Zero Dark Thirty follows the manhunt and eventual murder of Osama Bin Laden through the perspective of United States intelligence. After the attacks on 9/11, the United States funneled billions of dollars to the CIA to combat terrorism in the Middle East. For much of the movie U.S operatives have no idea where Bin Laden could be and conduct a series of intense interrogations to find out more information. Eventually a fictional CIA analyst named Maya traces Bin Laden to a compound in Pakistan where the SEAL team was able to kill him.
Dynamics of power are written all over this movie. Much of the movie showcases scenes of torture in which the US officers have complete power over their prisoners. These scenes are quite brutal and it makes you question the morality of such torture techniques. On the one hand, the prisoners in question likely have knowledge about Al-Qaeda and have aided in the attacks, but where do you draw the line of proper punishment? I think that the makers of the movie wanted us to be uncomfortable with the torture. You could see some of the actors faces as they watched someone get tortured and it almost seemed like they knew what they were doing was screwed up. But at the same time, these people killed thousands and the CIA was put under immense pressure to capture Bin Laden. After 9/11 the terrorists took a little power away from America, but these scenes show that the powerful will stop at nothing (even torture) to ensure their power is never threatened again.
Identity is another central theme of the movie. Clearly the Islamic fundamentalists have conflicting identities with the West. The fundamentalists hate the fact that western culture is encroaching on their ideology and identity tied to Islam. The movie really showed the inability for each side to understand each other. This reminded me of what we learned about othering. Just because we as Americans do not understand some thing, we want to label them as the “other”. This becomes even more dangerous when we associate all Muslims with the extreme, violent fundamentalists. We saw flashes of this while reading The Reluctant Fundamentalist. The author shows us how he felt like he was being pushed toward otherness after 9/11. I think that the makers of the movie wanted us to recognize how clashing ideologies creates a battle for power, resulting in the othering of one of the groups.