Under fire from several members of Congress over their depiction of the use of torture in the hunt for terror mastermind Osama bin Laden, the makers of the film “Zero Dark Thirty” stood their ground.
At the New York Film Critics Circle awards ceremony in Manhattan on Monday, the film’s director, Kathryn Bigelow, defended the scenes in which she portrayed CIA agents engaging in enhanced interrogation techniques on terror suspects.
“I thankfully want to say that I’m standing in a room of people who understand that depiction is not endorsement, and if it was, no artist could ever portray inhumane practices,” Bigelow told the audience at the Crimson Room, according to the Hollywood Reporter. “No author could ever write about them, and no filmmaker could ever delve into the knotty subjects of our time.”
“Zero Dark Thirty” won awards for best picture and best director, but has attracted the scrutiny of Washington lawmakers concerned that it inaccurately depicts the effectiveness of the use of torture in the hunt for bin Laden.
Senators Dianne Feinstein, Carl Levin and John McCain are demanding answers from CIA Director Michael Morell as to what information the filmmakers may have been given by the agency.
“As you know, the film depicts CIA officers repeatedly torturing detainees. The film then credits CIA detainees subjected to coercive interrogation techniques as providing critical lead information on the courier that led to the [bin Laden] compound,” a letter from the Senators dated Dec. 19 reads. “The CIA cannot be held accountable for how the Agency and its activities are portrayed in film, but we are nonetheless concerned, given the CIA’s cooperation with the filmmakers and the narrative’s consistency with past public misstatements by former senior CIA officials, that the filmmakers could have been misled by information they were provided by the CIA.”
Mark Boal, who wrote the screenplay for both “Zero Dark Thirty” and “The Hurt Locker,” was even more adamant that the cinematically enhanced interrogation scenes did not mislead audiences.
“I stand here tonight being extremely proud of the film we made. … In case anyone is asking, we stand by the film,” he added, throwing down a gauntlet. “I think at the end of the day, we made a film that allows us to look back at the past in a way that gives us a more clear-sighted appraisal of the future.”
Still, Boal said that audiences, if not Congress, understood the difference between a film and what may have actually happened in real life.
“It’s a movie. I’ve been saying from the beginning it’s a movie,” Boal said. “That shouldn’t be too confusing.”
