MOVIES
Bigelow & BridgesLOS ANGELES, CA 01 February 2010 |
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Recently, late at night, in a fit of mild insomnia, I found myself watching Blue Steel on cable television. And no, this has nothing to do with Ben Stiller and Zoolander; I'm referring instead to the 1989 Kathryn Bigelow flick about a rookie female cop (Jamie Lee Curtis) who is stalked by a psychotic stock trader (Ron Silver) in New York.
It's a terrific---and terrifically weird---piece of cinema, precisely the kind of movie that "Women in Film" professors must be showing to their students on campuses nationwide. A violent movie set in a world of men, but with a distinctly female point of view. It is, in the best possible sense, the kind of story that only a woman could tell.
A closer look at Bigelow's filmography reveals a clear trend line. Her very first short film, The Set-Up, directed back in 1978, was a twenty-minute deconstruction of violence in cinema. From there it was The Loveless, Born in Flames, Near Dark, and then on to Blue Steel...
What we often see is a deep interest in masculine ritual, in men and their guns and their cocks, their need for domination, their barely suppressed and mostly unconscious homoerotic subtext, and how women might (or might not) fit into this world.
The films are very knowing. Bigelow's a smart cookie.
And now, with The Hurt Locker, all these years later, she has broken through to the next level, a favorite for Best Picture, and rightly so. She also appears to be on track for Best Director, which would make her the very first woman in history to take the award (provided her old flame, James Cameron, doesn't wrest it from her).
The Hurt Locker was certainly my favorite film of 2009, the only one that felt like it had true greatness in it. It's possible that at least part of my affection for it is rooted in its open reverence for Chris Hedges, the longtime war correspondent. He's one of my favorite writers of all time, and War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, his classic treatise on humanity's predilection for battle, is among the best and most instructive things I've ever read. A book that changed my brain---permanently. I recommend it all the time.
One of its most resonant themes---that war is a drug, powerfully addictive---is rendered beautifully by Bigelow in The Hurt Locker, and in particular by Jeremy Renner, whose performance as the lead addict is deadly accurate.
War is a drug.
Why has nobody said that in a movie before?
Maybe it took a woman. Maybe men are too addicted to notice.
Maybe someone has said it before, and I didn't notice.
Bigelow is also the director of Point Break, a movie with a massive cult following---and count me among its members. This is a film whose appeal is a source of everlasting fascination and amusement...a film preoccupied, like much of the rest of Bigelow's work, with masculine ritual and greed and competition and violence.
It's a penis sword fight.
And yes, there is an air of mockery involved in much of the Point Break love out there, so much so that the film has spawned an off-off-Broadway show in which the part of Johnny Utah is played by a member of the audience, an untrained innocent who must read his lines off of cue cards in an attempt to approximate the effectless delivery of Keanu Reeves.
But still: The underlying love is real. It's genuine. For all of the lampooning it inspires, there must be something serious in the film. (Right?) At the very least, it must be operating with uncanny precision on some deeper psychological level in the minds of men.
Fine---it may not be high art. I can accept that. But whatever it is, it's relentlessly effective.
To dismiss the appeal of Point Break as flukish would be a simplistic mistake. The Hurt Locker makes this clear, and it has rightfully caused critics and cinephiles to reexamine the work of Ms. Bigelow through a more thoughtful lens.
Visually, she's always been terrific. You can watch Blue Steel on mute and be entertained by the images alone. But there's also a lot more intellectual heft to her work than initially meets the eye. Locked up inside of those cop dramas and vampire sagas and tales of surfing bank robbers are a core of recurring thematic ideas that are greater than the sum of their parts.
It's a weird filmography. Good weird. And deserving of attention.
I'm not saying she's some kind of guru, nor am I ready to declare her the next Fellini. I'm just saying she's interesting---which is better than you can say for most artists. There's a real auteur at work here, and much of the time she's better than her own material. Bigelow has something to say.
Anyway, I'm rooting for her on Oscar night. And I suspect that a nation of Point Break fans---the majority of us men---will be rooting for her, too. Why? She knows us better than we know ourselves.
The other guy I'll be rooting for? Jeff Bridges, whose work as Bad Blake in the indie film Crazy Heart appears to be headed for a triumph. A kind of lifetime achievement award, and one that's well-deserved.
Bridges, of course, achieved a rare cinematic immortality as The Dude in the Coen Brothers' 1998 masterpiece The Big Lebowski. He is, perhaps more than any other living actor, the embodiment of "eternal cool" and "universal belovedness." (Who doesn't wanna hang with Jeff Bridges? Who thinks Jeff Bridges is an asshole?)
And here I should point out that in the world of cult films fervently embraced by a male audience aged 18 to 36, Point Break and Lebowski almost certainly have to rate among the top ten, or close to it. The intensity and breadth of their popularity seems to have grown over the years. The quotability. The underground currency. The curious emergence as cultural touchstones.
Surfing's the source, dude.
Shut the fuck up, Donnie.
World of Pain.
The Dude abides.
To see Bigelow and Bridges receive their many accolades together, one can't help but look back and think of these earlier films, and how they laid the groundwork, and served as catapults, and how much momentum they must be providing in some weird, subterranean way.
Johnny has his own demons. Don't you, Johnny?
This is their moment, clearly, and it makes good poetic sense that it would happen for the two of them at the same time. Let's hope it carries through to March 7th and the big ceremony. Anyone who tries to stop them will earn the underground ire of millions. Be forewarned. The aggression simply will not stand.
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There is something to be said for a woman who really gets, and can portray, the dick swinging. I think part of the love any man gets from the movie Point Break is precisely the fact that we have all been that asshole, along with our friends, saying some really stupid shit, and all the while feeling pretty glorious in a wet-suit (substitute appropriate outfit).
I can just imagine her considering the chase scene where Johnny Utah is after bank-robbing Swayze who is wearing a Reagan mask. Johnny has hurt himself and is faced with the choice to shoot the man he has come to love or let him get away, thereby dishonoring his duty as an FBI agent. “Hmm, Keanu, this scene just isn’t working for me,” she says, approaching him. “I’m not really getting that feeling of angst I need. Maybe, after he escapes, just yell up into the sky and fire off a couple of rounds haphazardly into the air.”
“Just up into the air?” Keanu asks.
“Yeah, don’t worry about aiming, just grab it real hard with both hands and really fire a few off.”
“You think that’s how an FBI guy would play it?”
“Well, no, but that’s how Johnny Utah would.”
And she’s right. The average dude, whether he would or not, is grabbing that gun and firing it randomly into the air. We’re all that asshole.
This time last year I was settling down to watch Point Break for the third time in a month— I went around and showed it to all my friends who had never heard of it and watched it with them.
I had a screen writing class last year where we had to talk about our favourite films and I couldn’t really find the words to convey the greatness of a film that is both a genuinely entertaining action film, as well as a masterclass in bad dialogue.
If anything, Bigelow needs to win because Point Break deserves to be billed as being from ‘the Oscar winning director…’
I watched the 1992 version of Dracula the other day.
Keanu Reeves is Point Break bad, but with an ‘English’ accent. There’s a scene where he’s imprisoned with a load of female vampires to keep him weak or something.
And all I could hear in my head is ‘Johnny has his own demons. Don’t you Johnny?’
“Is the cah-sill fah?”
[Keanu in Dracula]
he’s amazing. There are actually three lines where his accent is amazingly spot on, but most of the time he just sounds like a gay(er) Johnny Utah.
apparently Coppola knew that that character should have been played by a Brit, but he needed it to be a commerical hit, and he needed a ‘hot young star’ to attract a young female audience….
I actually thought his performance in that was waaaaaaaaayyyyy better than Winona Ryder’s, personally. And having a naked Monica Bellucci rise from the bed between his legs is a much better thing to do with her than just coating her in dirt, as Mel Gibson did in Passion of the Christ.
I don’t hate Jeff Bridges. I love the dude.
I would like to postulate this also: the other thing that Bridges and Bigelow also have in common is that they don’t alienate women, even with all the dudeness in their works. I love Point Break. I love, love, love The Dude - and just about any other damn role Bridges has taken on. This is a real feat, in my opinion.
Hurt Locker has been atop my Netflix queue for weeks. VERY LONG WAIT. So I have to hold off intelligent comment on what I hear from all quarters is an excellent film.
As great as Bridges is, Lebowski is all about John Goodman. I saw a bumper sticker on a car the other day for Sobchak Security. I almost got into an accident trying to wave the guy down and give him a thumbs up.
I’m stayin’. I’m finishin’ my coffee.
Netflix can lick my balls. Once they start long waiting you (which they do if you send back more movies in a month than 90¢ per movie for postage will allow) it can become nearly impossible to get a new release in a timely manner. There is a hole in the system though. New releases. If you send back a movie on Saturday, and have a movie releasing on Tuesday at the top of your queue, they will always mail you the new release. The pain in the ass is that you have to check which movies are coming out every week, and you can only mail back your movies on Saturday if you want it to work, prolonging the time you hold onto them.
You want a toe? I can get you a toe…
I can get you a toe by 3 o’clock.
Goodman was FANTASTIC in Lebowski. He made that film.
Goodman is terrific in Lebowski, but I hold fast that Bridges is the key player in the film. He makes the whole thing go. He’s the nucleus, and his performance is deceptively deft.
You need the mellow Dude center in order for Walter and Donnie to be able to manage their frenetic orbit. It’s a delicate dance.
Jeff Bridges actually came out to the Lebowski Fest in L.A. a few years back. He is exactly how I imagined him. He sang a few tunes, even covering “The Man in Me” from the film, and then hung out with the fans, drinking white russians and signing autographs.
The Coens, in one of their rare interviews on DVD, said Bridges was astoundingly easy to direct as the dude. He would walk up to them and ask them if they thought the Dude “burned one” for the scene they were about to do. The answer was usually yes, and they said Bridges would go into the corner, rub his eyes to make them red and glassy, and then he was there. 1 take.
I give the Hurt Locker my 2nd spot this year, following District 9. And in a joke I stole from Doug Benson, I give the Hurt Locker the #1 spot for movie titles that are euphemisms for Oprah’s vagina.
Is it just me or was it you/Zoe who posted an article about the play where a random audience member portrays Reeves?
I have no idea how else I would know about such an obscure piece of knowledge concerning theater.
If Cameron wins for Best Director this year, I am officially through with the fucking Oscars. Avatar was a very well-developed piece of eye candy that I promptly forgot about as soon as I was done consuming it. The Hurt Locker, meanwhile, stuck with me for weeks, as did Moon, my other favorite film of last year (I haven’t seen Crazy Heart yet).
Until The Hurt Locker came along, my favorite of Bigelow’s films was Strange Days which almost never gets a mention whenever someone is talking about her work. Being a science-fiction thriller set on New Year’s Eve 1999, it’s a little dated now, but remains one of the most wickedly accurate dissections of the action-film genre I’ve ever seen–and like the best science fiction, very prescient about certain things, in this case the role of “reality” as entertainment in our culture. The film is, at heart, a prolonged (and very-well made) essay on deeply ingrained role scopophilia and voyeurism play in our lives.
I actually found my way through to The Hurt Locker because I’d heard the phrase ‘to put someone in a hurt locker’; to inflict mammoth trauma and pain. And when I heard of that put to use in the title of a movie, and heard that it starred Jeremy Renner, I was instantly intrigued (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, a movie that I absolutely love, has a scene where this a totally gratuitious shot of Renner’s butt. I have heard of, and been present in, cinema showings where the audience as one has laughed). And I thought that The Hurt Locker was phenomenal. I would love to see it take Best Film.
Of course, I also think Sam Rockwell should get Best Actor for Moon. Talk about your tour de forces.
But what if it comes down to Renner vs. Rockwell? Where will you come down then?
I think I’d go for Rockwell. Renner’s performance was excellent, but it was buoyed by an excellent film. Whereas Rockwell lifted the rest of the film up with him.
I hope “The Hurt Locker” wins. One of our Blackwater guys from An-Najaf days was a technical advisor for the movie and plays a small part in it. Somehow it would be one of the few success stories to come out of all that shit if he ended up in an Oscar-winning film five years after everything that happened. It wouldn’t make so many big things less pointless, but at least something small would sorta make sense.
I resent that men are always trying to take violence and aggression and call it their own. Like if you’re an aggressive woman, you’re defective and trying to take over men’s ugly territory and omigod why would you even want it, clearly you are just playing a role as a result of centuries of oppression and take this as a means by which to gain power, you poor thing.
It’s okay to be your kind, compassionate, nurturing and maternal gender-prescribed self, women of the world. Don’t fight it. Violence and aggression belongs to men. You don’t want it anyway. You have a different perspective. Isn’t a nice blankie and a cuddle so much nicer? Here. Here is a baby. You like those, right?
I mean, Joan of Arc and Boudica might resent this characterization that women are just wayward innocents who obliviously…swish…traipse?…into the menfolk’s macho territory. Keep in mind part of the reason it belongs to men is because they took it and wouldn’t let us have it.
We women finally find ourselves in a position where it’s okay for us to kick a little ass, and now everyone’s trying to call off war and violence altogether? Man, that’s bullshit! And so typical. Well, I will not go quietly.
I don’t mind aggressive women in films. As long as they show some cleavage.
Well, men won’t look women in the eyes while they’re alive, they might as well stare at boobs as they die, too. In films, of course.
I don’t know what it is about Hurt Locker but I was disappointed. Maybe I was looking forward to it too much. They’re showing it at AMC here in town and I saw it in the theater last week and it just left me flat. I feel like I need to turn in my film lover name badge, because everyone whose opinion I respect loved it. I felt like Staff Sergeant James was simply off his rocker. I didn’t feel any texture to his performance at all, even though a few times Bigelow threw in a couple of moments to make it seem as though he wasn’t a one-trick pony. I guess I need to see it again. I really feel left out with this one.
I’m with Matt on Moon. It blew me away. As did Up in the Air. That was my favorite film of the year hands down.
I kind of found the fact that he was “simply off his rocker” to be a particularly appropriate texture — and shade, and color for that matter.
I loved the way the movie was shot. And I can see how, as each scene was filmed, it felt intense. Obviously, the job is terrifying and requires men with extraordinary courage and nerves of steel. And here comes Staff Sergeant James, who maybe is the most courageous soldier alive or he’s just plain nuts. But…what?
What was the actual story? What did any of the characters learn about themselves or the world? Or the audience? Other than the opening line, that war is a drug? It all felt disconnected to me. Like a sequence of events with no real point. And what was James’ character arc? How did he change?
War is certainly a drug, and death is fantastically random and pointless within it. But I felt exactly the same way about war before and after the film. Same with the characters. It seemed shocking for the sake of being shocking.
I really wanted to like it. I’ll definitely watch it again to see if I just out of sorts when I saw it the first time. But at the moment the only Oscar I can imagine it winning is for cinematography.
Well, when you say “It all felt disconnected to me. Like a sequence of events with no real point” and “…death is fantastically random and pointless…” I’m thinking that you may have come away with a very good sense of what being in Iraq was (and is) like.
But I didn’t come away feeling like it was a story. Certainly not an experience worthy of Oscar consideration. Evoking the sense of chaos and pointless horror that war brings is only the first step. Bigelow achieved that in the first five minutes. But then what?
Yeah, I didn’t think Iraq rated an Oscar either. Then what? Well, then you get to leave the theater unscathed by the experience if you so choose. Sounds like a good deal to me. A free peek, with no strings attached.
I still haven’t seen Up in the Air but everything I’ve heard tells me it’s worth the $8, even though my checkbook’s pretty light at the moment. Think I’ll check it out this weekend.
I love reading about movies
but I rarely ever watch movies
and I’m not sure what that means
when I do watch movies I tend to watch the same thing over and over again
I loved Raising Arizona but I’ve never made it through The Big Lebowski
and haven’t seen any of the other movies here.
I like movies, I just never seem to watch movies
except for the same ones.
For example: It’s 11 pm and I dont have to go to bed for another 3 or 4 hours.
I could watch a movie I havent seen but I want to eat some Cocoa Pebbles
and if I am eating Cocoa Pebbles at 11 pm on a Monday night then
the only obvious movie to watch is Grease 2.
Again.
Rock n Bowl.
Don’t feel bad, JM.
I just looked at a list of nominees, and I haven’t seen a single damn movie that was mentioned.
Not a one. Not even “Avatar.” No real desire to see them, either. I did really want to see Sherlock Holmes, but apparently not badly enough to make time to go to the theater. I’ll catch it on PPV.
I did watch “Sleepy Hollow” a couple of times last year, though.
And “Signs.”
Two of my favorites.
I saw The Hurt Locker and Avatar within one week of each other, and I would put them as the two best films of the year, though I believe it would be really hard to say one is better than the other because they have two completely different objectives.
I thought Avatar was a superlative fantasy that probably trumps the Star Wars trilogy (trilogies?) and Lord of the Rings trilogy in terms of the overall effect of transporting the viewer to another world (largely due to the graphics of it, for sure). Yeah, the storyline was definitely not original but I was able to overlook that as I got so caught up in its beauty, chromatically and cinemotographically (sic) speaking. I have never experienced a film in such a way before, and I think that counts for a lot in this age of impossible-to-be original. (Which is ironic now that I think about it, as I just said it wasn’t original story-wise.)
The Hurt Locker was fantastic in putting you right there with the Army bomb squad like a fourth member of their team. I believe that it very shrewdly honed in on what makes this/these war/s different than any other is the bombs and the fact they could go off anywhere at anytime. It has been the best of all the other (fictionalized) Iraq movies I’ve seen so far (like War, Inc., In the Valley of Eliah, The Kingdon, Jarhead). But having said that, I thought “War is a drug?” - that’s the message here? And Richard Cox is spot on w/r/t the characters having much depth or changing. It was definitely riveting but I can’t say that it stayed with me any longer or even as long as Avatar did.
Crazy Heart is on my list, and is playing at the art house theatre downtown.
I have a very small bumper sticker on my car with a bowling shoe and the words “The dude abides” next to it. Bridges is a master, and is finally getting some of the recognition he deserves.
Oh yeah, I saw Up in the Air and thought it was a good dramady, somewhat poignant about the increasing distance technology is putting between us and the inability for men to commit to any type of relationship. But it didn’t blow me away. Having said that, I would like to see it again.
For me, two factors are the criterion by which I judge a film:
1)how much does it stay with me afterward?
2)if i see it a second time, how does it hold up?
I always liked Bridges, but it’s easy to see why he’s underrated, since he makes what he does look so easy. He was good from the start, in The Last Picture Show, which, as a teenager, was my favorite movie.
I was also a huge fan of Bigelow’s Near Dark, even though it was dismissed by many as an exercise in flashy, empty style. I think that complaint’s been lodged against her again and again, until The Hurt Locker, which I’ve yet to see. But I will.
Curious that you credit Bigelow for THL and not the writer. I feel sometimes people confuse the two and I would credit this particular film to the writer, Mark Boal, not Bigelow. I had to get past the look of the film, shot cheaply on cheap equipment. So, for me the fact that the movie is good is a testament to great writing, not great directing.
Now, for the record, Titanic was the WORST movie in the history of cinema (for me.) I am not a fan of Cameron or his gigantic ego. But he deserves to win the Oscar. Anyone who spends ten years developing technology so he can make a movie is one committed director and deserves all accolades.
There is another reason I am not rooting (Zara!) for Bigelow. I am a woman. I am a director. And just like this last election, I want the right woman to be the first to win the Oscar. I will not be broken hearted if she wins (the way I would have been had Coppola won - no nepotism for a first time winner please), but for me, she’s not the one who should make this historic achievement.
Personally, Campion should have won long ago. But I want to hold out for someone remarkable. Bigelow makes good movies, true, but not remarkable movies.
But if I were voting, I’d vote for Tarantino. There’s is no denying his thumbprint on cinema. But I fear he’ll be like Scorsese, making one interesting movie after another, always being overlooked.
P.S. Bridges is a god.
Oh, wait. I’m an idiot. I totally forgot about Inglourious Basterds. Having seen that a second (and third, and fourth time) last weekend, I’d put that as my top film of the year.
I agree with Kip that a film ought to stay with you afterward to be considered great. And that’s a hard thing to know because the feeling develops over time. I’ve been impressed by films in the theater and realized later they didn’t hold up under scrutiny, which makes them good entertainment, but not award winners.
Whereas with Inglourious, the film was so dense that I missed a lot of things the first time around. On repeat viewings, I grew to love it more each time. Which is why I want to see Hurt Locker again. I probably missed something.
But Ducky, I find it interesting you cite the writing of THL. For me there was no story. Just a bunch of unnerving situations…which weren’t as unnerving as they should have been because they were preposterous. Even for someone unfamiliar with military tactics, there was too much separation from logic. And not just on the part of James, who was nuts, but the whole team.
Anyway, it’s a lot of fun to debate these things because there isn’t any right answer. It seems you and I fall on opposite ends of the film appreciation experience, because I loved Lost in Translation and I like James Cameron and I liked the look of THL more than the writing. Can’t be more different than that, I’d say. Haha.
In interviews they gave promoting the movie, both Bigelow and Boal (who are business partners) describe the genesis of the story as a back-and-forth between the two of them.
As I’ve said elsewhere, I was massively underwhelmed by Avatar. I wish Cameron had spent a larger chunk of that decade developing the script as well as the technology to shoot it; for the $20 I paid to see the thing in IMAX 3-D I expected something beyond the plot of every pulp science fiction novel with a first contact narrative. Being fiercely dedicated to something does not make one “the best.”
Why do you consider Campion more qualified than Bigelow, when Campion has made several middeling, unremarkable films? I’m thinking specifically of Holy Smoke and In The Cut (I haven’t seen her latest, so I can’t comment on it). They’re okay, as these things go, but I’m much more inclined to revist Near Dark or Strange Days than either of those. Forgive me for saying this, the only really remarkable thing Campion’s done is The Piano–sixteen years ago.
Of course, I’m still grumpy that Avatar and District 9 (which was good, but let’s face it, beat you over the head with the subtext) are somehow listed for Best Picture while Moon gets completely shut out of every category. Which goes to show that the Academy Awards are a crock of shit, and this whole discussion is just academic anyways.
District 9 is another one I expected to like more than I did. Absolutely a step above your typical alien visitation story, or Hollywood action story for that matter, but as you said, it’s not subtext when you’re being bludgeoned to death with it. Interesting that District 9 used digital photography to better effect than Terminator 2 (the arguable father of that sort of thing), and today it’s considered the “low budget effects movie.” Haha.
The thing I disliked more than the first contact bit in Avatar was the too-obvious recycling of Titanic. I’m one of those uninformed Philistines who was entertained by Titanic, even though I recognize the simplicity of the story. I think Cameron put us on board the ship in a way to real to be ignored, and I’m a sucker for a guy-gets-unreachable-girl story, even if I can see it coming a mile away. But in Avatar, I felt like I was watching Titanic in the alien jungle. Even the James Horner score seems recycled. I’ll admit, though, that I saw it in IMAX 3D twice. Those visuals were worth seeing one more time, since the next time will be on my TV, which is decidedly not IMAX. And IMAX here is only $12.50.
I generally don’t watch big budget films much anymore, but I’m not completely allergic to them. Cameron does them better than most. But when you see something like Moon, you realize how much you can do with so little. And Sam Rockwell is one of my favorite actors. Did you see him in Choke yet? Good stuff.
I didn’t care for Choke all that much, but I didn’t have any problems with his performance; I just thought the direction was sorta “meh.” But I fucking loved Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, and I’ve made a point to pay attention to his roles since then. He always puts on an interesting performance, even if the film itself ends up not being of the highest quality.
So um, Point Break. Really? Men REALLY love that movie? They’re not just teasing us? Granted I only saw it once and it was decades ago, but to use it in the same paragraph as The Big Lebowski is making me freak out. Brad are you SURE about Point Break?
The dude abides. Totally.
I have to admit that Point Break got me. I don’t know if it’s because Keanu is sooooo bad
and that I love a good trainwreck, but it got me. Greg and I watched it a few months back
and it got me in the same cracky way that The Big Lebowski has me and forever holds me - only quicker.
Does anyone remember Bridges in Against All Odds? Sex pot! He is god.
And so much more.
Jeffrey, love me.