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January 2013

Casus belli

MOVIE REVIEW
Zero Dark Thirty (2012)

Zero-dark-thirty-jessica-chastain-christopher-stanley-alex-corbet-burcher
Jonathan Olley/Columbia Pictures

Kathryn Bigelow has defended "Zero Dark Thirty" with the carefully turned phrase "depiction is not endorsement." As a noted practitioner of other arts in addition to filmmaking, as well as the small matter of being a ferociously willful director with nerves of steel, Ms. Bigelow is no doubt well aware that depiction in fact provides the most significant endorsement any art can provide: an endorsement for the viewer to think, rather than to vegetate; to see rather than unsee. At the very least the film throws new light back onto "The Hurt Locker," where she and writer Mark Boal can now be sensed kindling behind the camera, unfinished business on their minds about how the residents of Camp Victory came to move in.

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