Saturday, January 26, 2013

Zero Dark Thirty's Real Message is Anti-Torture

Zero Dark Thirty is quite possibly one of the most misunderstood movies ever. I'm a huge fan. It's one of those movies people will watch in the future to get a sense of what the militarized American empire was like from 2001-2011. It is also one of the strongest feminist and anti-torture messages I have ever seen in a major Hollywood film. Yet people are accusing it of being the exact opposite.

There's been a lot of criticism from people on the left that makes me wonder, "Are we even talking about the same movie here?" The praise from certain people on the right also leaves me scratching my head.

So when I came across this HuffPost Live interview of filmmaker Michael Moore by Marc Lamont Hill, I said to myself - finally, someone gets it! Thank you, Michael Moore:

"Does the artist have a responsibility for the ignorance of the person watching the art? I don't want to have to dumb down my work for the people who won't get it.  I want to put it out there and the people who get it, get it."

I encourage you to watch Marc Lamont Hill's interviews of Michael Moore in their entirety. They're posted in 4-6 minute increments with a short commercial in-between. Don't miss the part where Michael Moore calls out the workplace sexism in the CIA. Fantastic.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

husband has been bugging me to go see this movie and i was undecided. maybe i'll let him talk me into it!

your last movie recommendation (this is 40) was spot on. while we're not there yet it was an excellent movie with tons of things to think about. we've been talking about it for weeks.

Claudia said...

That was great. Thanks for the link. I would like to see the movie, but being far-flung, who knows when that will be.

NoTrustFund said...

I'm so impressed you see so many movies in the theater. There are so many out right now I want to see, but I still have not made it a priority to see any of them. I still want to see This is 40, and this, and Lincoln and at least one other one I can't think of right now. Thank goodness for netflix.

hush said...

@Nataliya - Glad you liked "This is 40" - my only real criticism of "Zero Dark Thirty" is that it could be about 30 minutes shorter, and drags a bit at the end. And it is terribly violent, but so worth seeing if you can handle the edginess.

@Claudia - Maybe if it does well at the Oscars on Feb 24, it might have more of an international distribution?

@NoTrustFund - We see a lot of movies in the theater because we live in a small town, and run out of things to do on date night in the middle of a cold winter. ;) I love out Netflix instant queue, though it is so hard for us to watch grown-up Netflix shows and movies because our kids repeat every swear word they hear, and ask questions constantly whenever we watch anything as a family. And we go to bed early so we never have grown up time after the kids are asleep.