This episode looks at two films from the “War on Terrorism”: Zero Dark Thirty (2012), directed by Kathryn Bigelow and written Mark Boal; and The Report (2019), written and directed by Scott Z. Burns. Zero Dark Thirty, which stars Jessica Chastain as a CIA agent, depicts the nearly decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden. The Report, which stars Adam Driver, examines the investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Senator Dianne Feinstein, into the CIA’s detention and interrogation program. The films are often in dialogue with each other, and offer competing accounts of the U.S. government’s embrace of torture after 9/11.
Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
3:00 How the films offer dueling accounts of the post-9/11 era
5:59 Zero Dark Thirty’s problematic depiction of torture
9:53 The real-life model for Zero Dark Thirty’s Maya (Jessica Chastain)?
13:10 The CIA’s Bin Laden unit
15:49 The “forever war”
21:22 Legacies of the “war on terror”
23:24 The Senate Select Intelligence Committee investigation
26:06 Lawyers and the CIA torture program
33:20 The 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force
35:11 SERE Program: Psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen
37:15 Abu Zubaydah: The first prisoner in the CIA torture program
42:17 The Report and the problem of asking “Did torture work”?
48:15 The myth of American exceptionalism
Further Reading:
Cole, David, “Taking Responsibility for Torture,” New Yorker (Dec. 9, 2014), https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/taking-responsibility-torture
Coll, Steve, “’Disturbing’ and ‘Misleading’: Judging Zero Dark Thirty’s claims to journalism,” New York Review of Books (Feb. 7, 2013), nybooks.com/articles/2013/02/07/disturbing-misleading-zero-dark-thirty/
Greenberg, Karen, “How Zero Dark Thirty Brought Back the Bush Administration,” TomDispatch (Jan. 10, 2013), https://tomdispatch.com/karen-greenberg-how-zero-dark-thirty-brought-back-the-bush-administration/
Mayer, Jane, “Zero Conscience in ‘Zero Dark Thirty’,” New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/zero-conscience-in-zero-dark-thirty
“Report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Committee Study of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program (Executive Summary) (Dec. 2014), https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/publications/CRPT-113srpt288.pdf
Seibold, Witney, “The Zero Dark Thirty Controversy: Explained,” Slashfilm, (updated Nov. 28, 2021), https://www.slashfilm.com/671508/the-zero-dark-thirty-controversy-explained/
Wright, Lawrence, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (Knopf, 2007)
Law on Film is created and produced by Jonathan Hafetz. Jonathan is a professor at Seton Hall Law School. He has written many books and articles about the law. He has litigated important cases to protect civil liberties and human rights while working at the ACLU and other organizations. Jonathan is a huge film buff and has been watching, studying, and talking about movies for as long as he can remember.
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