Kathryn Bigelow

The other day I went to see “The Hurt Locker“. There was plenty of hype around this movie – 6 Oscars, 73 other award wins, and 47 nominations for more awards. Not to mention that the director is Kathryn Bigelow, who is, among other things, an ex-wife of James Cameron. (And as we know, in many cases, you are who you are married to, and if so, it’s extremely helpful in this case).

Anyways. Obviously, with all that noise, I’ve heard quite a bit about the film, and I saw the trailer, and I had a slight idea on what it was and how it was. I went prepared. Or so I thought…

The film turned out to be totally different from what I was expecting. Actually, I think it turned out totally different from what anybody were expecting. And that’s a good thing. Surprise! Somehow this film is very different from pretty much everything. It has action, but it’s not an action. It has drama, but it’s not a drama. It’s supposedly has documentary, but it’s not documentary. The storyline is very vague and doesn’t seem to stand out or lead anywhere, but on the other hand the film is rather long and I didn’t get tired of it at all. It’s very natural.

The way it works, I guess, is that this film is using atmosphere to tell the story, rather than dialogs, powerful music, and impressive shots. As I said, at times you don’t really know where it goes and if it goes anywhere at all. But yet somehow it all makes sense. Also, one other thing that I really enjoyed, and which I thought was a cornerstone of this film is simplicity. The whole situation in Iraq is not simple. There are many sides to it and many points of views. But this film drops down to a very simplistic view of the whole picture from the eyes of a few American soldiers. There is no propaganda, there are no high-flying ideas. It’s just that simple – a few guys at war. It’s not about why they are there. It’s about them actually being there.

The film is not very entertaining, even though it has a few hilarious bits and quite a few action sequences. It’s simple, and yet deep. It doesn’t force ideas upon thee, but it does make you think. And as I said, it’s different from most films I’ve seen, and yet very similar somehow.

Overall, I’ll give it a 4 out of 5, and I would highly recommend it.