Kathryn Bigelow: Guns, Blood, Beauty

There is a scene in Kathryn Bigelow’s mostly under-appreciated Blue Steel where Ron Silver, of all people, is atop Curtis, and in a moment Silver’s inner evil is exposed. It is frightening, grotesque, and somehow erotic. It is one of the more disturbing scenes in a film that is as implausible and ridiculous as it is riveting and, as is usual with Bigelow’s stuff, visually stunning. Blood, blood, blood and more blood was how Curtis made fun of Bigelow during press runs.

If you’re looking for Bigelow’s style, and not so much at the film itself, you will find Blue Steel a treasure. Unfortunately, it was slammed by critics and the public didn’t much care for it either. Point Break ended up a hit and remains probably her most popular film, though its popularity isn’t so much to do with Bigelow as genius behind the lens but to do with the story, the dialogue, and Keanu Reeves. Still, those surfing scenes are breathtaking. Consistently, throughout Bigelow’s work, whether the film is good or bad (and they’re mostly bad), there is that moment where you stop and appreciate her ability to capture the beauty in people, the movement of things. She has slowed down bullets, captured an unfurling, giant wave, brought out the grace in the way people run, dance, and kiss.

The story, though, is mostly what’s been lacking. Her background, like David Lynch, is in visual arts, painting specifically – and her films confirm her artist’s eye. Bigelow’s early promise, in fact, was so intense it encouraged studios to throw money at her not realizing that, like Orson Welles and other great directors, money isn’t what she needed to make better films. With more money her action sequences were more dazzling, but for a while there her work couldn’t top Near Dark – more money, more action, mainstream Hollywood; it was as if they wanted to make her the female version of Jim Cameron. What got lost along the way was almost everything.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JDxlZAn9AQ[/youtube]

But with The Hurt Locker Bigelow does what she was meant to do all along; cross over from being a great female director to being a great director; having a good script could have made all of the difference – or else having nothing to lose did; after K-19 The Widowmaker Bigelow had almost nowhere to go but up.

Roger Ebert wrote recently about Bigelow:

But my purpose is not to praise “James,” as everybody always calls him. It is to praise Kathryn Bigelow, who comes into full focus in this film as an artist in the classical Hollywood tradition. She is, I wrote in my review, “a master of stories about men and women who choose to be in physical danger. She cares first about the people, then about the danger.” If we create a list of other directors who did that, even crusty old Howard Hawks and Sam Fuller, it is safe to say they would have admired, even envied, “The Hurt Locker.”

Ebert, like everyone else writing about this film, sees potential Oscar gold:

“The Hurt Locker” is about characters, not effects, and so it requires skilled actors. Jeremy Renner’s lead performance is worthy of a nomination–the whole film is. Renner keys off a quotation that opens the film: “War is a drug.” Nobody uses that line in the film, but Renner’s performance illustrates it. He is not merely good at his job, he depends on it for psychic sustenance. Every time he dismantles a bomb, he keeps a small element of it as a souvenir–a little piece to remind him of the intelligence of his opponent. He approaches a bomb like a chess master approaching a board. He lives to understand bombs. So does a bomb builder; either one could lose their life with a tiny mistake. He wants to annihilate his opponent, as a chess master does, but has respect for him, and rather admires a worthy opponent in an abstract way.

Ebert spends a lot of time on the “War is a drug” theme that runs throughout the film. What was most telling about the Renner character wasn’t that he was addicted to dismantling the bombs; he was. But it was how he saw his role as father and savior that most interested me. It was so distinctly American, so much a part of the traditional war movie, even the modern war movie – who is that needs to be rescued? Whom are the soldiers helping, liberating, protecting, defending? How does all of that get mucked up in the end? Ebert, in responding to something written on The House Next Door, makes this point:

The film uses that subplot to demonstrate that any subplot would lead nowhere. This is the story of Staff Sgt. William James, and he is addicted to deconstructing drugs, and in the Iraq war that is a job that needs doing and he is the best man to do it. His reasons are almost beside the point.

I disagree — to me, the subplot of Sgt. James and the relationship to the Iraqi kid was some of the film’s only social commentary about the mess we find ourselves in in Iraq – there has always been the need to find people to protect, to separate the “good” Iraqis from the “bad” ones, and how often did soldiers returning home complain about having gotten it accidentally, woefully wrong? When he tries to find the boy’s killers he charges into a home of respectable people, not “bad” Iraqis. When he returns to his barracks he is treated the same way – no one knows who he is, on which side he is fighting and he must drop to his knees and drop his weapon. This is echoed in the scene where Sgt. James must undo a suicide bomber who has suddenly changed his mind. In these moments, the line between good and bad is so thin it almost disappears and here is another time, another life and death struggle, when a judgment call must be made.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ySsh5LcQkQ[/youtube]

It isn’t just that we are there to fight an enemy; it’s that we don’t know who the enemy is.

Sgt. James’ relationship with the kid is also crucial because he a new father who has no experience yet with being around a kid. This nudges his psyche just enough to make him start thinking of life beyond the war zone.¬†¬† He has a decision to make about the rest of his life. He is the reason that we end up looking at our country and what has been taking place since 9/11. The film is said to be non-political, that it is about war in general. Perhaps that’s true, that it isn’t specifically about Iraq at all, but about the long history of, and the inability to let go of, fighting an enemy.

Ebert writes:

“The Hurt Locker” is completely apolitical. It has no opinion on the war in Iraq, except that there is one, and brave men like James and Sanborn are necessary, and rookies like Eldridge of course are sometimes terrified, and will get no quicker sympathy than from veterans like Sanborn and James. In that sense, “The Hurt Locker” is arguably the most pro-Army feature to emerge from the war. Pro-Army, not pro-war. But the U.S. military declined to assist in its production or allow the film on a U.S. base, and the Bigelow team shot with its own resources in Jordan, sometimes within three miles of the Iraqi border. It was not an easy shoot. Renner speaks of boards with nails in them being dropped on them from rooftops, and he was shot at more than once.

I think it’s there if you go looking for it, but if you don’t want to look for it you won’t see it pop out at you; that is the difference between a film that is trying to make a thematic point and a film that seeks instead to tell a good story and after that, you’re on your own. These films don’t come around very often, of course. Films have been so greatly dumbed down so that everything must be spelled out. The “war is a drug” theme is the only one that is clearly spelled out. That the Iraq war specifically has no clear-cut enemy is also there. The only rules seemed to be – there are good Iraqis and bad Iraqis but you don’t know who is who until they get about five feet away from you. A note could be an IED, a pregnant stomach could be an IED, a dead body, a parked car – as they say in the film they go out every day and they could live or die.

No, the film isn’t specifically an anti-war film. It is a pro-soldier film. It is also a film for our time – a good look at our involvement in the Middle East over the past decade. Where do we go from here? Where do we go when we can’t pull ourselves away?

That isn’t to say that this can be pinned down as an acitivist, anti-war film; far from it. It was bumped last year probably because the “Iraq movies” were doing so poorly. It all has worked out well for the film that it was given more space to be released in 2009. It is going to be an easy call, putting The Hurt Locker in the Best Picture 10. It will likely be honored in Director, Actor, Supporting Actor(s), cinematography, editing, maybe the sound categories. And of course, screenplay – I’m guessing it has a shot of winning there. And you’re seeing so much written about it now because it is the rare film that transcends the usual crap, isn’t it? And good movies, REALLY good movies, don’t come around very often.¬†¬† We’ve all just learned to accept it and take what’s coming.¬† It was nearly impossible to get the movie made; it was made with passion, heart and most importantly, brevity. There isn’t a wasted shot, dollar or effect yet it never once feels “low budget.” For me personally it has that rare quality that makes me want to immediately watch it again. And again.