in Zero Dark Thirty
By Jonathan Price
In darkness this film (2012, directed by Kathryn Bigelow) begins and ends in darkness, not even revealing its title until it’s over and the credits are rolling. And it is both a mystery and “based on firsthand accounts of actual events.” Is it the truth? “Where was it one first heard of the truth? The the” (Wallace Stevens). Truth is elusive. It’s true that Osama bin Laden is dead. But it’s hard to imagine a viewer who sees this film and wonders if that’s true, or wonders if its cast of characters will eventually track down and kill UbL (to use his sometime screen nickname, creating another mystery) in Abbottabad, Pakistan, living modestly and unknown with others in a wellconcealed three-story walled compound near some goats.
