Maya’s Little Death
“To the extent that ZD30 instigates curiousity, it’s largely directed toward conjuring an inner life for a character whose exterior fills so many frames. The feminist gesture of casting a young woman as the central architect of bin Laden’s downfall is undercut by the cinematographic reliance on Chastain’s exquisite cheekbones, flawless skin, and lithe form to keep us fixed as Maya pursues her holy grail with Old Testament zeal. Seemingly immune to the passage of time, age doesn’t wither her. She merely applies more eyeliner as the years go by, exaggerating the sunken-socketed ferocity with which she views her lily-livered colleagues. Revenge may offer the most obvious source of motivation, but there’s also something latently sexual about Maya’s relentless quest to get her man. When she tilts her head back, tear trickling, after the body bag’s climatic unzipping, the scene is suggestively postcoital: lips apart, hair tangled, chest heaving. All passions spent.”
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Susan L. Carruthers. As if you needed another reason to subscribe to Cineaste.
