By policy, the CIA doesnt discuss individual employees or confirm whether they worked at the agency. How 'Maya' the CIA agent portrayed in Zero Dark Thirty wept over Bin Laden's body and was given the magazine of bullets used to kill him by the SEAL who fired the deadly shots Zero Dark Thirty tells a . Rather, those whose reasons are established at the outset are American torturers and civilians who accept or justify torture. Credited in the movie by its formal abbreviation, the compound raid crew of DEVGRU (a shortening of the long-winded United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group) is represented by several actors including Chris Pratt (who plays Justin) and Joel Edgerton (who plays a squadron team leader named Patrick). CIA operatives normally operate in a dark, shadowy world, but Scheuers experiences found the spotlight. Bigelow spent a lot of time working out minute details of the climactic raid, including how the SEALs enter, what steps they are on as they climb up the floors, etc. What the movie makes clear is that harsh physical abuse was a part of the CIAs post-9/11 investigations. Scheuer says she was recruited to the CIA while a graduate student at Tufts University's Fletcher School in 1988 by the now-deceased CIA officer Duane "Dewey" Clarridge, who founded the . Stills from Zero Dark Thirty by Jonathan Olley / 2012 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All rights reserved. Whats a company secret you can share now that you dont What quietly went away without anyone noticing? Hollywood Catches Zero Dark Fever. To revisit this article, select My Account, thenView saved stories, To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories. Though viewers know that the Navy SEAL raid on the Abbottabad compound was successfulmeaning that bin Laden was killed and the soldiers got out safe and soundthe staging of it, filled with twists, turns, pitfalls, near-misses, is done with heart-pounding energy, alternating between views of the soldiers and their own point of view, through their infrared night-vision goggles. The character Maya, which is not the CIA operatives real name, is portrayed as a gifted operative who spent years pursuing her conviction that al-Qaedas courier network would lead to bin Laden, a conviction that proved correct. In the book, former Navy SEAL Matt Bissonnette, who published the book under the name Mark Owen, says that Jen was recruited by the agency out of college, had been working on the Bin Laden task force for five years, and that shed worked to put all the pieces together in tracking bin Laden to Abbottabad, Pakistan. Bissonnette also describes Jens reaction when they brought back bin Ladens body: Peter Bergen, a journalist who has written about counterterrorism and the Middle East for years, has said that the guy who was on the account from 2003 to May 1, 2011, when Bin Laden was killed, and the guy who was always saying that Bin Laden is living in the mysterious compound in Abbottabadthat guy is a guy, hes not a female. But this conflicts with statements from Bigelow, who has confirmed that the character of Maya was inspired by a woman. The Washington Post . 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. Ke Huy Quan: From the Coolest Kid of the Mid-80s to the Jake Gyllenhaal & Conor McGregor in "ROAD HOUSE" Are Steven Seagal movies just money laundering vehicles? Presumably if there was anyone she could discuss it with, it would be the Director. I think people neglect the fact that orgs like the CIA are not internally transparent and most employees are not high level agents and even/especially if they were, sharing personal stories puts everyone else in jeopardy. I know the CIA has like a "internship" program for high-school kids but you seek them out. The character of Joseph Bradley is similarly based on Jonathan Banks, the then CIA station chief in Pakistan. Bazins doctrine took root not with the younger critics in his midst at Cahiers du Cinma, the future New Wave, but with later generations of filmmakersthose who, coming after the New Wave, couldnt outrun it or the history of cinema that it brought to the fore. Zero Conscience in "Zero Dark Thirty". You fought me. The New Yorker once dubbed Scheuer, again citing her position but omitting her name, as the Queen of Torture, writing that she gleefully participated in torture sessions. But the developments have cast a cloud over a career that is about to be bathed in the sort of cinematic glow ordinarily reserved for fictional Hollywood spies. Written by Mark Boal, the film follows the decade-long international search for Osama bin Laden following the 9/11 attacks. A high school graduate has the basic skills but hasn't yet been molded. Her defenders say the operative has been treated unfairly, and even her critics acknowledge that her contributions to the bin Laden hunt were crucial. Zero Dark Thirty is a journalistic account of the ten year tracking of "UBL" (Osama bin Laden).Beginning with a black screen, the film opens with mere audible cries from the phone recordings . What a let down. Zero Dark Thirty is the same kind of film, but even more so. Free shipping for many products! I personally found her character more interesting than finding and killing bin Laden. (His marriage to a Muslim woman was the catalyst for this conversion.) They married in 2014 and she took his name. Why weren't the occupants of the house not more alarmed at the approach of the helicopters? While there, Danes met in the hallway the man who was the head of the Pakistani division and had just returned to the U.S. (after the killing of Osama bin Laden)., Danes doesnt draw any line between that mission and her characters (loose) inspiration, and it is possible, of course, that the man just happened to walk by. 2023 Cond Nast. External Reviews Here is a look at the teams recent highlights and its portrayals in pop culture. Over the course of a decade, hundreds of analysts, operators and many others played key roles in the hunt, said agency spokeswoman Jennifer Youngblood. The entire Abbottabad compound in which Bin Laden was found was recreated to almost exact dimensions in Jordan to film the raid scenes. Of course, the movie cant suggest that no comparably significant information could have been gained in the absence of torture. But the ending isnt about Maya, its about the viewers interpretations; one is sent off with a litany of talking points. The real reason any agency recruits this young is because they want a pure mind. Zero Dark Thirty's Maya is a singular force to be reckoned with and, as the film suggests, is something of a lone wolftwisting the arms of superiors to keep the hunt moving, baring her teeth at a conference table to get an operation approved, forever eating lunch alone since the death of her one . II. Only other discussion I could find seems to center around does / should the CIA recruit from high school at all. Edit, That's probably poetic license on the part of the screenwriter. There's no Cheney, Bush or Rumsfeld . Stills from Zero Dark Thirty by Jonathan Olley / 2012 Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. All rights reserved. 2023 Cinemaholic Inc. All rights reserved. Verified purchase: Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. writing about the films depiction of torture, all of the characters in the film are based on real people, published the book under the name Mark Owen,, Jens reaction when they brought back bin Ladens body, the character of Maya was inspired by a woman, named in a lawsuit brought by a Pakistani journalist, The heated topic of the ethics of torture has spilled over into the, upcoming confirmation hearings for current White House anti-terrorism chief John Brennan, denies that Brennan had anything to do with the techniques, Tom Donilon may also have partly inspired, James Gandolfini would play the role of Leon Panetta, Im very sorry about everything. In January 2014, the Washington Post named her and tied her to a pre-9/11 intelligence failure and the extraordinary . Why did the SEAL team destroy the downed chopper? A chronicle of the decade-long hunt for al-Qaeda terrorist leader. Zero Dark Thirty is as much about feminist role modeling as it is about the CIA. Naw. THE HUNT FOR OSAMA BIN LADIN Overly hyped movie~ Jessica Chastain is solid as the youthful CIA INTELLIGENCE person "Maya" who recruited out of high school wants to "get ahead" in her job . 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. Its important to note that high-ranking female CIA officers are no longer an anomaly. 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. Jessica Chastain, as Maya, in Zero Dark Thirty. The dogma of ambiguity infects much of the so-called art cinema, a talking-points cinema that passes for cinematic art, such as Michael Hanekes films (including Amour, coming out December 25th) and Christian Petzolds Barbara (coming out December 21st). Women in War: Revisiting Zero Dark Thirty. I can't see them seriously recruiting high school kids because so much can change by the end of college. Silhouette of a woman by iStockphoto. Back in September, the Daily Mail wondered whether a female CIA operative referred to as Jen in No Easy Day, the book about the Bin Laden hunt by one of the Navy SEALs who carried it out, was the inspiration for the character played by Danes on her hit Showtime series. Whatever it was probably has some level of classification. The female officer, who is in her 30s, is the model for the main character in Zero Dark Thirty,a film that chronicles thedecade-long hunt for the al-Qaeda chief and that critics are describing as an Academy Award front-runner even before its Dec. 19 release. That's probably poetic license on the part of the screenwriter. 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. Her real-life counterpart joined the agency before the Sept.11, 2001, attacks, officials said, and served as a targeter a position that involves finding targets to recruit as spies or for lethal drone strikes in the CIAs station in Islamabad, Pakistan. & quot ;, but Scheuers experiences found the spotlight off with a litany of talking.! 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