There’s more breadth and depth—more of a sense of history at large, of the intrinsic and profound horror of the practice and the experience of torture, and of the moral issues involved in political action—in that thirteen-minute sequence than in the whole of “Zero Dark Thirty.” 

Richard Brody on the truthful torture scene in Jean-Luc Godard’s “Le Petit Soldat”: http://nyr.kr/ZuXX4Z

Cartoon by Tom Toro. For more from this week’s issue: http://nyr.kr/XwWKdv

Richard Brody reviews “Gangster Squad,” and looks at the fake cinema of the season:

In all four films [“Gangster Squad,” “Zero Dark Thirty,” “Argo,” and “Amour”] the question of knowledge arises: what does the filmmaker know of his situations, his characters (and it doesn’t matter whether the subject at hand is historical or utterly fictitious), and what, in the “telling,” makes for an authentic experience? The short answer: none of the above. In all four, for different reasons, the filmmakers foreclose the characters, clamp down the implications, filter out the context, and thereby fake the results. These films may be the subject of discussion now but will end up on the scrap heap of cinematic history.

Continue reading: http://nyr.kr/WImkJf

Photograph: Warner Bros.

Amy Davidson considers who did a better job making a movie about torture—Kathryn Bigelow or Ben Affleck? http://nyr.kr/VO5zQL

The Oscar nominations were announced this morning, with “Lincoln” garnering a leading twelve nods from the Academy. Richard Brody has already shared his thoughts. Here is how the magazine covered the nine Best Picture nominees: http://nyr.kr/UQ8VV6

The senators shouldn’t edit the movie; they can, and should, increase transparency about torture…

Amy Davidson on the government’s reaction to “Zero Dark Thirty”: http://nyr.kr/ZUavGH

“Zero Dark Thirty” is two and a half hours long; in real life, the hunt for Osama bin Laden lasted for nine and a half years. Here are four fact-filled pieces from The New Yorker’s archives to help you fill in the gaps… http://nyr.kr/V7wwyp

Bigelow maintains that everything in the film is based on first-hand accounts, but the waterboarding scene, which is likely to stir up controversy, appears to have strayed from real life…

In this week’s issue, Dexter Filkins talks to Kathryn Bigelow about making her new film on the killing of Osama bin Laden, “Zero Dark Thirty”: http://nyr.kr/SEeiCy