‘The Hurt Locker’ that wasn’t
There’s an interesting story on the New York Times Lens blog today: “How Not to Depict a War.” In it, Times war photojournalist, journalist, and multiple Pulitzer Prize nominee Michael Kamber recounts, from Baghdad, his impressions on the Academy Award nominated “The Hurt Locker.” How’s the film fare when it comes to authenticity? Not good. Rather, Kamber deems the much lauded film “wrong in almost every respect.” (To learn the many ways the movie gets it wrong, read Kamber’s story; suffice to say, they are legion.) “I’ve covered a number of conflicts and Iraq was the least romantic, the one that looked the least like the war movies I grew up on,” he writes. Instead of aiming for accuracy, director Kathryn Bigelow “pulls one out for Hollywood.” In the end, “it glamorizes war.” By and large, soldiers and veterans agree. Among the many technical and tactical errors, “There is too much John Wayne and cowboy stuff,” EOD team leader Staff Sgt. Jeremy D. Phillips told the Los Angeles Times. Not long ago, I spoke with an EOD operator who agreed. He could hardly stand to watch it. To him, it was a joke.
The Times wasn’t the first to point out this issue. There’s “‘Hurt Locker’ Takes a Hit,” “The Curious Case of the ‘Hurt Locker’ Attacks,” “When Cinéma Vérité Isn’t,” “‘The Hurt Locker’ Sets Off Conflict,” “Are ‘Hurt Locker’ Foes Using Soldiers to Take Down the Oscar Front-Runner?,” and “Afghan: US Bomb Squad on the Frontlines.” Since the negative buzz around the movie manifested only recently, some are theorizing the source is rival Academy Award nominated teams looking to sling mud at a movie that’s enjoyed a pretty positive reception up until this point — and Oscar voting ballots are due Tuesday.
Of course, the practice of Hollywood romanticizing war is as old as Hollywood itself. Perhaps viewers expected a proximity of accuracy because the movie was written by Mark Doal Boal, who was embedded with an EOD unit in Iraq. Or, maybe they didn’t. So far, the finger pointing has focused alternately on the director, the writer, and Hollywood, but the truth of the matter is that “The Hurt Locker” veers so sharply from the truth because Americans don’t want to see it.
No doubt, it’ll only be a matter of time before someone starts whining that any negative attention accorded to “The Hurt Locker” is on account of its director being a woman. (But is she a “Feminist Pioneer or Tough Guy in Drag?” Salon can’t decide.)
The bottom line is Hollywood mirrors what America wants to see, and when it comes to war, Americans would rather stick with a fantasy.
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I didn’t take the film to be a literal take on reality and didn’t think it was presented as such. The encounter in the desert didn’t fit in very well, but was a necessary plot device to advance the relationship of two of the bomb techs. Several scenes in the film come directly out of Doal’s story in Playboy, so he was either lying then or not wrong in every respect. I don’t know that Kamber’s resume trumps that of someone who was actually in that situation.
Lastly, who took the John-Wayne-ism of Sgt. Williams to be a glamorous portrayal? The only John Wayne movie in which his stoic persona is revealed to shield his emotional insecurity is The Shootist.
The Hurt Locker is a movie that portrays soldiers as something other than baby-killing psychopaths or patriotic superheroes, and that, more than anything, seems to be why Hollywood is patting itself on the back about it.
Considering the fact that the NYT helped sell the occupations, and that military types are the last people whose take one would want on a war movie, I’d say it’s pretty high praise.
Shit, Gunny Ermey makes a nice living doing the drill sergent thing at trade shows from Full Metal Jacket-usually with law enforcement and military types. I’m not sure they quite understand what Kubrick was trying to say.
But war is a drug and I think the director made a reasonable attempt to explore that.
Troops are bad mouthing Oscar nominated Hurt Locker? Jesus, if you guys don’t know that it is common practice for big studios who will not win Oscars to always trash Oscar favorites, then you snooze. The big deal is that this movie has been made by Ms. Nobody from Nowhere (a woman, for Chriss sakes) for around $1.75 and has already won a ton of prestigious awards. And who in the Liberal Media is running around interviewing the hated military for their opinions on movies anyway? Good movie (not great), and anyone expecting rigid accuracy from any movie is bat crazy anyhow. It’s just a story that doesn’t show our soldiers as sex deviates, rapists, drug addicts and liberals. What a crime.
Actually, Kathryn Bigelow is NOT EXACTLY “Ms. Nobody from Nowhere.” In case you hadn’t heard, howard, she is the former Mrs. James Cameron.
In response to another comment. See in context »Perhaps this explains why Cameron’s cool with his producers torpedoing The Hurt Locker! Either Hurt Locker or Avatar will win.
This conspiracy theory is somewhat complicated by Bigelow & Cameron’s friendship that’s confirmed as of a few months ago.
In response to another comment. See in context »The writer’s name, if anyone cares, is Mark Boal–B-O-A-L, Boal with a B. And no, he wasn’t supposedly embedded, he WAS embedded, in Iraq. He was on contract with Playboy, where I was Managing Editor, and for whom he produced several excellent features. The Hurt Locker is based in part on an article entitled “The Man in the Bomb Suit” which ran in the July 2005 issue. No doubt some departures were taken, but I do not understand the dismissive tone of the entry.
I don’t know that Kamber or Breslin have read the story. One of the most common criticisms of the film’s realism is that it was ridiculous to have an explosion in the Green Zone that was also in a residential area. This is exactly what’s described in Boal’s story (an embassy is blown up and families nearby are injured). The film diverges when Williams has his team storm off to find the culprit. That’s not realistic if Sgt. Williams’ team was functioning properly, but it’s not an unrealistic consequence of Williams’ fictional mental breakdown. The scene in which Williams disables a bomb by hand and then finds a secondary bomb and tackles it happened, too.
The environment in Iraq has changed dramatically between 2004 and 2010. I wonder whether scenes that are relatively accurate in the context of 2004 seem ridiculous to people seeing combat today.
There’s also the niggling issue that a strictly realistic movie about an EOD unit would be boring. A movie’s not a novel; you can’t see someone’s thoughts. Films instead convey the same sort of content by showing individuals’ responses to extreme events. A movie in which an EOD team blows up a dozen bombs instead of disabling them might be more accurate, but it wouldn’t convey the undercurrent of constant tension brought about by the threat of possible IEDs, snipers, and mortars striking at any moment at any place.
In response to another comment. See in context »I think a lot of it has to do with a woman directing a war movie. Traditionally, women are not involved in direct combat—even those who do serve in the military—so perhaps a woman director would tend to romanticize combat more than a man would. although to be fair, Hollywood has upheld a grand tradition of making war and combat seem heroic and romantic for almost 100 years.
I also take issue with the notion, so often advanced, that a movie dealing with some factual subject matter has a duty to be an illustrated history book and nothing more. Folks, it is a work of fiction, which means that the writer and director are free to take any liberties they like with the subject matter and do not deserve attacks for “inaccuracies.”
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