Apparently some of the material in the Kathryn Bigelow film, The Hurt Locker, was rather laughable; certain bomb-disposal soldiers found it so. Certain bits and pieces in Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty (2012), written by Mark Boal, probably are as well, while other details are simply false, such as the intel about Osama bin Laden’s courier being acquired through waterboarding.  But no matter.  The politically unbiased Zero is sufficiently honest to communicate that waterboarding, form of torture though it is, can be effective.  It does so without condoning or despising it, however; rather it shows it journalistically and reticently.  It is this that has drawn fire from the liberal elites.

Strong and involving, this hunt-for-bin Laden docudrama is all about CIA activity, especially that of Jessica Chastain’s Maya.  It tells us that a strong nation always puts up a fight against a Hitlerian enemy, even with a temporarily failing intelligence agency (which is what the CIA is here).  Notice I said “temporarily.”  In truth the film respects the CIA.

Regrettably, Maya is not a fully realized character and far less interesting than Carrie in the TV series Homeland.  Chastain does what she can with her, though, which is a lot.  Jason Clark is vivid and gripping as CIA officer Dan.  The British actress Jennifer Ehle, this time with an American accent, succeeds beautifully.

I have lately seen some meaningful and significant political films:  Won’t Back Down, Lincoln, Atlas Shrugged Part 2, and now Zero Dark Thirty (a military phrase, by the way, meaning 30 minutes after midnight).  The more this kind of cinema irritates the liberal elites, or at least challenges their views, the better, for then we have cultural diversity of thought and sentiment.  It makes for a healthier situation in the arts than we have had.

Zero Dark Thirty: This one felt important (Photo credit: MikeOliveri)

Listening to his Cantata 140, one may well opine that Bach was a genius of a melodymaker.  Melody shines throughout the choruses, duets and recitatives here, and Christian optimism pervades.  Bach makes choral music happy; his art is, of course, a sanguine art.

Cantata 140 is impressively dignified too—not only in its choruses but also in, for example, the first soprano-and-bass duet.  Indeed, a sense of human dignity is evoked as well as the greatness of Christ, for the worth of man exists because the worth of God exists.  However, it is the cantata’s second duet (the sixth movement) that contributes to the work’s beauty more than anything else, for it is a gentle and splendidly lyrical aria.  It’s no surprise it issues from the melodymaker behind “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.”

Johann Sebastian Bach (aged 61) in a portrait by Elias Gottlob Haussmann, Copy or second Version of his 1746 Canvas, private ownership of William H. Scheide, Princeton, New Jersey, USA (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The tasteless and sloppy rubbish found in so many Hollywood movies is now much in evidence in TV programs.  Twenty-five minutes of the Fox series, The Following, is all I could take the other night.  Later episodes might be better, but I’m too disgusted to care.

The Fox network is endlessly repelling.  Mariah Carey, Keith Urban and Nicki Minaj have been added to American Idol—this because it cares more about showcasing and worshipping celebrities than about hiring adequate judges for singers.

Official LOGO (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Kathy is a child raised in the English boardingschool, Hailsham, before becoming a young woman played by Carey Mulligan in Never Let Me Go (2010)—and Kathy is a clone.  So are the other children at Hailsham, among them Kathy’s friend Ruth and the boy she has a crush on, Tommy.  Because she doesn’t want to end up alone, Ruth woos Tommy away from Kathy and later provides a mea culpa for it, since she is finally separated from her lover, anyway, by a coercive society.  This is because it is determined that Ruth and the other clones will have their vital organs removed that they may benefit those who are sick and injured.  They are human beings created by a society that will sacrifice them.

As does the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, this adaptation directed by Mark Romanek recreates past decades as a fantasy world, though one which is recognizably ours.  We are told that most major diseases were wiped out by 1952 and that by 1967, human life expectancy was 100.  We can figure out for ourselves, however,  that moral progress did not match medical progress, in what were in fact post-Hitler, post-Stalin years.  It is during the 1990s that Kathy and the others must donate their organs.  We are induced to ask:  How is moral sanity reached?  How is dehumanization in the past prevented from becoming dehumanization in the present?  Why is this a world of both English boardingschools (which are generally not for clones) and evil?

“Never let me go” means never let the human individual, even if he or she is a copy, go—into death.  But the human individual must go in a strange England which fails to see its postwar spiritual emptiness, its placid acceptance of horrors.  It’s an acceptance slowly rising in today’s Western civilization.

Romanek’s film is superlative.  It understands the importance of Ishiguro’s themes but is not too cerebral.  It is never pretentious.  Its tone is sure and its scene composition fine. . .

I like Kevin James, but I don’t like Here Comes the Boom (2012).

It’s an inspirational comedy starring and co-written by James, and, although the comedy is reasonably funny, the inspirational content is spurious and ridiculous.  Sometimes I thought the movie was simply an excuse for showing a man getting pummeled in a mixed martial arts ring.  That goes on before we’re pummeled by inspiration.

*

Now for a year-end list.  The best films I saw in 2012 are, in no particular order: Bernie, Lincoln, Moonrise Kingdom, Damsels in Distress, Chronicle, and probably Silver Linings Playbook.  Honorable mention: Atlas Shrugged Part 2 and The Avengers.