Career Report Card: Kathryn Bigelow

The writer-director Kathryn Bigelow has been getting some well-deserved love from the press for her new Iraq War film The Hurt Locker, the best new movie of the first half of 2009 that doesn’t feature a balloon-powered flying house. That’s a good thing, even if it is a shame that every piece ever written about Bigelow seems to bog down in the writer’s confusion about what a woman is doing making movies about men–and women–who define themselves through action, often violent action. Bigelow is a master of flamboyant action, but she’s also one of the few directors in Hollywood with a genuine eye, one that combines a fresh pop sensibility with a painter’s gift for expressing emotion through visual beauty. Clearly a believer in proper planning, she’s only managed to complete seven features since her solo directing debut, Near Dark, back in 1987. (She’s also directed a couple of shorts, 1978’s The Set-Up and 2007’s Mission Zero, as well as episodes of Homicide, Wild Palms, and Karen Sisco.) Her body of work has been erratic, but it’s seldom been boring.

THE LOVELESS (1982) Bigelow’s little-seen debut was co-directed and co-written with Monty Montgomery, who would go on to become better-known as a producer and associate of David Lynch. (He played the Cowboy in Mulholland Drive.) Bigelow must have contributed mightily to the look of the film: set in a mythical period called “the ’50s”, and starring Willem Dafoe and the neo-rockabilly musician Robert Gordon as leather-clad bikers, it is what kind-hearted reviewers used to call “an exercise in style.” It’s all about the visual iconography of old Brando movies and Elvis pin-ups. But because Bigelow and Montgomery couldn’t think of a reason to be doing it beyond their evident love of that style, it feels so remote, and so devoid of energy or a point, that it’s like a homage to a homage, as if the filmmakers were imitating Scorpio Rising instead of The Wild One. Truth be told, they probably were. Grade: C-

NEAR DARK (1987) Five years later, Bigelow fully emerged with this incongruously beautiful splatter movie, a tale of white-trash vampires (co-written by the director and Eric Red) that adroitly straddles the line between the art house and the drive-in audience. At the time, much of the imagery here–the ageless vampires, some of whom appear to be middle-aged, some of them teenage, one a little boy, who function as a nuclear family; the black van with the windows blacked out through which they travel the country roads in search of prey; the big, bloody set piece in a roadhouse bar where Bill Paxton, as the most assertive of the vamps, laughs off having taken a shotgun blast to the chest; the father and mother figure (Lance Henriksen and Jenette Goldstein) reaching out to hold each other’s hands as their flesh begins to smoke in the morning sun–had the force of genre material being revitalized with new blood and new rules. (The filmmakers also had the inspiration of making vampirism “curable”, a rule-breaker that provides for the option of a possible happy ending for the young bloodsucker lovers, played by Jenny Wright and a young Adrian Pasdar.) For many people, this is the performance that Paxton will be best, or at least most fondly remembered for, while both Wright and Goldstein stake their claims to being two of the great underappreciated “where-are-they-now?” actresses of the ’80s. Grade: A-

BLUE STEEL (1990) Bigelow’s first big-studio movie is a filmed essay about sex and violence and gender roles dressed as an urban police thriller. In her blue uniform with her big gun, Jamie Lee Curtis is both a strong, likable protagonist and a walking fetish object as a rookie New York City cop who shoots an armed robber and inspires a witness to the shooting–Ron Silver as a Wall Street broker named Eugene–to get deep in touch with his inner Son of Sam. Much of the coincidence-heavy plot works only on the level of dream logic, if it works at all, and Silver goes way over the top and into the clouds as the stalker, who’s meant to seem suave before his feral side emerges. (The funniest thing in the movie is the footage of Silver’s character at work on the floor of the NYSE; he flails his arms and jumps about screaming, “Sell! Sell!” while the extras stare at him as if wondering if he’s taken the brown acid.) But if you can fight off the urge to dismiss it all as just too silly, Bigelow’s moody style and Curtis’s star performance make for a hard combination to shake off. Grade: B+

POINT BREAK (1991): This surf-heist movie was probably the biggest hit of Bigelow’s career, a fact that I suspect she herself can’t help regarding with a crooked grin. It is the guilty-pleasurest of her movies, an overlong action fiesta that includes spectacular surfing and skydiving scenes and a remarkable extended chase-on-foot and that doesn’t have a an active brain cell in its whole head. Keanu Reeves is the young FBI agent hero who infiltrates a chapter of the West Coast surf culture to find a crew of bank robbers who call themselves “the Ex-Presidents.” (They storm in wielding guns and wearing rubber masks of Nixon, Carter, Reagan, etc.) It turns out that the leader of the gang–”Bodhi”, short for Bodhisattva, played by Patrick Swayze with a mane of blond hair and the bright-eyed smile of a Cheech and Chong fan–is a gaseous adrenaline junkie who used the robberies to fund his intercontinental, thrill-seeking lifestyle. Reeves acquits himself well in his first action-star role; as Bodhi, Swayze throws himself whole-heartedly into the action stuff, especially the skydiving, but he also reels off his long-winded, comic-book-Nietzsche speeches without the requisite irony. The movie ends with Reeves, having tracked Bodhi to the beaches of Australia during a titanic storm, permitting him to ride out into the waters to certain death rather than subject him to the indignity of sticking him “in a cage,” though by then there’s no believable connection between the two men and it’s hard to see why Reeves would feel that he owed this murderous, egomaniac goon any favors. Point Break is thrilling when nobody’s talking, annoying when anyone is, and sheer torture when the shrill would-be starlet Lori Petty is onscreen, challenging you to tell the difference between her acting and nails on a chalkboard. At its worst, the movie feels as if Bodhi might have directed it. Grade: B

STRANGE DAYS (1995): This large-scale sci-fi fantasy, set in Los Angeles on the eve of the millennial New Year’s celebration, is perhaps Bigelow’s most ambitious movie and probably her most grandiose. Ralph Fiennes, ahaggy-haired and snakeskin-clad, plays an ex-cop named Lenny Nero who now deals in illegal discs that record sights, sounds, and physical sensations taken directly from the cerebral cortex. By playing them as if they were a DVD, you can experience the thrill of robbing a bank, or of being a teenage girl taking a shower–whatever you desire, as Pierce Patchett used to say. Lenny himself is a broken man who’s hooked on his own product; long since dumped by the girlfriend (Juliette Lewis) he’s still pathetically hooked on, he spends his time alone replaying the discs he made during their time together, reliving the happy moments of their relationship. This is a thrilling metaphor for depression’s ability to prevent the sufferer from moving on and for the many forms that crippling addiction can take, and Fiennes gives himself over totally to Lenny’s helpless romantic sadness; it’s a bravely sodden performance. Angela Bassett has the tower of strength role as Lenny’s best friend, who’s heroically loyal to this broken-down mess yet smart enough to be angry with herself for being in love with him. Unfortunately, Strange Days loses track of its most intoxicating elements as it expands its canvas, trying for a vast picture of a society partying nonstop on its way to the verge of total breakdown. The last half gets ever messier and more hysterical, and Fiennes and Bassett’s excellent performances have to be balanced against career-worst turns by Lewis and a fright-wigged Tom Sizemore. The movie all but challenges you to stay with it as it lurches towards its conclusion, but the viewer’s memories of poor Lenny, huddled up in his squalid room compulsively replaying his life, and of Bassett extending him her motherly concern while trying to figure out why she still cares, die hard. Grade: B

THE WEIGHT OF WATER (2000): Bigelow’s clearest departure from genre material is also her biggest misstep. Based on a novel by Anita Shreve, The Weight of Water–which premiered at the 2000 Toronto Film Festival but wasn’t given a theatrical release until two years later–is set on the Isle of Shoales off the coast of New Hampshire. The movie cuts back and forth between two stories, one of them about the events leading up to a famous ax murder committed in 1873. In the other, contemporary story, a photographer (Catherine McCormack) who’s obsessed with the murders and her husband, a famous blocked poet (Sean Penn), visit the island in the company of the poet’s brother (Josh Lucas) and his new girlfriend (Elizabeth Hurley), who keeps flirting with the poet. The contemporary story is underwritten and underdramatized, and often resembles a glossy-looking version of one of those amateur films that beginners cook up when they get access to a camera, some friends, and a boat for the weekend. McCormack makes for a dull center of consciousness, while Penn, in a mustache, mumbles his lines as if he was sorry to discover that he remembered them and looks as if he were posing for a statue of Eugene O’Neill. (The liveliest performance in this section comes from Elizabeth Hurley, of all people; she looks as if she were enjoying playing a predatory groupie bitch.) The less lucky actors in the 1873 section–they include Sarah Polley, Katrin Cartlidge, Vinessa Shaw, and Ciarán Hinds–have to drag themselves over the wet, rocky seascape and hang out in uncomfortable-looking shacks while modeling their ugly-looking rags and unconvincing facial hair. The point of this section seems to be that forcing people to repress their natural sexual urges can lead to madness and violence, which would be an easier message to take if what the murderer hadn’t been forced to repress was an inability, as a young girl, to keep her hands off her brother. The whole thing builds to a climax that intercuts the murders and their aftermath with McCormack, Penn and company trying to keep their boat afloat during a violent storm. It’s the kind of inert “literary” movie where you appreciate the metaphorical connections instead of instinctively sensing them. Grade: C-

K-19: THE WIDOWMAKER (2002): This expensive summer epic, which in was, in a sense, Bigelow’s first war picture, marked a major return to form for the director, though pitifully few people saw it. That’s too bad, especially since it documents an actual but little-known act of heroic sacrifice from the Cold War era. The title refers to a nuclear submarine launched by the Russians in 1961. (It got its nickname before its first voyage: it was inspired by the number of men who were killed in the course of the vessel’s construction.) When the sub’s reactor springs a leak during its maiden voyage, the captain (Harrison Ford) and his second in command (Liam Neeson) are confronted with the problem of preventing an underwater meltdown, which means ordering men to subject themselves to lethal amounts of radiation to do the necessary repairs. Ford does a commendably solid job in the unlovable role of the brusque, careerist captain, and Peter Sarsgaard is superb as a nuclear technician who understands all too well what’s being asked of him and has trouble convincing himself that the fate of the world above is worth it. Grade: A-

THE HURT LOCKER (2009): Bigelow’s richest and most perfect movie is also the first great movie of the Iraq War, and it turns out that the secret in both cases was to focus on something that the director probably understands better than anything else: process. As in the old-school war flicks, Bigelow’s soldiers don’t talk about politics, and they don’t make speeches; when not engaging in goofy small talk, their favorite topic of conversation is staying alive: how have they done it for this long, how can they keep doing it, and even, in one scene, whether or not the best way to make sure they can keep doing it would be to blow up the team leader. The movie is both big and, in narrative terms, scaled back, and the acting style of Jeremy Renner, who plays James, the free-style head of a bomb dismantling squad, is perfectly in tune with it.

Renner, who gave an amazing performance in the title role of the true-crime picture Dahmer, and who also appeared in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford and 28 Weeks Later, is a stubby-looking little guy with the smile of someone who wants you to know that he’s already enjoying the joke you plan on making at his expense as soon as he’s out of hearing range. He seems to be one of those actors, like Gene Hackman, who by force of skill and talent, has willed himself to be the most charismatic person in the room. Part of the genius of his performance here is that he never overplays James’s wildness. At work, he’s careful and concentrated, with a full awareness that his next move could be his last; the problem is that he’s a solo act, and his back-up team, Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Eldridge (Brian Geraghty), get antsy while standing on the sidelines, with the flow of communications shut off–James tends to discard his headset while trying to concentrate–and the implicit instructions to sit tight and have faith that their new friend has everything under control, at least until he disappears in a cloud of black smoke. The Hurt Locker sensitizes you to the insanity of war through the time-honored method of helping you understand how people do their best to survive it by acclimating themselves to it, at the risk of going a little crazy themselves. It’s too bad that Bigelow’s best movie had to get stuck with her worst title, but what are you gonna do? Grade: A

–Phil Nugent