Half Past Midnight

The film "Zero Dark Thirty" is not unlike many films.  The main character Maya (female), takes on the role that most people would not see any female doing.  However, with the combination of Kathryn Bigelow (director) and Jessica Chastain (Maya) they make the audience think that this role could be filled by no other person.  

We do not get too much background on the character of Maya in the film however I do remember a part towards the end of the movie where the CIA director comes to the dining hall to talk to Maya.  He asks her how long she has been working for the CIA and Maya responds by saying twelve years.  They continue to go back and forth a little about what she has been doing since she started at the CIA and she happens to mention something about her being recruited out of high school.  HIGH SCHOOL! 

Lets go back to the beginning, where we see this young female standing by and watching a man be tortured and starved.  In the beginning of this film we see a woman who seems like she is out of her element doing something that she shouldn't be doing.  This woman is standing by and watching another man be tortured and she looks disgusted.  Could it be because she is a female?  I could not tell you.  But to me that question was answered when Dan was talking to Joseph.  Dan mentioned something about "is this the best the CIA has to offer?"  With Joseph answering "Washington says she's a killer."  So we go from scared woman watching a man get tortured to a killer in a matter of 20 minutes in the movie.  

I do not know how this happened so quickly but as the movie wears on we see the development of her character as she becomes the torturer.  She becomes this person that the viewer does not see in the first 10 minutes of the film.  Jessica Chastain does a great job at making her character come to life.  Although, we still do not have any background information on her.  Until........The end of the movie when she is talking to the CIA director.  To me it was astonishing to follow this character, her being a female and doing a job that women do not do.  Then finding out she was recruited out of high school made it even more amazing to me.  Nobody in this film seemed to care that Maya was a girl, because she got the job done and she did not care that she was a girl.  She was a person who did her job and in the end was successful at it.