief comfort in the arms of a woman, through visiting his friends one last time, but there is no disguising the fact he has reached the end of his rope. It is this focus of vision in Malle’s film that rings true to me throughout its running time. Malle’s use of Erik Satie’s piano works are also a magnificent choice. Unadorned, and melancholy, these musical interludes provide the right touch of cinematic embellishment, without manipulation. Using the techniques of natural lighting, stark b&w and hand-held camera work gives the film a focus on reality. There’s no flashbacks here. There’s no digressions into potential hope. There’s nothing but depression. This is not an easy film to like. However regarding the subject matter, it is as respectful, focused, and elegant a film as I can think of on the subject. 

The Burmese Harp (1956) - Directed by Kon Ichikawa

After recently watching Kon Ichikawa’s Fires on the Plain, and being completely blown away by its tone and perspective on war, it was with great anticipation that I quickly sought out his other highly regarded film, The Burmese Harp. Harp was made 3 years prior, but it is vastly different in tone, look, and overall impression. Yet it is no less effective or moving an experience. In fact, it is a film of great humanism and compassion, which is almost polar opposite from Fires on the Plain’s hellish view of war. It’s fascinating that a director can make such different films on the same subject within such a short period of time.

The Burmese Harp follows a band of Japanese soldiers in Burma, late in the war in 1945, who have formed a special bond over their ability to sing songs of home and camaraderie, and who also have acquired a harp. A private named Mizushima has learned how to play it along with their renditions. After the Japanese surrender to a group of British soldiers and the war is over, the Private is sent on a short mission to convince a group of soldiers, who are hunkered into a mountain fortress, to surrender. He is unable to convince them and ends up in the midst of shelling by the British. Mizushima is thought dead, but is in fact the only survivor of the battle. He acquires a monk’s robe as a disguise, and begins a journey that will take him to spiritual enlightenment. He achieves this through a profound desire to bury dead soldiers. He is adopted by a group of monks and seems to disappear from all traces of his previous life as a soldier, until some chance encounters with his troupe bring memories and experiences flooding back.

Ichikawa’s film, although in 1.33 aspect ratio, is nearly as expressive as Fires on the Plain. Cinematography by Minoru Yokoyama contains beautifully framed moments that are arranged in montage. I often recalled Soviet cinema here and think of Eisenstein or even the work of Kolotozov who released The Cranes Are Flying right about the same time. There is wonderful use of low-angle camera shots, and soft lighting that illuminates faces in the foreground while the background is darkened. There’s also the terrific balance between close-ups, medium range, and long shots. In fact, balance throughout the film is key. There is a balance between ugliness and beauty, between pain and healing. Both the elements of the script and the visuals themselves seem to feed into these opposing features.

What I especially loved was the meditative tone, which is heartfelt, genuine and offers up some very moving setpieces. I think of the moment on the beach where Mizushima is working solo to bury a large pile of dead soldiers with a group of onlookers seemingly astonished that anyone would do such a thing. Yet his inspirational efforts cause the rest of them to pitch in. Also there is that spectacular moment near the end where Mizushima’s soldier troupe reads a letter aloud that he wrote, explaining everything he is doing and why. It is a great moment of compassion and outpouring of emotion that is thoroughly earned. Ichikawa breeds a sense of redemption and hope into this film that is vastly different from the following Fires on the Plain. In fact, this also has to be one of the most spiritually satisfying films I’ve ever seen. Rare is the film that is able to touch something of the soul in this particular way. 

Mulholland Dr. (2001) - Directed by David Lynch

There are those movie experiences that stick with you. I remember back in the fall of 2001….it must have been in October I suppose, and I was attending school at the University of Illinois. I was in the midst of filmic obsession, probably viewing at least one arthouse or classic film every day. So I arrived to the Goodrich 16 in Savoy, which was just the town over, to watch Mulholland Dr. I specifically remember being one of only 3 people in the theatre for that evening’s showing. I also distinctly remember feeling completely overwhelmed by the film, to the point that when it was over I could only sit there. I literally didn’t want to move when it was over as I felt so overwhelmed and shaken by the film. When it was over I remember thinking that I had no idea what I had just seen but I had seen something AMAZING. I didn’t care that I didn’t understand the plot. Somehow all that mattered was understanding the emotions. It was an overwhelming emotional experience…feeling terrified and exhilarated all at the same time. It was probably the single most incredible experience in a movie theatre that I’ve had to date. Amazingly, it had been over a decade since I’ve seen the film.

Going back to revisit films that I really love is kind of an odd thing for me. I go long periods without watching films. Lynch’s film at the time was getting a lot of dissection over the plot and the structure. Watching it so far removed from its release allowed me to take the film as it is, which is actually a remarkably simple story. Mulholland Dr. is the story of Diane Selwyn (Naomi Watts) who comes to Hollywood with dreams of being a movie star. She tries out at an audition that her aunt helps her get, but loses out to a woman named Camilla Rhodes (Laura Harring). They end up hitting it off and eventually become entwined in a passionate affair that leaves Diane feeling helpless and abandoned when Camilla becomes involved with her director. Diane, bitter with rage and hatred for Camilla, hires a hitman to kill her. Diane spends an entire day dreaming, daydreaming and remembering times she had with Camilla and experiences since she got to Hollywood. She ends the day by killing herself over the grief of losing her lover and the loss of her dream.

Of course the film is not as straightforward as I’m making it sound. For the first 2 hours of the film, we see Diane’s dream. It is explicitly a dream as we see a POV shot of someone lying down on a pillow, and we see Diane wake up at the end of the dream. In her dream, she projects all of her fantasies and desires and redirects certain events in her life to skew the outcome of her wishes. In her dream, she is Betty, and Camilla is Rita. She takes certain people from her real life and views their roles differently, in order to redirect her present day guilt and fear. I liken this to The Wizard of Oz, whereby Dorothy re-imagines those in her life into different characters. It’s much the same here. We also know it’s a dream from the cryptic glossiness of the first two hours and from the odd dream logic in which things occur. It is a heightened state of reality where everything is of extreme importance. This is contrasted with reality at the end where Diane is shallow eyed, morose and bitter and even the film loses it's glossy edge for a more realistic and pat portrayal.

Lynch also displays much of his prototypical Lynchianisms throughout, from the velvet red curtains, to flickering lights, to bizarre setpieces, to fractured linearity, to the use of sex to reflect fear and desire. What I was struck by watching it this time, is how the film is mostly about a woman scorned, and when the film is over, the thing that stands out is the desperate sadness and bitterness of Diane/Betty. It is a sad tale of lost love and lost innocence. She projected an immense amount of love and emotion into her relationship with Camilla, but it was not returned to her in the same quantity. Her dream allows her the fantasy of recreating the feeling of being in love, and controlling the relationship, making Camilla do what she wants, that is until the two women attend the show at the Silencio club in the dream. This scene still plays as one of Lynch’s greatest setpieces, filled with clues that the film we have been watching thus far is a dream. It contains that brilliant Spanish acapella version of Roy Orbison’s “Crying”, “sung" by the woman on stage as Betty and Rita sit in the audience brought to tears for no apparent reason, other than that Diane is realizing that it is a dream (while dreaming), and that it must come to an end.... that she is about to come back to reality and know that she has had Camilla killed. The scene is one of cinema’s best moments of the last 15 years.

Many also see the film as a myth of the Hollywood dream. It does contain some kinship with Wilder’s Sunset Blvd., but I don’t think Lynch’s film plays best this way. If it’s the tale of the dark side of the Hollywood dream, doesn’t that play a bit too clichéd for our modern sensibility? Don’t we know this already, that Hollywood is nothing but a catch-all for 15 minutes of fame type stuff? Isn’t the myth of the Hollywood dream so 1950’s? If this is all that Lynch was after, I don’t think it’s worth the effort on that basis alone. I think it plays better as a heightened emotional experience, as a surrendering of the senses to dream logic, or as a fractured and tragic love story. It also contains what may be the best performance by any actress of the last 15 years. Naomi Watts thoroughly commands the screen, playing what amounts to two roles and has scenes of intense honesty here that has rarely been duplicated in the last decade. She is emotionally fragile and carries the film on her shoulders. In the scene where she attends the party given by Camilla and the director Adam, there is that look of sadness and disgust on her face as she attempts to hold back tears while watching Camilla and Adam across the table. Lynch’s film ultimately works so well because it makes one FEEL. It is one of cinema’s great experiences. I had that feeling back in 2001, and I still have it now. Trying to dissect it too much leads to over-analysis and rather rote interpretations and I don’t think that’s where the film’s strengths lie. It is best experienced and felt, rather than undermined with too much dissection.

The Loneliest Planet (2012) - Directed by Julia Loktev

Toward the end of the year I had come across a few really nice reviews of Julia Loktev’s The Loneliest Planet. It also just so happens that it was playing On-Demand, which for me, living in Kalamazoo, MI is a really nice opportunity to be able to see hard-to-find films like this. I wish this opportunity would be made for other films as well. Go ahead and charge me admission price for the film…..I just want access to it. Loktev’s film has a freshness of ideas that I find really rewarding, even though I know that for many people, watching this film would be a near interminable experience.

Gael Garcia Bernal and Hani Furstenberg play Alex and Nica, a couple that is soon to be married, but who are on a 3-day backpacking trip in Georgia (the Georgia in Asia that is). The film literally drops us into the film with no context provided. It appears that at least one of them has connections to the culture there, but no real explanation is given that I recall. They hire a local man to be their guide on their hike. They proceed through a scenic stretch of the Georgian mountains that would take anyone’s breath away. What the film examines is whether our couple really KNOWS each other and how do they handle crisis. Through the journey of the film, they will encounter a few moments that will call their roles, loyalties, and commitments into question: foremost I feel the film examines communication (both of the verbal and non-verbal variety); the traditions of male/female roles, equality and expectations; and also whether in our modern world these expectations are still relevant or should be relevant.

Loktev’s approach here is much in line with minimalist cinema. I draw on comparisons here to Chantal Akerman, Bela Tarr, Gus Van Sant, and more recently to the works of Kelly Reichardt. Barring a few examples, I really like the minimalist movement and generally find these films to be energizing and moving experiences. If one does not take to films like these that I mentioned, then perhaps one may not like The Loneliest Planet either. Loktev’s film takes the framework of this cinema, but certainly examines new elements and adds her own eye and perspective to this type of work. There are topics, shots, and sequences here that I don’t feel like I’ve ever seen in cinema before, from the jarring opening images, to the debate of chivalry, which is inherent to this film, to unique perspectives on certain moments (the sex scene which is almost disguised as not a sex scene at all, to the scene of illness outside a tent, to playing ball with someone invisible behind a fence), to the fantastic cinematography, which incorporates those vast swaths of green and gray of the mountainsides, punctuated by Fursternerg’s wild mane of red hair. Something here feels alive and vital. Even though there is barely any sequences of true dialogue, there is also a great deal of character development. It all requires effort on the part of the viewer to seek it out and examine it as you watch.

I’m not going to try to convince anyone of the virtues of this type of film that is not inclined to it in the first place. It is not easy to convince anyone that watching people walk silently across a landscape is something to be enjoyed. What I really love is the texture of it. It’s the texture and feeling of the present, being with these people on this journey and thinking through the ramifications of what is happening to them and why. I enjoy the thinking while I am watching and not being TOLD what to feel or HOW to feel it. There are literally no signposts here that cue anything. For the most part, key moments that occur are never discussed. In fact I think it’s completely possible to miss certain moments here and thus fail to register the full impact of what the film is about. Maybe this is a fault of the director? Maybe this is a fault of the viewer? I cannot say. What I enjoy is the active viewing and thinking. This is a film that of course will divide viewers by its very nature. But it is that nature in particular that I am so fond of. 

Zero Dark Thirty (2012) - Directed by Kathryn Bigelow

“The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden….It is our No. 1 priority and we will not rest until we find him.”
-         George W. Bush - 9/13/01

“…We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al-Qaida. That has to be our biggest national security priority.”

-      Barack Obama - 10/8/08 

It was that accursed white whale that razed me; made a poor pegging lubber of me for ever and a day!... I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give him up. And this is what ye have shipped for, men! To chase that white whale on both sides of land, and over all sides of earth, till he spouts black blood and rolls fin out.

 -         Herman Melville - Moby Dick

2012 is littered with the refuse of my own disenchantment with cinema. I was waiting and waiting for a savior that never seemed to come. There were a few films that were great, but nothing that seemed incredibly earth shattering. Then there was Zero Dark Thirty. It might be a perfect movie. I think it was about 80 minutes into the film, when Jessica Chastain as CIA agent Maya is yelling at her superior, expletives flying, that I finally felt I was seeing something with real meat to it. The fact that the film has obtained a good deal of controversy perhaps points to the fact that it feels so realistic, that it is so well-made, that it is being taken as "the truth". Whether Bigelow embellishes certain aspects of the story or not isn't really as important to me as how good the film is and Bigelow has in fact made quite a film.

Bigelow’s film follows the 10-year manhunt of Osama bin Laden by the United States. Mark Boal’s excellent script zooms in on a CIA operative named Maya (whose story is purportedly based on a real individual), who in the first scenes of the movie, we see her viewing the torture and interrogation of a detainee at an undisclosed location. Her early years on the case researching detainees and interrogations allows her to find a lead to a purported courier of bin Laden’s. Maya’s dogged determination throughout the years to support her idea and to find and kill bin Laden are what we follow, and like all great procedural films (All the President’s Men, The Insider), there is a great deal of suspense. Yet there’s also a noted dose of humanism here as well. Maya’s determination, leadership, and near obsessive sense of purpose create intense human drama. 

Jessica Chastain is ruthless AND human in a performance that indicates she is quickly becoming one of the best and most versatile actresses around. She seems to know exactly how much to emphasize in a certain scene….never laying it on too thick, always striving for believability and genuineness. I find Chastain’s Maya is an existential woman on a mission. She IS her job and we see her do but little else. Even when interacting with others, it's usually through work. It's amazing in fact, how often Maya is framed alone on-screen. She's a lone wolf. Her determination to pursue her prey is tested on numerous occasions though: when her friend is blown up in a suicide bombing; when she is nearly blown up at the Marriott Hotel bombing; when she is shot at in her car. Yet she pushes on and we understand her sense of urgency, her pain at the loss of friends and colleagues…..it’s all there on her face. Her character development is interesting as we watch her disgust early on as she looks on during scenes of torture, but soon enough when she conducts her own interrogations, she is asking a fellow interrogator to smack someone on the face. Her learning curve is a short one in this film, but her story of near maniacal zeal is what gives the film its drive. Mark Boal deserves some fine credit for his script here, allowing for moments of feeling and fiery emotion in the midst of the procedures. But Bigelow’s sense for pacing is just as spectacular and one of the film’s greatest assets. Though the film is 157 minutes long, there is genuine intrigue all throughout, building to the climactic raid on bin Laden’s compound, that is staged about as well as anyone could imagine it to be.   

Although the scenes of torture have been getting attention from nearly everyone, I find there is an element to them that has strangely been getting little attention. The film clearly places the torture scenes early in the narrative within the era of the Bush administration. During the era of the Obama administration, we are not shown any further scenes of torture. In a conflicting portion of the back story of this film, is something called the Military-Entertainment Complex. This term (which I'd never heard of before) refers to the little discussed practice of the exchange of capital and information between branches of our Military and Government factions and filmmakers. For example, Paramount Pictures was able to gain access to all the aircraft they needed at a steep discount to make Top Gun back in 1986…..but they had to submit the script to the military for approval and positioning.  This amounts to near propaganda if you ask me, and it’s no wonder that most ordinary war films amount to nothing. Now the question becomes, did Bigelow in fact receive assistance from the military and the government? According to The Freedom of Information Act, it appears that she and screenwriter Boal DID make contact and received some information from the government, despite the fact that Chastain said last week on The Daily Show with John Stewart that they didn't receive help. In this clip she mentions not only this, but that Bigelow also thus avoided government intrusion by not working with them and that they apparently did not receive equipment from the military for the film.

If by chance Bigelow and Boal did happen to work closely with the government (as seems to be documented), and if we presume the government was then able to review the script, why would they approve of a film that puts the CIA and our country’s practices in a bad light? That gets back to the Republican/Democrat divide and differences in approach between the two administrations and how those means are portrayed in the timeline of the film. Of course if Bigelow did NOT have to submit her script for approval, it would stand to reason that the tone and placement of the torture scenes were her own idea. I feel much better about the intent of the filmmakers, knowing that the film came out after the election, not allowing it to be construed as propaganda for the election. Either way, I find it interesting that the torture scenes have received just about every interpretation imaginable, which would indicate to me that whoever had the most influence over those moments did not allow any particular agenda to come to the fore. They exist here in the film because they happened.

Bigelow’s and Boal’s narrative achieves additional depth and troubling moral implications as it takes us face-to-face with revenge, and this is where the film starts flirting with truly epic importance. It follows in the tradition of both literary and cinematic revenge stories, perhaps foremost... Moby Dick. Maya is the Ahab and bin Laden is the White Whale. In cinematic terms, she's a modern incarnation of John Wayne as Ethan Edwards in The Searchers, or Clint Eastwood as The Outlaw Josey Wales. But the masterstroke of the whole film, is that in portraying Maya as this type of protagonist, complete with her obsessive, single minded-goal, Bigelow is able to reflect and implicate the United States as a whole in the film. Maya is simply the micro level version of our country’s macro concerns in the years following 9/11. For many in our nation, including some of our leaders, killing bin Laden was some kind of holy grail.  Parallels between ZDT’s real-world example and the narrative traditions that it recalls, adds layers to an already complex and far-reaching story, as the sometimes ugly nature of those fictional tales hits home here, but in an all-too-real fashion.

As a document of revenge and manhunt and the search for justice, Bigelow’s film is infinitely fascinating, and she rightfully avoids any sense of rah-rah enthusiasm. There’s also a melancholy fatalism to the whole thing. Punctuated throughout the plot are reminders of various terrorist attacks from the London bus-bombing, to the Marriott Hotel bombing in Pakistan. We’re reminded of WHY Maya is doing what she’s doing and why she feels it’s important, even if when the movie's over, there is a feeling of “now what?”. Zero Dark Thirty is also a fascinating document of craft, of the existential distillation of one woman’s determination for an end-goal and the process to reach it. The film is not without potential ideological pitfalls and moral implications, the likes of which may not fully be known yet. But the manhunt, and watching the woman get her man, makes for absolutely riveting and epic cinema.