All rights reserved. Jessica Chastain's character Maya, based on a real CIA operative involved in taking down Osama bin Laden, tells a fellow agent that she was recruited out of high . Maya is apparently horrified by the practice, but soon gets sufficiently accustomed to torture that when a prisoner begs for mercy, she flings back at him the line that hes in charge of his own fate (i.e., if he gives the desired information, hell be spared). (about 1:50:15). But only Maya is confident Bin Laden is where she says he is. It chronicles the efforts of Maya (Jessica Chastain), a CIA analyst who relentlessly hunts Osama bin Laden in the years following 9/11. Colleagues said the on-screen depiction captures the womans dedication and combative temperament. Better than a sleeping pill. Zero Dark Thirty suggests that theres a lot of violence being done in the world by bin Laden and his followers; it offers little confidence in the power of diplomacy to oppose it (as, for instance, in the scenes suggesting the betrayal of a C.I.A. Rated R for strong violence including brutal disturbing images, and for language. waterboarding) in order to seek out information about al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden (Ricky Sekhon), becomes obsessed with the search. Edit, She's a composite character-Maya is based on several female CIA officers who worked on the bin Laden case in the years before and after 9/11. Jessica Chastain, as Maya, in Zero Dark Thirty. Free shipping for many products! As the paper noted, Danes has said that her character is loosely modeled on an actual CIA officer whom she has met at Langley. In the film, Maya watches an al-Qaida suspect get waterboarded and locked in a tiny compartment. I can't see them seriously recruiting high school kids because so much can change by the end of college. She believes a male operative would not have been described the same way. For his bravery, Cairo earned a meeting with the President himself (described at length in the New Yorker) and was named Times Animal of the Year in 2011. | Even the dog in the film, Cairo, depicts an actual canine with special training that accompanied the SEAL team that captured Bin Laden. While not naming the agent, even with a pseudonym, the report is highly critical of her work, stating that she was a primary advocate for ineffective torture techniques and that she lied to Congress in an effort to misrepresent the effectiveness of the CIA's torture program. Oscar for best picture. Torture is depicted as indirectly but indubitably useful in the search for bin Laden (an assertion that has been denied by officials, as reported in the magazine by Dexter Filkins); a crucial piece of information in Mayas investigation is elicited from a prisoner who had been tortured and, now being fed a peaceful lunch, is threatened with more torture in the case of his non-coperation. Sold by: Its a humanist cinema that constructs an ostensible humanism through the elimination of most of human experience. Did they still go up to 007, if you couldn't yet count that high? It is a world removed from her prior life, with the website featuring photos of her, thoughtful and confident. II. Whats a company secret you can share now that you dont What quietly went away without anyone noticing? Why were the CIA not more suspicious of the Jordanian doctor? Its like middle-schoolers with clearances.. The screenplay was written by American journalist/screenwriter Mark Boal. Director Kathryn Bigelow has done it again by putting out a superior product. The film is a cinematic page-turner, constructed on a simple architecture: the decade-long hunt for Osama bin Laden, mainly from the perspective of a C.I.A. Both are presented as unusually sure of their analyses, even in comparison to their CIA colleagues, whose conclusions they confidently upend. The relevance of this term to the film is that the raid on Osama bin Laden's quarters was executed between midnight and 2 AM on May 2nd, 2011. I wondered about that too since I knew someone all of my childhood that worked for the CIA and they were definitely not recruited in high-school, but definitely were in college. She is soon in the "group of " CIA types who use torture, deprivation and just about any means to get info on their quarry Osama. A former CIA member who was branded the 'queen of torture' and was the inspiration for the movie Zero Dark Thirty is now an online beauty influencer - and is selling coaching sessions for $600. the inspiration for the character played by Danes, an actual CIA officer whom she has met at Langley, a class-action suit involving sex discrimination, hired women analysts almost exclusively in the 1990s, changed or eroded to protect her identity. Alfreda Frances Bikowsky (born 1965) is a Central Intelligence Agency officer who has headed the Bin Laden Issue Station and the Global Jihad unit. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. Zero Dark Thirty ***MINIMAL SPOILERS*** Director Kathryn Bigelow has done it again by putting out a superior product. This movie tells the HOW and WHO was credited wit the eventual tracking down of Public Enemy # 1: Usama Bin Laden( UBL). Bigelow, no orthodox Bazinian, deploys a familiar, conventional repertory of the techniques of coded Hollywood realism, including rapid-fire editing and hand-held cameras, to ratchet up excitement, involvement, identification, suspense, which the storys own gaps and elisions undercut, throwing the viewer into the position of having been entertained by things that really arent much fun and rooting for things that make a viewer then wonder why. After Obama took office, CIA operatives reexamined several potential trails, including al-Qaedas use of couriers to hand-deliver messages to and from bin Laden. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, Zero Dark Thirty is a 2012 war drama movie that follows the decade-long hunt for a terrorist leader and the high-stakes encounter through which he is apprehended. Therefore military helicopter flights overhead were not necessarily unusual, they could have chalked it up to an army night exercise. This assignment is more important now than when she was hired if only because of 9/11 and the knowledge that Al Qaeda was responsible. In fact, the CIA reportedly gave Boal and director Kathryn Bigelow unprecedented access to information for the making of the film. Jennifer Matthews, who was one of the employees killed, was his protg, and an unnamed source has cited Rogers hiring of her as an example of the problems with the functioning of the counterterrorism system. Is there a tune copied from the Telugu film Leader? In fact, the movie presents torture as a seemingly inevitable outcome of the attacks. The movies superficial realismremaining on the outside of characters, eschewing interior monologues, fantasies, dreams, visions, the directors own voice-over commentary, flashbacks, backstory, dialogue extraneous to the pursuit of the action, parentheses and apostrophes that would provide context and analysisis in no way natural or automatic, but is a careful and calculated contrivance. People with a porn addiction, how did you realize you had What do people claim they do but in reality they dont? On the one hand, the movie stokes excitement; its not a cool or dispassionate view of Maya and the Navy SEALs, and it depicts their dedication and courage with warmth and admiration. So I'm watching Zero Dark Thirty for about the fifth time and I'm at the part when the head of the CIA (Gandolfini) sits down at the lunch table with Maya. Wait until they go through college so they don't have to waste a bunch of time training them. Have always wondered why during the cafeteria scene in Zero Dark Thirty, Maya thinks she isn't allowed to disclose the reason she was recruited straight out of high school. Previously Edit, CIA operative Maya (Jessica Chastain), assigned to Pakistan to learn how to apply "enhanced interrogation" (i.e. Zero Dark Thirty starts with a sonic montage of calls from victims of the 9/11 attacks, and that montage is followed swiftly by the first scenes of torture at a secret site of extraordinary rendition. The suggestion is that many American viewers reliably visceral response to the horrific sounds of 9/11 victims facing imminent death parallels the visceral response of many in government, and that the overheatedly emotional reaction led ineluctably to widespread arrests, secret renditions, and interrogation under tortureto a government that approved and engaged in these practices and to public opinion that accepted them. Edit, The Inter-Services Intelligence agency, the Pakistani equivalent of the CIA and FBI combined. Edit, How many days since they discovered that house and had yet to do anything about it. What is a creepy fact about the human body? The story is a very good one but just too long. Through extensive espionage and even some secret torture, the CIA strives to track his location. In 2010 he was named in a lawsuit brought by a Pakistani journalist whose relatives were killed by U.S. drone strikes. Zero Dark Thirty tells a . The most solid lead is his most trusted currier. Stills from Zero Dark Thirty by Jonathan Olley / 2012 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All rights reserved. Did Maya not have sex for ten years? The CIA ended up pulling him from the country. Whatever it was probably has some level of classification. Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. The lawsuit blew his cover, leading to protests in Islamabad. They do not recruit unless you are already in the military or intelligence community. Its revealed, near the end of the movie, that she was recruited for the C.I.A. Maya is a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency analyst, recruited "out of high school" around 1999, tasked with finding the al-Qaeda leader Osama . Women in War: Revisiting Zero Dark Thirty. In Vietnam, the Allies captured up to half a million documents a month from the Viet Cong, which allowed them to anticipate and largely thwart the famous Tet offensive. A report in the Washington Post notes the unpopularity of Mayas real-life counterpart in the agency and describes Maya as a combative person quite a bit like the character played by Chastain. I know the CIA has like a "internship" program for high-school kids but you seek them out. Though Zero Dark Thirty refers to Maya being recruited to the CIA out of high school, No Easy Day says that she was recruited out . If someone reading this was actually recruited tell us about your experience. Although they were suspicious, it was simply too good an opportunity to pass up, and they considered it worth the risk. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. For one, Mayas friend Jessica, who dies in a suicide bombing at Camp Chapman in Khost, Afghanistan, seemingly refers to Jennifer Lynne Matthews. With Perianne Why can't we just scatter these hovermines everywhere to Everything Everywhere All At Once Takes Best Picture At New Image of Bill Skarsgrd and Jessica Roth in Official Poster for 'INSIDE' Starring Willem Dafoe. The real reason any agency recruits this young is because they want a pure mind. There's no Cheney, Bush or Rumsfeld . The caveat is that a family member must be employed with the agency. Scheuer says she was recruited to the CIA while a graduate student at Tufts Universitys Fletcher School in 1988 by the now-deceased CIA officer Duane Dewey Clarridge, who founded the agencys counterterrorism center. Entertainment & Arts. The new unit was called Alec Station, headed by a CIA analyst named Michael Scheuer. Answer (1 of 14): No, but they do offer intership opportunities to high school aged students. While some of the movies details differ slightlyMaya is recruited out of high school, not college, before working on the operation for a full decadeother Jen-related passages from the book read like the shooting script for Zero Dark Thirty. Ultimately, they launch a covert mission involving the Navy SEAL Team 6. The wig, everything. . By rejecting non-essential cookies, Reddit may still use certain cookies to ensure the proper functionality of our platform. The usual advantages of portraying an actual living person didn't apply to Jessica Chastain with her role as Maya in " Zero Dark Thirty ." The woman responsible for . A 2005 CIA inspector general report said the CIA failed to pass the travel information about al-Qaida attackers to the FBI before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the US. The hidden premise of gun control is the states monopoly on force, the willing renunciation of the most potent form of self-defense in favor of collective defensenot the nave wishing-away of violent crime but the assumption of effective law enforcement that would both thwart and obviate the proliferation of firearms. Have always wondered why during the cafeteria scene in Zero Dark Thirty, Maya thinks she isn't allowed to disclose the reason she was recruited straight out of high school. By policy, the CIA doesnt discuss individual employees or confirm whether they worked at the agency. It's intense, 2.5 hours long, and worth every minute. The CIA had granted the filmmakers unprecedented access to agency officials, and outlets from NBC News to the New Yorker reported that Chastains character was patterned partially on Scheuer, citing her position but omitting her name because the agency said her work was classified. But in a broad sense, she said waterboarding cited in government reports was not torture, insisted such techniques can work and said any criticism of her was largely the result of her taking risks to combat terrorism. dude you got lucky. In fact, so accurate is the depiction of the events in the film that its makers had to be extra cautious during the casting process. The emotional excitement that the movie generates from the start, which soon becomes the protagonists own excitement, and which the movie ratchets up to a peak with the killing of bin Laden, is itself suspect. The character isnt just a cipher but a filtered-out cipher, reduced to her function as the chief bin Laden hunter. 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