Zero Dark Thirty

Zero Dark Thirty, the story of the manhunt and eventually attack that killed Osama Bin Ladin, begins with emergency response recordings from September 11th, 2001 with several minutes of just blank black screen. The beginning scene can be seen below.

This serves as a compelling and powerful frame for the rest of the narrative. This opening scene brings back a flood of emotions from September 11th, 2001. It was a tragic day in America where 3,000 innocent people lost their lives. The attack on that day is a moment where many people can tell you exactly when and where they were when the news broke. I was in 1st grade in Mrs. Nutterville's class, we were at lunch and one of the teachers had turned on a small TV in the cafeteria. Several of them stood around the TV watching in horror before shepherding kids away from the screen. I remember I was very very scared.

It is a day that remains engrained into the memories of the American people.

By starting the film in this way, it elicits all these emotions of fear and the desire for justice that prevailed after the attacks. It firmly entrenches the audience into the cause of the American CIA workers. Throughout the film, the audience seems to be pushed into willing to look past the torture and treatment of detainees of terror suspects. By framing the film with the 9/11 attacks, justice for the American victims becomes the primary focus for the viewer. It also sets the sequences of events into chronological order. 9/11 is the first event in the story of America's war on terror. The narrative builds from this point in sequence until Osama Bin Laden was killed in 2011. The physical content is also interesting. It is just a blank black screen as if it to suggest that the audio is so important that visuals were not needed for this portion of the film. . 

Another effect of the opening scene on the viewers is it sets up the film as almost documentary-esque. It brings in real emergency communications, not Hollywood script. The filmmakers would like to see this film as historical accurate, and this scene attempts to do that. Also, it frames the eventual idea that Zero Dark Thirty would become the average person's account and belief of what happened. The film wants to become a part of American historical culture.