Kathryn
Bigelow, who has not made enough great movies given the talent she so often
flourishes, likes to pitch her films in “heightened emotional states”. These
are her own words. Her milieus, however diverse, come super-charged: the roving
cowboy vampires of Near Dark, gurgling with blood-lust; the adrenaline junkies
of Point Break, funding their surf habits by holding up banks beneath Nixon and
Reagan masks; or the techno-junkies dealing in brain clips in the underrated
future noir, Strange Days. In K-19, a rickety Russian sub is hit by both
radiation leaks and mutiny. Not for the former Mrs. Cameron the tribulations of
the average schmo, but beautiful, young men (rarely does she break boundaries
of age, sex or general attractiveness) getting high on risk while draped in her
trademark high style; a luxuriant if sometimes potty dance of death.
For her latest,
and best, adventure in extremis, she couldn’t have found a more heightened
state if she went on location to the moon: the very earthbound world of
bomb-disposal experts plying their knife-edge trade in the inferno of the Iraq
war. It’s required her to strip back her artsy leanings for the stomach-churn
of docu-intense vérité. Aside from the odd surreally beautiful, slo-mo dust
blizzard care of the various explosive tremors, we are shoved face-first into a
grungy hellscape patrolled by pinwheeling handheld cameras, designed precisely
to throw you completely off-balance and strip away any cinematic grandeur.
Indeed, the film itself does little more than follow the daily shift of
confronting suspected IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices), terrifyingly
ramshackle Heath Robinson contraptions built from old shells and hidden
elusively amid the wreckage of Baghdad.
Unlike the
tirade of recently failed Iraq-themed efforts, the impenetrable geopolitics of
the Middle East are not on Bigelow’s mind, nor are the straightforward slings
and arrows of the modern combat flick. She’s all about visceral participation.
The result is a spare, unyielding masterclass in the racking-up of tension to
the point thrill distorts into exquisite agony — not a second relents. If you
think the mindless clank of Transformers 2 is a rollercoaster ride, just try
riding the steel-wire tension of the opening sequence, where a ‘regular’
mission inexorably slips into horrific mishap at the glimpse of as simple a
thing as a mobile phone. While planted in reality, the film shares the
oxygen-stifling grip of James Cameron’s Aliens and his finesse with the
choreography of action. For every threat, the ground is surveyed, the dynamics
assessed, putting you into the epicentre of the crisis. There is also something
bizarrely science-fictional in the vision of a soldier, sweltering in the
140-degree heat of a protective spaceman suit, treading softly through the
moonscape of empty streets to his dance with death.
Bigelow is
especially good on the disorientation and flat-out weirdness of stalking the
fragged ruins of Baghdad, where everyone — be they child, adult, old-timer or
goat — is a potential trigger. The camera twitches and jerks to the soldiers’
rhythms, glancing toward every flicker of movement, deciphering every friendly
advance. Cinematographer Barry Ackroyd (who gave such an unbearable doom-pulse
to United 93) had four handheld cameras whirring simultaneously, generating 200
hours of footage, which the editors have pared down into bone-shards of
storyline. The drama operates as a set of increasingly unhinged encounters
between a team of young EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) ’tecs and their
unpredictable quarry — even the plot twitches like it’s been lubricated with
Red Bull.
“War is a force
that gives us meaning,” trumpets noted war reporter Chris Hedges in the
introductory quote used in lieu of opening credits. “War,” he concludes, “is a
drug.” And we soon gather that hero/villain/fuck-up hybrid Staff Sergeant
William James (Jeremy Renner) is addicted to the head-rush of communing with
these piecemeal death-traps. He’s like the brooding son of Colonel Kilgore,
minus the cowboy jingoism, and his nerveless gung-ho attitude will stretch
relations with his fellow team-members, twitchy greenhorn Eldrige (Brian
Geraghty) and gruff, pragmatic Sanborn (Anthony Mackie). A man running this
close to death has to be borderline psychopath.
Iraq, it turns
out, is merely context. As many of the Oliver Stone school of ’Nam films
refused to dally with politics to embody the increasing delirium of experience,
it serves as a setting in which to observe how the male psyche endures under
impossible pressure. Screenwriter Mark Boal, a magazine journalist who has
specialised in the human truths of the Iraqi conflict, writes in strafes of
agitation and desperation. The result is a vivid study of existential
confrontation as daily routine — how facing your own death becomes the ultimate
trip.
James comes
across like one of those pumped goons from 300, but with a swell of emotions
that hiccup to the surface. He keeps attempting human basics — bonding with a
local boy (amusingly flogging pirate DVDs to the soldiers), trying to discover
common ground with his team mates, finding something, anything, outside of the
vortex of bomb disposal — but he’s too on edge, sucking up adrenaline like a
vampire, treating everything, and everybody, as if they are a death-loaded
challenge to be overcome.
The effortless
(and more than a little Oscar-worthy), not-quite handsome Renner, a relative
unknown (note: star names on the cast list can be treacherous red herrings),
creates a new form of war-damage. His is a life inverted: listless and
out-of-kilter when fumbling with wife and child, almost serene when slowly
following the red wires to their slippery conclusions.
The Hurt
Locker, such a bruising, brilliant experience, can be viewed as the
culmination, to date, of Bigelow’s heightened MO. Amongst her snorting satire
of macho posturing that was Point Break crops up a pumped and tattoo-splattered
surf-warrior derisively dubbed War Child. Now, heartbreakingly, she has found a
true war child, a soul that can only function in country. Without the
breast-beating of the Sarandon-Robbins crew, without much Bush-bashing at all,
it’s a tragic picture of men defined by conflict.
If it lacks the
grand breadth of the great war movies, the mythical elevation of an Apocalypse
Now, say, Bigelow has envisioned a stunning microcosm of hell that asks the
most nakedly important question of all: will they make it?
Grade - A+
Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker is thus far the best of the recent dramatizations of the Iraq War
