Shedding light on "Dark"
Andrew Sullivan has restored my faith in him by:
a) Finally seeing "Zero Dark Thirty" and then giving his opinion.
b) Reading the film correctly.
Here's an excerpt from his blog item "Kathryn Bigelow: not a torture apologist:"
"A word about the acting. Chastain is completely
believable. Given the extremes to which this character is exposed, that is an
acting feat of stupendous proportions. And the movie ends in deep sadness, not
triumph. It may be that many people watching this movie will actually believe
the torture was integral to the end-result. But that will be because they want
to see that or because they are as dumb as Owen Gleiberman. It isn't there. And
if they want to see that, they will also be forced, at least, to own the barbarism depicted on screen in a way that euphemisms
like "sleep deprivation", "stress positions" and "enhanced interrogation" were
designed to obscure. Maybe there are enough people in this country to be
comfortable with that. But my view is that Americans were shielded by their
government and, disgracefully, their press, into living with barbarism - because
Orwellian language was used and propagated to disguise the true evil that was at
the heart of the Cheney mindset."