{"id":6406,"date":"2016-05-30T19:52:25","date_gmt":"2016-05-30T14:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=6406"},"modified":"2026-07-17T22:11:00","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T16:41:00","slug":"why-the-report-is-the-perfect-film-for-janata-curfew-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=6406","title":{"rendered":"Why \u201cThe Report\u201d is the Perfect Film for Janata Curfew Day"},"content":{"rendered":"\nM<\/span>idway through Scott Z Burns\u2019 <\/span>The Report<\/span><\/i>, a dense but rewarding film cataloguing the missteps of the CIA\u2019s post-9\/11 \u201cDetention and Interrogation Program\u201d that involved torturing Al-Qaeda prisoners, the moral centre of the film is laid bare. When Daniel Jones (<\/span>Adam Driver<\/span><\/a>), the Senate staffer leading the investigation, expresses his impatience at the increasing unlikeliness of the \u201ctorture\u201d report seeing the light of day, Senator Dianne Feinstein (Annette Bening) asks him if he wants to be Edward Snowden. \u201cEdward Snowden was a traitor,\u201d she answers before Jones has a chance to offer a rejoinder. By which she means that the truth is as important as the lawful processes that it is filtered through. Neither Feinstein nor the film treats whistleblowing that comes at the cost of circumventing the system as an act of bravery; instead on more than one occasion, Burns\u2019 underlines it as an ultimate form of cowardice.\n\n

\"adam_driver_the_report\"\n

\n

On his part, Adam Driver, an actor par excellence, adept at conveying a lifetime of emotion through the stillness of his face and his vacant eyes, brings a quiet vulnerability to Jones that ekes out the significance of a government\u2019s duty toward the nation.<\/p>\n

Amazon Prime Video<\/p>\n<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nJones follows that belief through in another scene when he refuses to leak the report to <\/span>The New York Times<\/span><\/i> (Matthew Rhys makes a welcome appearance as a haggard investigative <\/span>journalist<\/span><\/a>), even when the chances of it being published without being sullied by irrational redactions seems nil. When asked what happens if the report never comes out, Jones replies with a steely, \u201cIt means I haven\u2019t done my job well.\u201d It\u2019s an idealistic position to take, especially when held up against the methods of the CIA, a body that has routinely turned having no regard for the law or jurisdiction into an adventure sport. But what <\/span>The Report <\/span><\/i>wants viewers to recognise is that Jones and Feinstein aren\u2019t just after uncovering the truth of a dedicated cover-up of oversight, they\u2019re also seeking accountability. As Feinstein and the film make amply clear, the former can\u2019t come at the cost of the latter.\u00a0<\/span>\n\nThis means that Burns\u2019s screenplay (the director is making headlines at the moment for writing <\/span>Contagion<\/span><\/i><\/a>, the 2011 medical thriller that predicted <\/span>Covid-19<\/span><\/a> in chilling detail) has the challenge of earning the viewer\u2019s interest instead of spoon-feeding them. The subject at hand is as vast as it is terrifying. In 2005, when the CIA destroyed video recordings that documented the \u201cenhanced interrogation\u201d methods they deployed on Al-Qaeda suspects Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri three years ago, Jones is tasked with leading an investigation into its contents.\u00a0<\/span>\n\nThe methods in question, involve inhumane torture practices like mock burial, waterboading, stress positions, and sleep-deprivation carried out to get prisoners into a state of <\/span>\u201clearned helplessness\u201d<\/span><\/a> under the supervision of two contracted amateur psychologists. The aim was to brutalise the naked, shivering, and tied suspects to such a worthless state (in a flashback scene, they shave off the beard of a <\/span>Muslim<\/span><\/a> suspect to dehumanise him) that they spill out any secret intel about potential acts of terrorism. That these harsh practices didn\u2019t work at all or yield any new information, made it all the more illegal, and by extension, gave the CIA prime reason to push it under the rug.\u00a0<\/span>\n\nBut when Jones takes over, what ensues is a six-year-long meticulous labour that involves poring over pages of un-redacted CIA files in a bare, suffocating basement room to draw up a report that exactly summarises the extent of the brutalities inflicted and their repercussions. Running simultaneously is Jones\u2019 protracted battle to make the report public amid push backs from the CIA, President Obama\u2019s Chief of Staff Denis McDonough (Jon Hamm), and occasionally Feinstein herself. <\/span>The Report<\/span><\/i> travels forwards and backwards, using flashbacks to transport the viewer to the black site where the atrocities actually happened.\u00a0<\/span>\n\n

The Report<\/em> occasionally resembles an information dump, akin to a thorough journalistic piece of investigation.<\/p><\/blockquote> \n\nIt\u2019s a lot to take in and Burns\u2019 crafts the film and its screenplay with a calculated precision that doesn\u2019t romanticise or glamourise the inherent disrespect of the proceedings. This distant gaze means that <\/span>The Report<\/span><\/i> occasionally resembles an information dump, akin to a thorough journalistic piece of investigation; yet like <\/span>The Spotlight<\/span><\/i>, the chase is always invigorating. Making it melodramatic might have actually reduced the rigour of Jones\u2019 integrity, and Burns\u2019 insists that the viewer derive sentimentality from one man\u2019s unrelenting pursuit of uncovering the truth instead of seeking them through melodramatic embellishments.\u00a0<\/span>\n\nThat\u2019s probably the reason the film feels like it is shot with the camera at an arm-length\u2019s distance from the proceedings; there\u2019s no mention of either Jones\u2019 <\/span>childhood<\/span><\/a> or his personal life, although early on in the film, he alludes to a broken relationship. Over time, as the making of the report consumes Jones to an extent where he claims \u201csleep gets in the way of work,\u201d it\u2019s a quiet indictment of what the job takes from him. On his part, Driver, an actor par excellence, adept at conveying a lifetime of emotion through the stillness of his face and his vacant eyes, brings a quiet vulnerability to Jones that ekes out the significance of a government\u2019s duty toward the nation. The film\u2019s closing sequence that sees Jones walk out of the Senate building after the report is finally made public is testament to Burns\u2019 steely determination to make a movie that didn\u2019t get lost in its theatrics.\u00a0<\/span>\n\nThe Report <\/span><\/i>can be streamed on Amazon Prime Video.<\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adam Driver is excellent in The Report, a film about a Senate investigation into a post-9\/11 CIA detention programme. It\u2019s a movie that you need to pay attention to and if you are binge-watching while in self-isolation, we recommend it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":103,"featured_media":6409,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10108],"tags":[10241,108,10397,10421,10422],"class_list":["post-6406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coronavirus","tag-adam-driver","tag-cia","tag-contagion","tag-janata-curfew","tag-scott-z-burns"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy \u201cThe Report\u201d is the Perfect Film for Janata Curfew Day<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Adam Driver is excellent in The Report, a film about a Senate investigation into a post-9\/11 CIA detention programme. 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