The Hurt Locker is a movie putting a face on an Explosive Ordinance Disposal unit, specifically one man, Staff Sareant William James played by Jeremy Renner. After its world premiere last year at the Toronto International Film Festival, it has been garnering rave reviews from critics and its doesn’t look like these reviews are unwarranted. When I found out it was directed by a woman, Kathryn Bigelow specifically, I looked her up. Bigelow is the director responsible for a movie called Near Dark, a mediocre horror movie that is the first vampire western fusion. Starring Bill Paxton, Adrian Pasdar and Lance Hendrickson. Sitting at 34 on Rotten Tomatoes list of 50 Best Reviewed Horror Movies and was hailed by Hal Honson of the Washington Post as “both outrageous and poetic; it has extravagant, bloody thrills plus something else – something that comes close to genuine emotion.” A thinking vampire biker western movie with romance that’s rated R. That’s all kindsa awesome.
Then I noted that Bigelow also directed some other very iconic and very big budget movies. Point Break, for instance, might be her best known movie. I’ll say that it came as a surprise to me that Point Break was directed by a woman, being such a very macho movie. She also directed a movie called Strange Days, which was disturbing and a little nuts, but excellent and even though I haven’t seen it in years, it really stayed with me. She also directed K19: The Widowmaker, a movie I haven’t seen, but which garnered a great deal of acclaim.
Bigelow started her career as painter and studied at the San Francisco Art Institute eventually doing her post graduate studies at Columbia University in the film program. She was married, for a time, to James Cameron with whom she collaborated on Strange Days.
Interestingly, Bigelow doesn’t think that it should matter who directed a movie. “If there’s specific resistance to women making movies, I just choose to ignore that as an obstacle for two reasons: I can’t change my gender, and I refuse to stop making movies. It’s irrelevant who or what directed a movie, the important thing is that you either respond to it or you don’t. There should be more women directing; I think there’s just not the awareness that it’s really possible. It is.” It’s possible that I think that it’s something special that she has managed to direct a number of extremely successful and lasting movies and she is a woman simply because it is done so rarely. I don’t disagree with her statement, but I think it has a lot to do with why she is, in fact, so successful.
I’m very much looking forward to seeing The Hurt Locker, what’s being called a “near-perfect movie” as soon as I possibly can, but I’m also looking forward to seeing more for Kathryn Bigelow and that’s why she’s The Weekly Awesome.
