Only Have Ayes for Kathryn

In 1997, James Cameron released into theaters what would become the most successful movie of all time. Following the triumph of Titanic, Cameron spent the next seven years developing and perfecting the most advanced, state-of-the-art digital 3D and performance capture technology ever utilized in the production of motion pictures.

In 2005, members of Cameron’s marketing team announced that he was currently working on a movie, at the time, being called Project 880, with an estimated budget somewhere in the vicinity of $300 million. Between that announcement and December 18, 2009, James Cameron created Avatar, which has gone on, over the past two months, to eclipse Titanic and become the most successful movie of all time (not taking into consideration inflation or ticket price adjustment).

On June 26, 2009, a considerably smaller film with an estimated budget of $11 million experienced a limited release across the United States, before finishing a relatively minor run on November 15, 2009 with a respectable-enough box office take of $12,647,089 (USA only). During the two months in which Avatar has been earning its $595,752,416 (USA only), The Hurt Locker has won the Producers Guild of America Award for best picture of the year, the top Directors Guild of America Award for its director, Kathryn Bigelow, as well as nine Academy Award nominations, including ones for best picture and best director (only the fourth woman ever nominated in this category).

The Hurt Locker follows three members of a US Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team throughout Iraq on various missions to find and disarm bombs. Each new call to the site of a newly discovered explosive device is set-up and filmed as its own mini suspense thriller, directed and acted in such a way as to take full advantage of every possible moment of tension.

Alfred Hitchcock used to define the difference between mystery and suspense in this way: Show two people sit down at a table in a restaurant and start talking. A bomb explodes. That’s mystery. For the alternate scenario, however, begin by first showing the bomb ticking away time under the table. Then have the same couple come in and sit down at the table and start talking. That’s suspense. Maybe you even show the two start to leave when the husband suggests he might just like some desert after all. Now that’s even better suspense.

Bombs by their very nature are perfect elements of suspense. We know what they are supposed to do. We know what happens to anybody or anything in their presence when they do what they are supposed to do. And unless they have one of those giant red digital timers (which I really can’t imagine a skilled bomb maker including on a real bomb, unless it is his intention to help the person trying to disarm it), we just don’t know when or by what means they will be triggered to do what they are supposed to do.

Put a likeable character into a known-hostile environment and watch him handle an object created explicitly to blow his body into unrecognizable pieces, and you have the perfect setup for a scene of almost unbearable suspense. The Hurt Locker, constituted of scene after scene like this one, built to make you sit on the edge of your seat, white-knuckling your arm rest and holding your breath, is one of the most tightly-paced and expertly constructed thrillers I’ve seen in a long time. It is one of the best films of 2009.

It is also a unique war film. Often times war movies suffer as entertainments when they allow their message to bog down the story. That is not the case with The Hurt Locker. Despite the fact that the story is set in present day Iraq, Bigelow refreshingly has no political agenda here. This film is not a clinch-fisted rage against war, nor is it a flag-waving tribute to all things American. Rather what we get is a sharp-focused view of an unparalleled branch of the armed forces and a completely absorbing movie experience. If the director and her screenwriter, Mark Boal had an agenda, it was to visually express what it must be like to work in the job Bigelow has described in interviews as the most dangerous in the world. They succeeded.

Lina Wertmuller for Seven Beauties (1975). Jane Campion for The Piano (1993). Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation (2003). And now Kathryn Bigelow. 81 years of Academy Awards, and never a female winner for best director. However, only six times since the Directors Guild of America Awards’ origin in 1948 has the winner not gone on to receive the Academy Award for best director. And for approximately three-quarters of Academy Award history, the best picture winner has been directed by the best director winner.

Come March 7, a woman who used to be married to “King of the World” James Cameron himself could find herself walking away from a podium with a little gold statue in hand for directing a terrific little movie that I highly recommend you see. Kathryn Bigelow and The Hurt Locker deserve this recognition.

Until next week, here's my hope that we all find our Shangri-La. Good night.