4 February 2010
The Hurt Locker (2009)
The Hurt Locker is among the best of the Best Picture nominations. It doesn’t deserve to be mentioned in the same breath as Avatar let alone actually be in competition with it. They’re both spectacles, to be sure, but one has a depth of character and human understanding that is awful glossy in the other. And I enjoyed, for the most part, James Cameron’s film. It really was like seeing something I hadn’t seen before – the way the environment is so convincing, despite recalling a Roger Ebert criticism of special effects being made up to serve the plot as they go along. Oh, there’s a big floating mountainous region where radar doesn’t work? Great! Oh, everything glows at night to show not only how wondrous and deserved the Nav’i’s plug into the environment is, but it’s really scary when it’s dark! The hyped 3D is deployed reasonably – it adds character to the picture, to make up for that which is lacking in the story.
The Hurt Locker is a story, on the other hand, driven entirely by character. There are a few scenes that are a bit familiar involving alcohol and stomach punching but then again, the whole picture is imbued with the sense of showing you something real and fantastically dangerous (or unimaginable) so maybe those familiar scenes are a good anchor for us. What we see vets as “realistic,” but it is utterly psychotic. The film posits in the beginning that, simply, ‘war is a drug’, a simple fact not necessarily cogently backed up by reality, but certainly proved beyond reason within the context of the film. And yet the characterizations are grown throughout, by characters ignoring each other, standing beside each other, and offhand glances. There’s no awkward exposition or backstory beyond a few minor details.
There are, however, two scenes that deserve to be chided. The first is the heroic (and granted, reckless, so its in character) night trip off the base to find a boy’s family and attempt to get some answers as to why he’s seemingly been used in nefarious ways. It’s filmed in a way that’s a little gratuitous in its indulgence to Hollywood (perhaps ironically), with its lone star gunman bashing down doors, triceps ready at a moment’s notice to absorb the kickback of his big gun. So, it’s a little ridiculous, and beyond William James’ accepted recklessness and need for adrenaline, it just doesn’t make much sense. Or it hinges on an accepted sentimentality that is wildly out of context (and smacks a little bit more of something akin to The Blind Side). James’ recklessness better demonstrated at the end of the film where there are more unsavory outcomes with a bit more meat on the bone than that skinny kid has/had/has/had/who-cares.
The second scene, perhaps only because I found it a little difficult to relate to, works a lot better but is still awkwardly raw. When Sanborn confesses that he finally understands what he wants in life, he’s like an alien specimen to James, who already has a family and child whom he finds difficult to disarm. There’s one of those countdowns going on throughout the movie, and this scene happens right around with one or two days left. The countdown gives the movie a shape, since every scene is shaped as a sort of vignette, with its own tensions, characters, bomb-makers, etc, and in that sense each scene is more or less structured like a videogame level where the characters have a goal and an ever-increasing amount of pressure/danger coming their way (with exception to one scene, where the tension mesmerizingly bleeds out of the scene over minutes).
I’m frequently amused by movies that attempt to undercut the “Oh Hey, It’s that guy!” syndrome. In summer movies and those that are bound to Chekovian motifs, you can always spot the bad guy and/or traitor by the famous actor in the seemingly unimportant role (yes, this applies to Law & Order, and only recently that I can think of did Gone, Baby Gone have an interesting slant on it). Here, it appears there’s real Hollywood talent that’s stationed in Iraq, and handled to good effect when, shortly after the first irAqt, the film mildly threatens a more typical plot. There are some “blackwater” type dudes out in the desert with a broken down truck pulling in some guy with a bounty. Kathryn Bigelow throws out all kinds of Hollywood signals about this developing into something, only to let them slowly settle back down into the sand while the audience patiently waits for someone to lose an eye in the whole affair.
Just saw this, and absolutely adored it. Insofar as anything that makes you feel like you just got punched can be lovable. I think you hit the nail on the head with this.
It’s definitely kind of poetic that this and Avatar competed for the big prize: Avatar, an entertainment ultimately about entertainment itself (with filmgoers as disabled bodies borrowing better lives via onscreen avatars), borrowing the mythology of war in ways that directly reference current events, but all in the service of pure escapism, more purely than any movie I’ve seen in recent memory; and, THL, which is actually directly about this experience of war, and what it means to people’s lives, and believably “realistic”, except also done in the format of a crazy over-the-top action movie, and sort of intended to make you feel the pain via bombast and tension and blast. The two movies are so polarly, incredibly opposite that they’re almost similar.
I also was struck by how beautiful the lighting & sound design are in the hurt locker; in its way it’s as 3d and immersive as Avatar, but without the glasses. I felt like I had dust in my mouth half the time, and was surprised I wasn’t sunburned when the film ended.
Not a fan of the closing frames though, with the cut-to-buttrock macho moment. But I’m willing to accept it.