Ebert opens ‘The Hurt Locker’
Roger Ebert has been doing as much as anyone to get the word out about The Hurt Locker which expands into an estimated 50 theaters today. The latest post on his blog is a nice look at why the film is great, but there are couple of things that could be considered spoilery if you’re a hardass about such things.
I’ve extracted some of the praise and left the plot points behind for those of you so inclined. If you don’t care, by all means read Ebert’s original post, but if you’re worried about it, read on and enjoy spoiler free Hurt Locker appreciation.
It’s not about explosions:
The Hurt Locker represents a return to strong, exciting narrative. Here is a film about a bomb disposal expert that depends on character, dialogue and situation to develop almost unbearable suspense. It contains explosions, but only a few, and it is not about explosions, but about hoping that none will happen. That sense of hope is crucial. When we merely want to see stuff blowed up real good in a movie, that means the movie contains no one we give a damn about.
We care a lot about the people in The Hurt Locker. It does what many good movies do, and gives us a feeling for the personalities and motivations of its characters. What happens to Staff Sgt. William James matters to us. He is a brave and complicated man, and we worry about him. It is a good thing he is doing. He is risking his life to defuse bombs intended to kill and maim not only military forces but random civilians.
He goes on to describe a scene in Hitchcock’s Frenzy where the first murder is left entirely to the audience’s imagination and he compares it to a similar scene in The Hurt Locker:
The imagination of the audience is the most powerful weapon in the arsenal of any director of suspense. Bigelow is employing exactly the same technique as Hitchcock. We see what will happen when a bomb explodes. Then we spend the movie fearing it will happen again. Compared to this restraint, directors using unrestrained CGI effects are like children having a tantrum and throwing their toys around. It explains why a film like The Hurt Locker is objectively better than a gimcrack blockbuster.
It’s about the characters:
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.
It’s not political, yet unlike Transformers it did not receive any assistance from the military:
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…
Filed under: Buzz
Tags: Jeremy Renner, Kathryn Bigelow, Roger Ebert, The Hurt Locker
Yeah, I think I agree with Ebert’s praise on the grounds that the film is more than a handsome piece of work on suspense. The comparisons to Hitchcock are apt. So was last year’s TRANSSIBERIAN as well, a film from last year that was also overlooked, and I’d rank with THL side-by-side as suspense thrillers. They’re admirable films.
Yet, while I don’t want to take the position of contrarian against a movie that is under-appreciated, I still have to hesitate on some of the praise and take a step back for a minute (this is a film that has been labeled as a “masterpiece,” after all).
The definition of “realistic” has to be cleared in here: the narrative of THE HURT LOCKER is not exactly the most plausible, as figures from the military have expressed. And while the military’s regard to TRANSFORMERS is incredibly absurd (i.e. “that would be how we fight aliens”), I’m not sure Bigelow’s right to have aid should be based on the grounds that her film is real-life, either. Instead, the realism of the film is its immediacy — toward death, toward a place that anything can happen, as if it is unscripted. That’s the film’s intended goal, after all, and to celebrate that sensation. It delivers on that. But, even as someone that hasn’t been in a bomb-squad in Iraq, I don’t think it is hard to question the authenticity of, say, Renner’s character as the-badass-who-does-everything-he-wants. This is just a simple case in which the film finds realism in feel, I think, but not facts. I’m surprised how some people have been taking it more as an authentic training tool, instead of the film that it is.
I also find myself at odds under other things: aside from the expertise for a suspenseful experience, I still believe that the Iraq-War genre is one that has been so saturated that there’s not much of a consistent, original enjoyment to be seen visually; that the characters are variations of other characters in other films is another thing; and I simply question whether the film’s intention to depict war as a drug is really much of an innovative emotionality in the war-genre (I know I’m in the minority, but I actually found the action-less JARHEAD to be more risky on how it dealt with this subject). At times it does find some original ways to show war’s drug with grace, but I don’t think it does so consistently enough to submit the film as something worth matching with other giants.
It still should be watched, of course, since it is indeed better than most of this summer’s flicks. And no one should argue otherwise.
The movie seems to make a statement that the reality worth exploring, via fictional means, is the intense psychological experience of life-and-death situations for a few select soliders in an occupying army. This is what is most real and interesting about war–that seems to be the ideological statement of this movie. And that raises the suspicion that it is narrow, untruthful and reactionary due to its attempt to focus on psychological reality rather than the more complex social reality of the occupation including what it meant to the Iraqis. Perhaps Bigelow thought that she could say something profound about the experience of war without being perceived as political. I take this to be a very unfortunate choice.
I am wondering whether Roger Ebert knows about the controversy over Ernst Junger who explored how war elevates the soldier’s life, isolated from normal humanity, into a mystical experience. He turned out to be a fascist, embracing militarism over the ‘talking houses’ [parliamentary democracy] of the Weimar Republic. One would guess that Bigelow is a bit more critical of such intense and primordial experience. Yet I wonder how Bigelow’s movie could be seen in relation to Junger’s embrace of war as a mystical adrenalin rush. But more importantly there is something inherently narrow, reactionary and untruthful about a Iraq movie that takes psychological experience of members of an occupying army as the sole focus when Iraqis are now struggling with one million premature deaths, the return of cholera, the hardening of sectarian conflict and the possible dissolution of their nation, and the loss of up to nine trillion dollars.
How can a movie marginalize such phenomena, and be truthful?
It’s not just about America. Our president is trying to teach us a more cosmopolitan philosopy. We have to grow up and learn to live in a world where we take other points of view seriously. Is this an immature movie?
Seems that way to me.
AV, I think we largely agree. Though I’ve been trumpeting this movie and want people to see it, I have to say I’m not as crazy about it as Ebert or some of it’s bigger fans.
Too me, it’s a terrific piece of suspense wedded to a bit of war-is-hell drama and I think it’s a nice tribute to the sacrifices that the people who have to do the fighting make.
Though Ebert addresses this point, one of my big issues was the whole section with the kid. It’s part of the dramatic arc that holds the whole episodic thing together, but it seemed a little dense to me.
“This is just a simple case in which the film finds realism in feel, I think, but not facts.” Totally agree with that statement.
Hartal, thanks for your comments. I think I see what you’re saying, but you seem to be characterizing this as a pro-Iraq war film just because it’s not an anti-Iraq war film. I believe it’s an anti-war film, or at least a cautionary war film, in general because it shows the cost of the war on the people who fight it. It’s pro-soldier in that soldiers do the dirty work, but they’re not the ones who make the decisions to go to war. Being pro-soldier and pro-war are two different things and can be treated separately.
There is a movie to be made about the consequences for the Iraqis in this war, but this isn’t that film. I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
I just saw this movie today and really liked it. It’s very well-done, the cast was terrific (Renner was particularly excellent and convincing) and though it has its flaws the rest of it really works. It’s suspenseful and moving and there are some truly powerful scenes and images in it. The documentary style works so well for this. And I think you said it very well in your comment above, Craig – it’s pro-soldier, and it’s about the soldiers who don’t make the decisions but do the dirty work, and it explores how it affects each of these three different men, with very different personalities. And I think in general it does make some statements about the cost of war to human beings generally – both Americans and Iraquis – without ‘making a statement’ or being pro or con. It’s more subtle than that but it’s there for the audience to grasp. For example, after James successfully diffuses that 5-bomb network in the ground the camera pans over to the wall that the wire was hooked up to and there’s an Iraqi child sitting there right underneath it. We are given glimpses of the effect that the presence of the occupiers have on the life of the Iraqis in addition to seeing the psychological effect on the American soldiers.