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The Hurt Locker
Dec. 19th, 2009 09:50 amThe Hurt Locker is a movie about surviving in an alien environment. That makes it a science fiction movie, although the alternate universe where it’s set is a place most of us are at least peripherally aware of from the dribbles and drabs of news that filter in through the radio on our daily commutes. Science fiction’s particular genius is the actualization of metaphor. The metaphor here? War is hell.
The film follows the lives of three bomb squad members on the last 38 days of an Iraqi tour. It’s a convincing answer to the old meta-question: Why war? Well, war – apart from, you know, those old guys with delusions of manifest destiny – is a really, really exciting video game, immensely more exciting than life. It is hard to sustain a singularity of purpose when you’re staring at a hundred different kinds of cereal boxes on a supermarket shelf, but very easy when you’re defusing an IED.
The particular brilliance of The Hurt Locker is the way it embeds the viewer in this altered state of consciousness so that sensory details during the missions themselves are very distinct – the strange gait of a mutilated cat, a fumble with a juice pack straw, the eerie way in which a black shape in the distance turns into a man watching you – but the rest of the movie is shot in a slightly out-of-focus blur.
The money performance is the cowboy “specialist” Will James – oh, and nice homage to transcendental psychology, Mister Screenwriter – and I’ve been racking my brain to think why that is. Certainly it’s a cockier role than the spotter Sanborne’s although if I’m not mistaken, Sanborne gets more actual screen time. But I think the difference is more in the actors’ respective approaches to their roles – while the actor who plays James is clearly channeling someone else, the actor who plays Sanborne – though very good – is anchored in his own persona.
I felt very antsy all day yesterday. That’s not necessarily a Bad Thing – I generally get very restless right before a burst of generative energy and I’ve been tunneling down into The Book over the past few days, fitting it, structuring it, so that there’s rhythm and purpose behind manic eruptions of prose. Far more deliberate process than actual writing, and the work goes on in some secret green room in the back of the brain. On the surface, you need distractions. So I’ve been watching good movies and bad TV. Just be thankful I don’t play Roger Ebert with the bad television.
The film follows the lives of three bomb squad members on the last 38 days of an Iraqi tour. It’s a convincing answer to the old meta-question: Why war? Well, war – apart from, you know, those old guys with delusions of manifest destiny – is a really, really exciting video game, immensely more exciting than life. It is hard to sustain a singularity of purpose when you’re staring at a hundred different kinds of cereal boxes on a supermarket shelf, but very easy when you’re defusing an IED.
The particular brilliance of The Hurt Locker is the way it embeds the viewer in this altered state of consciousness so that sensory details during the missions themselves are very distinct – the strange gait of a mutilated cat, a fumble with a juice pack straw, the eerie way in which a black shape in the distance turns into a man watching you – but the rest of the movie is shot in a slightly out-of-focus blur.
The money performance is the cowboy “specialist” Will James – oh, and nice homage to transcendental psychology, Mister Screenwriter – and I’ve been racking my brain to think why that is. Certainly it’s a cockier role than the spotter Sanborne’s although if I’m not mistaken, Sanborne gets more actual screen time. But I think the difference is more in the actors’ respective approaches to their roles – while the actor who plays James is clearly channeling someone else, the actor who plays Sanborne – though very good – is anchored in his own persona.
I felt very antsy all day yesterday. That’s not necessarily a Bad Thing – I generally get very restless right before a burst of generative energy and I’ve been tunneling down into The Book over the past few days, fitting it, structuring it, so that there’s rhythm and purpose behind manic eruptions of prose. Far more deliberate process than actual writing, and the work goes on in some secret green room in the back of the brain. On the surface, you need distractions. So I’ve been watching good movies and bad TV. Just be thankful I don’t play Roger Ebert with the bad television.
