Movie Notes: Zero Dark Thirty

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
Director: Kathryn Bigelow

This was definitely the award season movie I was most looking forward to seeing, and it really didn't disappoint.  This is really difficult story-telling because of all political land mines surrounding the plot, but I thought the filmmakers did a great job.  It didn't seem to me a political film, in an agenda-driven sense, but rather a story about one person's drive and commitment to a cause making sure that cause happens.  Jessica Chastain is very good in the role of catalyst and crusader.

I can't recommend it to everyone because it's a dark bloody movie about dark and bloody things.  However critical the advanced interrogation techniques used by the CIA may have been in finding bin Laden, they're not fun to watch.  They shouldn't be fun to watch: they're terrible and dehumanizing.

Neither is it appropriate to make revenge-fantasy porn about bin Laden's death, and this movie carefully avoids that.  I thought it illustrated the raid pretty fairly, and while I think bin Laden's death was just, it's still terrible to kill people, and the movie shows that.  The sequence with the interpreter walking through the house near the end of the raid contrasted very well with the special forces' machine-like efficiency.  I thought that was very emotionally effective.

Anyway, good movie, even if it looks like it's on the outs this award season.

Tree of Life (2011)
Director: Terrence Malick

 On a retreat last spring, Libby and I participated in an exercise called family sculptures.  This involved using the other participants at the retreat to stand in as family members in order to illustrate our family dynamic around age 10.  After setting up the sculpture, participants spend time asking questions and coming as a community to a better understanding of the sculptor.  This is a difficult exercise, and if performed honestly, can bear both pain and fruit for one's spiritual development.

The middle part of Tree of Life strikes me as a similar exercise for the director.  The crux of the story involves the relationship of a child entering adolescence, his parents, and the inter-relationship of that family dynamic with the character's adult understanding of God and the universe.  I cannot think of another movie that so honestly deals with this topic.  It plays out like memories projected on a screen.  Snippets of beauty, pain, life, and death, all dealing with nature and grace.

Mallick gives it a more cosmic and universal scope by confusing but intriguing capstones giving the creation and ending of the world.  All in all, it makes for a film that can be a difficult and rewarding source of meditation.