“The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?” 
― George Orwell, 1984

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Do we understand this simple fact about terrorism and the state-sponsored terror that counters it?
Be it a cycle bomb in Hyderabad or planes hitting the heart of New York or CIA agents and soldiers torturing prisoners of war, should we at all read the back story of why human beings are killed or dehumanised?
Is there a back story at all or is terrorism as much of a business as politics is?
And pain? What of it? When does pain stop becoming human and turn into a weapon of war used both by terror groups and governments around the world?
And who decides which pain is more valid? Was the violation of the Abu Gharaib prisoners any less than the terror of the nameless stick figures falling helplessly off the twin towers on September 11? Did both deserve equal amount of dignity in life and in what finally remained of them?
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And then there is Kathryn Bigelow, making clever films about broadly these questions but never answering them. She never rubs your nose in sympathy or gives a clear idea of where she stands as an American and a filmmaker while dealing with explosive issues like the American presence in Iraq (The Hurt Locker) ‘and the morally ambiguous yet obsessively self-righteous search for Osama Bin Laden in Zero Dark Thirty. But the very fact that she is narrating the American version of history, should tell us something.
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The Hurt Locker opened with the quote, “The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug.” And Zero Dark Thirty is a continuation of the same idea that war..of any kind and ideology is an addiction. The film is again written by Mark Boal, the multi-faceted writer who was an embedded journalist for a while in Iraq and had penned the Oscar winning screen play of The Hurt Locker. This is a winning combination. A film about America, the others, bomb blasts, the randomness of violence, the absence of a real relationship between warring ideologies. Why on earth would she change the formula that has won her so much acclaim?
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 Zero Dark Thirty  is a decidedly masculine film made by a woman, with a woman as its main protagonist. This could easily have been an Oliver Stone film but then we may have missed the subtle subtext about what it means to be a woman in hell full of men who torture and men who get shut up in boxes, are put on leash like dogs, waterboarded, broken down sinew by sinew till they cave in because “it is biology.”  What it means to be the only woman and invisible in a conference room full of stubborn, opinionated bosses poring over the diagrams and pictures of a house in Abbottabad and wondering if it hides a man America has searched for in vain. And then to be asked, “Who the hell are you?”
The answer that Jessica Chastain’s Maya offers without emotion or anger, “I am the m……….r  who found this house..sir,” establishes why even without an obvious feminist agenda, this movie could not have been made by a man.
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We have had Jodie Foster in The Silence of The Lambs, on a similar obsessive search though without the political undercurrents and a certain Ms Jolie playing glamourised versions of what would be usually considered as masculine parts but it will not be far fetched to say that this is one of the most definitive films about women in a world controlled by men in power. And just like Bigelow makes her films without worrying about gender stereotyping, the fact that Maya is a woman is incidental. Her gender or her sexuality never interfere with her work as a CIA agent, obsessively searching for the little pieces of a big puzzle.
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The film wastes very little time on dialogue and so neatly spares itself the necessity of taking a moral stand about human pain. We never know for sure if Maya or Bigelow have any strong opinions about torture. “If you lie to me, I hurt you, ” is the recurring dialogue here as a prisoner is beaten, dragged by a leash and stripped and the put back together again with a cold drink and some snacks. And what do Bigelow and Maya think about the country they spend a long time in as they chase Osama’s ghost? “It is f….d up, ” says Maya when asked about Pakistan. We see images of milling crowds in Pakistan, painted buses, vacant stares of the locals and occasional rage as they sense the presence of Americans among them, but we never see anything more. They are just part of a cinematic setting. Props to showcase the CIA team that braves a bomb blast in Islamabad’s Marriott, loses some key members during a suicide attack at a CIA base and spends lonely Christmases away from their families in impersonal bases.
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Yes, this is a clever film and documents without obvious emotion  the year by year quest that finally led Maya to Abbottabad and some helicopter borne canaries to  a fortress where they found and killed the world’s most elusive terrorist. The film is a slick, almost documentative search for answers, clues, leads and yes, like we said there are not many back stories. We never learn why Maya is so driven to find Osama. Is it just a job or something more? After the search is over, why does she cry? Because now her life has no meaning or because finally she has found closure? The good bit is that the film has very little Die Hard machismo. It does not indulge in posturing and the little fist waving  when Osama finally arrives in a body bag at an American base is not jingoistic, just cathartic. The last hunt is shot matter-of-factly with a night vision camera with staccato flashes revealing to us the fear of the inmates of Osama’s fortress. Kids. Women. Nameless men. And the few fleeting glimpses of the man who is then gunned down, packed and carried away in a chopper.
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So yes, this is a historical document. One that will reassure the Americans that they finally smoked the bad guy out of his mythical cave and nailed him. It is brilliantly shot, enacted and cut. The absence of  any background music in key scenes, the colour bleached template, the minimalist narration instantly lifting it up above films where great American heroes save the world. And Jessica Chastain is hard to look away from in a role that celebrates her coiled aggression, her unapologetically unique face and her all seeing eyes. The film can be taken as a spy thriller as well but we all know it is not. It is about America. About its war on terror. And how it came to an end.
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But as we know, it is hard to end war. Especially with another war. Should be interesting to watch which new war  Bigelow will find next to film. We can be sure though of one thing. Its protagonists won’t be Afghans, Pakistanis or Iraqis.
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Reema Moudgil has been writing on art, theatre, cinema, music, gender issues, architecture and more in leading newspapers and magazines since 1994.  Her first novel Perfect Eight ((http://www.flipkart.com/perfect-eight-9380032870/p/itmdf87fpkhszfkb?pid=9789380032870&_l=A0vO9n9FWsBsMJKAKw47rw–&_r=dyRavyz2qKxOF7Yuc )won her an award from the Public Relations Council of India in association with Bangalore University. She also edited Chicken Soup for Indian Woman’s Soul and runs  unboxedwriters.com.  She has exhibited her paintings in Bangalore and New York,  taught media studies to post graduates and hosts a daily ghazal show Andaz-e-Bayan on Radio Falak (WorldSpace).

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