The Academy loves docudramas. I’d say it’s because it makes members feel smart, but that’s psychology and what do I know about psychology? This year we’ve got two nominated for best picture (OK, there are three, but Lincoln is a whole different critter), both CIA spy stories, and both closely related to the truth. Not truth, but related to the truth. They are similar to the truth, and oh, what sins can hide in similarity. And they hide there because these films are sold as truth, just with a footnote of crossed fingers.
A few years back the docudramas of the moment were The King’s Speech and The Social Network. They shared a problem, but it is so much clearer with The Social Network: It was only interesting because it was real. Would anyone have even sat through The Social Network if it was about the languid rise of a fictitious computer programmer named Fred, and the film’s ending was known to all? There just wasn’t enough story, or conflict, or development. But hey, that’s OK, because it was real. Except it wasn’t. Through omission, Zuckerberg’s biography was altered, and his motivation was created. What we were given was a movie too inaccurate to be a documentary, and not interesting enough for a narrative.
Which brings us back to 2013. Neither of the docudramas have much in the way of plot. Argo has enough of a story for a cute 45 minute short. It follows a CIA agent as he attempts to get six US embassy workers, who have been hiding with the Canadian ambassador, out of Iran during the Iran Hostage Crisis. He does this by creating a fake film, that is to be shot in Iran, and claiming the “house guests” are Canadian filmmakers. Zero Dark Thirty‘s plot can be covered in one tag line: CIA agent has a hunch on how to find and kill Bin Laden, and she’s right. What saves them, what should save them, is their reality. But of course, they are only related to reality.
Argo‘s shifts from truth are less damming, and harder to understand. OK, I get why they added a nonexistent chase at the airport (as the 6 Americans are escaping on a plane). The reality of their covers holding up and them passing through customs smoothly is not terribly dramatic. But why downplay the Canadian’s role? Or state that the British refused to help? Those are pointless lies. And why make up a never-existing sci-fi script, when in reality they used the screenplay and art for a film version of Zelazny’s classic novel Lord of Light. Any science fiction fan would be all over that nugget of information. But instead Affleck and company go for a less interesting fiction.
Zero Dark Thirty is a police procedural, with spies. For two hours it follows Maya, an obsessed, methodical desk jocky, who likes to go with her hunches. She looks at a lot of pictures, questions a lot of prisoners, takes a lot of notes, and without the facade of this being real, every viewer would be snoring. She does hang around torture at the beginning, which isn’t entertaining, but at least something is happening. At the end, the film violates good story telling form by leaving the only character we’ve been with for two hours, to give us twenty minutes of Bin Laden killing with characters we don’t know (If Bin Laden’s death is a spoiler for you, you need to read the news more often). Unlike Argo, which at least has an amusing premise, Zero Dark Thirty has nothing except the truth. (Yes, the acting is good, but good acting does not make a good movie.) The killing of Bin Laden was a significant event; it is important. It is worth the truth. But this isn’t the truth…not quite.
I’ll narrow my focus to one bit, the most notorious part of the film: the torture scenes. Maya gets her big break from the torture of a prisoner. Many congressional movers and shakers have come out saying that isn’t true. Is it true? Is it false? It is really essential to know in our current political climate. It is essential to the story. But director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal didn’t care. They have no idea what is true, and Bigelow has stated she just put in the scene because torture was part of what was going on, and that was a good place to put it dramatically. She isn’t lying, she’s just making shit up.
Most people smile and say it is dramatic (or poetic) license, and then put it out of their minds. But this is the history that people will remember. Truth gets lost in dramatic license, and that’s a shame. But I’m a film critic, not a historian. So I can instead say that it’s a shame for film as well. These are movies that are loved because viewers can laugh afterwards and say “Wow, you just can’t make that stuff up.”
Only they did.
And if everyone clearly understood that they did, no one would care about these films.