The Hurt Locker & Post-9/11 Films

The Hurt Locker succeeds as a post-9/11 film, where many others have failed. The film is a reflection of the real world – non-fiction disguised as fantasy. It is of no surprise that since 9/11, there have been a slew of films concerned with war, terrorism and world politics. Planes are now connotation-heavy methods of transportation; so weighed down, that it is a surprise they ever make it off the ground.  Events in the real world affect the reel world.

However, films that have tried to deal with tensions between America and Afghanistan/Iraq, have thus far mostly failed – for varying reasons.

Lions for Lambs (2007) is just one example. Tom Cruise plays a misguided senator; certain that war in Afghanistan can be won. Meryl Streep is a reporter whose faith in America is challenged when she interviews the Senator, and hears his plans.  In another setting, Robert Redford plays an ageing academic trying desperately to inspire his typically disengaged Generation Y students to help shape the future of America. The last arm of the narrative follows two of his former students who, against his advice, joined the army – and now find themselves alone and in danger. It’s clear which characters are being led to the slaughter.

Lions for Lambs was lambasted by the media for being didactic, slow-paced and un-cinematic. For all its brave subject matter, the film failed because it was, essentially, a lecture from Robert Redford.

Rendition (2007) is another example. Directed by Gavin Hood, it stars Omar Metwally as a suspected terrorist, who is “disappeared” by the American government. He reappears in a secret detention facility outside the US – where he is tortured for information he might not even have. Reece Witherspoon plays his pregnant wife, desperate to find her missing husband. Jake Gyllenhaal is a CIA agent who is forced to question the legitimacy of his actions – and those of his employer, the United States of America.

The film suffers from trying to tackle too many issues; or at least, trying to interweave too many subplots. Aside from being criticised for its sometimes confusing structure and the two-dimensional characters (always a concern when there are so many on screen) Rendition tends to simplify complex issues into easy situations. Despite Hood’s obvious earnestness, the intense seriousness of the film merely comes across as stupefying.

These – and many other films like them – have been seen as failures. Audiences and critics alike appeared to be fatigued by fatigues. How, then, does The Hurt Locker succeed? A low-budget, independent film, without the guaranteed audience that comes with Redford, Cruise, Witherspoon or Gyllenhaal - perhaps that allows it to say something different.

Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker – winner of Best Film and Best Director at this year’s Academy Awards – follows three men in an American Army bomb squad unit. It shows us the effects of war upon these men. As they become more psychologically damaged by the war, each day they physically survive.

Unlike Lions for Lambs, The Hurt Locker does not feel like a sermon or judgement. This must be partly because The Hurt Locker is such a personal tale. It is about the people not politics, casting little moral judgement on the film’s soldier protagonists. Because of this fact the film seems non-exploitative, in a way that politically or real world-inspired films sometimes seem to be.

In contrast to Rendition too, The Hurt Locker does not suffer from the same faults. Where Rendition was weighed down by a busy plot and light on the complexity of morality, the opposite could be said of The Hurt Locker. A deceptively simple story that allows the viewer to concentrate on the characters, this film does not present any easy conclusions. The ending of the film is uncertain, just as the end of war in Iraq is uncertain.

The Hurt Locker succeeds because it is a good film. Watching this film, one leaves the cinema with an aching jaw from gritted teeth, and hands permanently frozen into claws, from clutching the cinema chair armrest. The film is tense and the suspense rarely lessens. Even off-duty moments in the lives of the bomb squad unit, their play-fighting, are fraught with violence and desolateness. What makes the film effective is that one feels this is most likely an entirely accurate representation of life on the line: any soldier, any man, any person involved in warfare lives a life filled with fear. The film manages to inflict this life upon the audience.

The Hurt Locker works precisely because it hurts.

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