Don’t call Kathryn Bigelow a female filmmaker.
The director of Point Break, Strange Days, and Friday’s release The Hurt Locker can’t stand being pigeonholed. Bigelow, who graduated from Columbia’s School of the Arts in 1981, is one of the most recognizable female directors today along with Sofia Coppola and Jane Campion, although she is certainly part of the boys’ club. “If the politics of gender are at work,” she remarked speaking earlier this week about the film, “I am not dignifying them or acquiescing to them—I’m just moving forward at what seems right.”
The Hurt Locker, an independent feature that she helped develop with journalist and screenwriter Mark Boal, follows an EOD (explosive ordnance disposal) tech squad that deactivates dangerous bombs in the center of Baghdad. The lead character, Sergeant James (played with visceral fun by Jeremy Renner), becomes the new team leader with an almost suicidal confidence as he performs what Bigelow calls “the most dangerous job in the world.”
The film, which won a number of prizes at 2008’s Venice International Film Festival, was originally conceived after Bigelow met with Boal to discuss an adaptation of one of his articles for the small screen. “I was immediately tantalized with the filmic possibilities there,” she said. “I saw it was a great opportunity and also a chance to look at this particular conflict, meaning Iraq, and what is going on over there from the standpoint of the epicenter of this war.”
Certainly, Iraq hasn’t been a popular subject for recent movies. But Bigelow’s vision of the conflict is different—The Hurt Locker remains for the most part apolitical and really gives a feeling of the soldier’s point of view. Bigelow explained, “My interest was to keep it very reportorial and presentational and make it raw and immediate and honest and authentic and realistic, and not judge.”
But as much as Bigelow wanted to explore Iraq, the film is really about the psychology of these men, these characters—during Boal’s time, EOD techs had a death rate five times than any other army profession, and Bigelow wanted to acknowledge the identity of these men. “I think it’s a very interesting psychology of somebody who can basically be that courageous,” she explained. “Its one man walking toward what perhaps the population of the rest of the planet would be running from.”
Bigelow has worked within the studio system for films like Point Break and K19: The Widowmaker, though she would hardly call herself a studio director. But for The Hurt Locker Bigelow needed to have full creative control, especially considering her desire to shoot in the Middle East. “I think would have been completely a game changer if I would have gone to a studio for this movie.” Instead, as an independent filmmaker, Bigelow shot in Amman, Jordan, and the sets proved perfect: “I’m shooting with four super 16 mm cameras and they are in constant motion and they are in that 300-meter containment area and it was important to look 365 degrees with no bad angle. So the architecture was great, and you’re in the Middle East, you are able to turn the camera in any direction so you couldn’t move off the set.“ She also remarked that the Iraqi refugees in the area participated as extras and even in some of the minor speaking roles.
Bigelow mentioned that EOD techs call the moment in which the tech walks alone toward the bomb in the massive suit “the lonely walk.” In a way, Bigelow has made her own lonely walk as a filmmaker. Riding lines between studios and independence, male and female, and explosive genre filmmaking and psychologically devastating portrayals, Bigelow’s career and The Hurt Locker are both one hell of a ride.
The Hurt Locker opens in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, and will expand to more cities in the upcoming weeks.
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