Oscar snubbed

Forget the controversy surrounding “Zero Dark Thirty.” Forget the criticisms of its inevitable inaccuracies. Forget anyone who accuses the filmmakers of having an agenda. Don’t think of it as a documentary — it’s not. It’s a movie that shows the 10-year hunt for Osama bin Laden like a bomb going off in slow motion. It’s a tense, wrenching build to an explosive climax.

Director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter/journalist Mark Boal, the dynamic Oscar-winning duo behind 2010’s “The Hurt Locker,” infuse “Zero Dark Thirty” with the same raw energy. They chronicle the search for bin Laden through a CIA lens, which focuses on Maya (Jessica Chastain), the young agent based on a real undercover operative who dedicated her career to finding bin Laden. Maya is the film’s guiding force, a hardened heroine hell-bent on settling the score in the war on terror at any cost. Her passion and confidence simultaneously impress and unnerve her male colleagues, especially in a stirring scene where she declares her 100 percent certainty of bin Laden’s location to a doubtful audience.

But it takes her a while to gain that confidence. Bigelow and Boal push the envelope with graphic displays of torture as Maya’s fellow agent Dan (Jason Clarke) subjects a suspect to waterboarding and other vicious methods of questioning. Maya is visibly uncomfortable at the sight of such abuse, but her growing anger replaces her fear as the film progresses. Chastain is a master at capturing the nuances of Maya’s subtly changing character.

This subtlety, along with Maya’s unyielding demeanor, is what defines “Zero Dark Thirty.” Bigelow directs her films in such a way that they lose all theatricality without sacrificing a shred of drama, accomplishing a stunning realism in her art, regardless of which facts are correct. She doesn’t delve into relationships or provide background. She simply tells the story as it is.

The tension mounts throughout, stopping your heart with unexpected explosions and leaving you in constant suspense. Even though you know how the hunt ends, watching the Navy SEALs creep through bin Laden’s compound with their guns at the ready is the hardest scene to endure. The absence of a Best Director nomination for Bigelow is this year’s greatest Oscar snub.

Bigelow’s style can easily result in a film lacking a strong emotional connection, as it did with “The Hurt Locker.” But Bigelow doesn’t fall victim to this trap in “Zero Dark Thirty,” thanks largely in part to her work with Chastain. Chastain brings depth you didn’t know was there to a seemingly one-dimensional character. Her performance as Maya is so controlled, so aloof (save for occasional badass outbursts) that when she finally loses her composure in the last two minutes of the film, it’s enough to make you feel every ounce of pain and triumph imaginable. Maya’s arc brings the movie from start to finish and gives “Zero Dark Thirty” its humanity, something for which Chastain deserves an Oscar.

You won’t be able to get that last look on Maya’s face out of your head.