While studying The Hurt Locker in a modern cinema class, I heard something like, “Not many directors manage to start their films with a singular quote, then follow through with a story that doesn’t stray from it thematically.” Whether it was my professor who said this or I read it in a critique slips my mind, but the fact that Bigelow did manage to build a film around these words I haven’t forgotten.

Roger Ebert elaborated on the quotation in his 2009 review, correctly stating that war is not a drug for everyone. Then again, drugs aren’t for everyone, either. But what of those very few? The men who crave the release of adrenaline war provides in the way junkies crave dope? These are the characters who interest Katheryn Bigelow.

It is known she possesses some of the adrenaline-seeking attributes — climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in freezing temperatures, skydiving to get coverage of Patrick Swayze during the filming of Point Break — of her leads. What makes The Hurt Locker a striking step in her career is she examined adrenaline-lust in wartime, and she did so with her signature camerawork, using movement to intensify emotion and suspense. Such heightened reality only plays on the audience if they are invested in the character’s journey.

I had an acquaintance who once told me what worried him most since returning home from Iraq wasn’t the fact that he killed people, it was the fact that he hadn’t felt anything like it since. This is the kind of confession that makes you question man. I only share it to highlight a bullet the creators of The Hurt Locker dodged: exploring man’s addiction to wartime killing via a dramatic film would have undoubtably alienated viewers. Bigelow and writer Mark Boal crafted an absolving solution to their study by choosing the right type of military serviceman to dissect.

The overlooked (and possibly only) subtly of the film is we are not asked to focus on men killing each other obsessively, we are focused on a bomb specialist addicted to beating the fuse. The enemy is a looming threat, watching his every move, but diffusion is his vice. This is not a film about man vs. man, it is a film about man vs. his cravings for danger. The camera plays on the ticking-clock to a discomfort that Jeremy Renner’s Sergeant First Class William James thrives on. When watching the character work, ‘You shouldn’t do that’ may cross viewers’ minds.

Back at the FOB, he keeps a box of trophies, or objects that almost killed him, one of which is a wedding ring — ‘Like I said, stuff that almost killed me’. When at war, he is released. When at home, he only thinks of the battleground. This is a character not cut out for the ordinary life. Director Kathryn Bigelow has stated she isn’t interested in scenes of the ordinary either (Kinetic Camera, DGA).

By the time of The Hurt Locker’s release, she had garnished a lengthy resume of action-packed movies with The Weight of Water, K-19, Strange Days, Near Dark, Blue Steel, Point Break, and The Loveless. There has been talk in the media about her being a woman in a genre predominantly, if not absolutely, occupied by men, and speculation as to why she chooses to work on the material she does. Her stance on creative output remains topically iconoclast:

“It’s irrelevant who or what directed a movie; the important thing is that you either respond to it or you don’t. There should be more women directing: I think that there’s just not the awareness that it’s really possible.”

These words are spoken from a true artist. One who understands that a work should be considered before the hands that shaped it. In an era where representation is heavily emphasized, I can’t help but wonder how different this film would have been if directed by someone else. Boal’s contributions undoubtably added realism, as he was reporting on the ground in Iraq with a bomb unit in the early 2000s, but it was Bigelow’s style that correlated so perfectly with the film’s message and characters. Without her artistic touch, The Hurt Locker might have been a very different film.

She has faced a fair share of criticisms, the most discrediting coming from documentarian Michael Moore. At his 20th anniversary screening of Roger and Me, Moore claimed The Hurt Locker was a "lazy movie" and that he could easily have viewers on the edge of their seats if every other scene was practically, "Should we cut the red or green wire?"

My response to Michael Moore is no, you could not. Bigelow has talked of her multi-camera coverage technique that she used in the filmmaking process. It is a method that provides a plethora of options when footage is taken to edit, but all options must be examined before finding the right angle and take. When we acknowledge this, the film’s relatively small budget, and that the production was shot in the Jordanian desert in upwards of 135-degree heat, Moore’s commentary on lazy can be dismissed.

Bigelow’s following film, Zero Dark Thirty, faced more elaborate criticism. It was initially dubbed leftist propaganda and later scrutinized for its depictions of torture, which some argue come across as promotional in the context of achieving victory. This of course comes down to perception. The response she gave during a 2012 interview with The New York Times:

“The film doesn’t have an agenda and it doesn’t judge.”

She also faced backlash for taking liberties in regards to the character Maya’s (Jessica Chastain) involvement within the operation that led to Bin Laden’s death (granted, Zero Dark Thirty and Blue Steel are her two films that feature powerful female leads). The director has clarified she is not setting out to make any social statements:

“I’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking about what my aptitude is and I really think it’s to explore and push the medium. It’s not about breaking gender roles or genre traditions.”

Beyond gender, the intensity of her work is not expected from someone who started her artistic career studying painting at the San Francisco Art Institute. Yet she projects a resilience that rings true to the Northern California woman.

Born in 1951 in San Carlos, California, her childhood witnessed the post-war suburban boom. Her adolescence was likely exposed to the hippy movement that was prominent in the greater San Francisco area during the 60s. Perhaps because of the conflicting ideologies between these two eras, there lies an interesting duality in the people who lived through them. Though individually unique, women of this place and time seem to convey a certain forcefulness: a bit no-nonsense, of working-class modesty, but with strokes of creativity and steadfast in their pursuits.

“If there is specific resistance to women making movies, I just choose to ignore that as an obstacle for two reasons: I can’t change my gender and I refuse to stop making movies.”

Bigelow carries this aura. Joan Didion instilled it onto the page. The stories they tell differ. Their voices share a Northern California home. I saw similar attributes in my mother, born just across the bay from San Carlos in 1952, a year after the director. I think of how she wrote a novel before her passing, how before that she was an English teacher (as was Gertrude Bigelow, Kathryn’s mother), and how both her teaching and creativity inspire me to write. Because Bigelow’s father was an amateur cartoonist, I wonder if she too was driven by creative curiosity, the sharing of ideas, and if this played a role in her choosing to study painting.

After the San Francisco Art Institute, Bigelow moved to New York. She has mentioned she was intrigued by the masculinity of The Wild Bunch and Mean Streets while studying film there. It was around then that she realized with moving images she could reach a broader audience. One would assume there must be more behind her drive to explore the extraordinary. This question builds an eccentric ambiance, which makes me want to learn more about her, find out what made her the creator she is today.

At first glance, Kathryn Bigelow may not be the director we’d expect to provide a stellar examination into such masculine complexities. But when looking into her body of work, personality, and methods of filmmaking, it becomes clear she is the perfect fit for the job. Her perspective and style transcended any sort of label to shape The Hurt Locker into a masterpiece. Her doing so echoes her above statements on filmmaking. Creativity is something that everyone has the rights to, that anyone can explore. It is up to the artist to defy expectations.

There are certain aspects of our personalities that push us to create. Sometimes, there are certain people and films. If Katheryn Bigelow can direct an award-winning piece on the American obsessions of war, more power to her, and inspiration to us.

"01_82_AR_0061.jpg" (CC BY 2.0) by FICG.mx

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