The Best Films of 2009: A KuddelSaus Retrospective Exclusive (1)
1. THE HURT LOCKER
The Hurt Locker
For my money, the best film of 2009 was The Hurt Locker. The Academy Awards and dozens of critics across the nation scooped me on this one, but if I were to prop another film on the top of my list just to be different, ignoring my actual opinion, then that would make me an asshole. Now wouldn’t it?
This film provided the most nerve-shattering cinematic experience I’ve had in a very long time. Jeremy Renner stars as Sergeant First Class William James, the leader of an EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) team in the thick of the currently still happening and 8 years young Iraq War. Children born at the beginning of this bloody, Allah-forsaken debacle are firmly entrenched in the 3rd grade. Quite a depressing thought, is it not?
The Hurt Locker is the first film I have seen about the current Iraq War that is not only incredibly well-made, but is also the first first that seems to take seriously the task of representing the reality of the American soldier’s experience in the war. Yes, soldiers have questioned the veracity of some of the details, but that’s okay. The “reality” that I’m referring to is the specific everyday deadliness of a contemporary war. The film is hard to watch due to sweat-inducing scenes involving the disarming of improvised explosive devices created by insurgents, and therein lies the visceral power of the film: throughout the film we are waiting for the anti-hero, William James, to explode into millions of little fleshy pieces. What is more: if and/or when he does, you can’t say that he doesn’t deserve it.
This is a good point to bring up an argument that my brother and I had with a dear friend of ours. We and this friend had a vehement discussion at a bar in Portland, OR which lasted long enough, and became heated enough, that other people present felt ostracized and left our vicinity as we continued unabated. My friend’s point (and he can correct me if I’m misrepresenting him) was that The Hurt Locker is an irresponsible film because it glorifies war. According to this friend, we’ll call him David, the hero was a little bit too cool and therefore would warp the minds of impressionable youth and trick them into thinking that war is a sweet career move. David also took exception with the POV firmly placed with the American soldiers and not the Iraqi people.
I did some Google research, and apparently David’s opinion that this is a pro-war film is shared by the Socialists as well as the Republicans. The Socialist writer in the first of the preceding links believes that the critical praise for this film is part of a conspiracy on the part of the “ongoing and concerted rehabilitation of the Iraq war taking place within the liberal political and media establishment.” He writes, “The presence of US forces as an army of occupation is never questioned, and the work of this fearless (frankly, psychotic) individual is presented as heroically saving thousands of lives.” First of all, to think that there is a conspiracy on the part of the nation’s film critics to critically praise a film in order to sanitize the image of this war is batshit crazy. (For the record, I don’t believe that David would concur with this point). Yes, Roger Ebert and A.O. Scott and the Onion AV Club have secret meetings in order to decide which films they should pretend to like the best in order to drum up public support of this war. Absolutely nuts. The second point, that this is a pro-war film because the occupation is never questioned and because our hero is psychotic is also crazy, although maybe not quite so batshit.
Firstly, the fact that the occupation is never questioned does not make this a pro-war film. It’s called nuance people. Nobody wants a dramatic film to be a political diatribe with lots of froth and snappy, self-aggrandizing, back-patting points. Dramatic film is much more effective when political points are made intrinsically to the story and the action. This film is about the insurgents in the sense that our “hero” would not have a job if the Iraqi people approved of this war. Throughout the film, Iraqi citizens look on toward the US soldiers with suspicion and ire. They are not happy with the occupation. The insurgents cannot be sorted out from the Iraqi citizens because the insurgents ARE the Iraqi citizens. There is one small Iraqi boy who seems to befriend Jeremy Renner’s character. The result of this friendship should squash any notions that this movie is pro-war, or pro-American occupation.
Secondly: Jeremy Renner’s character a war hero? He consistently endangers every soldier and civilian around him. His fellow soldiers hate him by the end of the film. This man loves war. War has become a life-affirming drug for him. He is unable to love anything besides endangering his own life and the lives of others. He turns his back on human connection of any kind: whether it be his fellow soldiers, his wife or his baby daughter. This is not a hero. This is the human mind corrupted by an absolutely fucked up war. David mentioned that he was concerned that children would watch The Hurt Locker and become impressed with Jeremy Renner’s character. My response was: are we supposed to make all of our films with small children in mind? Are we to censor everything so that a child could leave the film without any misconceptions or misinterpretations? I would hope not. Small children aside, there is no way an adult could interpret Jeremy Renner’s character as anything remotely glorified. He’s a nut whose life has been ruined by this war.
To say that The Hurt Locker carries a pro-war message is a strange position to take. It feels similar to people believing that Juno is a pro-life film. I understand that when abortion takes center stage in a film, or when war takes center stage, the hackles get raised on both sides of the fence. Teen-aged Juno does not have an abortion, but this does not make Juno a pro-life film. It’s the story of teen-ager making decisions in her life. She happens to have a child. Yes, pro-life idiots are going to take this as a feather in their collective bonnets because Juno becomes scared in an abortion clinic; pro-lifers tend to be nuance-less blockheads, so this is how they think. The same blindered thinking is in play with the Fox News nitwit in the article linked to above. His thinking is tantamount to: “This movie doesn’t involve Michael Moore with a megaphone, therefore it must be pro-war”.
Why is Juno scared to have an abortion? Perhaps it’s because American teenagers are woefully uneducated when it comes to sex and reproduction. Perhaps the problem lies within a gaping abyss in American culture and understanding and not in the choices a fictitious teenager makes in a popular comedic film. Maybe the problem is that abortion clinics are not federally funded and must do their best to exist on a shoestring budget. Some pro-choicers were upset about Juno’s decision to get an abortion. They blamed the film for daring to allow Juno to have her child, to …what’s the word? oh, yes: to choose to have her baby. I suppose every movie would need to involve abortions in order to make some pro-choice people happy. Just like every war film should have the nuance of a bulleted memo in order to make some anti-war people happy.
As to David’s problem with the POV of The Hurt Locker: yes, this movie does not adopt the perspective of the Iraqi people, but this should not be held against it. This movie is the story of an American soldier in the Iraq War. There is an excellent movie screaming to be made about the Iraqi experience of the war, but this isn’t that film. Every movie must decide what perspective to adopt, and this film chose the perspective of a nutty EOD man and 2 of his fellow soldiers. They made this choice and came up with something poignant. Tim O’Brien’s The Things they Carried is one of the best war novels ever written. It adopts the perspective of American soldiers in the Vietnam War to devastating effect, and I dare anybody to claim that this novel is anything but anti-war. Every war is filled with an endless number of atrocities and every piece of war literature, whether it be a piece of writing or a piece of film, must decide from which angle it will focus on these atrocities. To adopt the perspective of those instigating the bloodletting does not make the criticism inherent to these works any less damning.
The Hurt Locker is an expertly edited, directed and photographed film. The tension is primed from the first scene of the film and it only gets worse from there on out. This film brings the mindless violence and the horrible life-destroying power of this current war onto the screen in a way that I have not yet experienced. The Hurt Locker is heartbreaking, gut wrenching and often painful to watch: exactly the way a responsible war film should be.
For these reasons, The Hurt Locker is not only my best film of 2009, but it is a film that deserves entry into any conversation regarding the best war films of all time.
I for one was torn as to whether I should understand the present state, of our heroic EOD adrenaline junkie, to be a consequence of the war in question. The protagonist’s monologue to (in the presence of) his infant child opens up readings of the war in Iraq as backdrop to and canvas for some greater existential statement. Of course, how might one come to implicitly invalidate the simple pleasures and miracles of communal life? Of life at all? Probably through witnessing myriad individual lives reduced to a rain of hamburger for no apparent or intrinsic benefit. So, there’s that.
As for the character of Juno, it is clearly representative of the ‘pro-death’ camp, a faction requiring eternal dissuasion from the moral bedrock of (North)America. The EXPLICIT lesson here is that, if allowed to act outside the purview of the righteous collective – that is, of America The True – a teenage girl is a willful murderer. Juno, our anti-hero abortionist, is deterred at the last but not converted, and this is a moment raised for its value in horror, summoning as it does for us the terrible POSSIBILITY of choice. Ultimately, Juno the film is an indictment of the laxity of modern society vis-a-vis the millions of Junos out there, present and future, and it proves effective at lacing the suggestion of a suburban idyll with darkest irony. The closing scenes chill. As we cannot unsee the assassin among us, the apparent restoration of order and innocence is a master stroke in perversion, a death mask, a plastic doll animated with the soul of a killer.
I also considered whether Jeremy Renner’s character was working as an indictment on modern society in general, and not simply the war itself. I think that his brain was warped by the specific soul-melting task that he has perfected. Dangling on the precipice of complete annihilation every day of his life has led him to necessarily devalue life itself, which then becomes the primary attribute that allows him to excel at his job. In order to make reckless decisions flirting with explosives, he must eschew everything that had up to that point given his life meaning. In the movie I think it’s apparent that this unlearning how to love (how to be a successful human) is the reason he’s the most “successful” American soldier on screen.
Re. your point on Juno: What the “righteous collective”, the “Real America” as Madame Palin would have it, would just love us to understand is that Rosemary’s Baby had it backwards: unborn female fetuses are angels but then transform into the Devil’s agents after they have become human beings and are bestowed with the ability to make their own decisions. With their pesky free will they will always make the evil choice and therefore must not be allowed such a privilege. This free will, as innate to the young girl as breathing, must be unlearned just as it was required of our EOD officer to unlearn a love of life in order for him to become fully immersed in the role of the “true American hero”.
Eight years this war has been going on? That’s just crazy talk. These now 3rd graders you mention are going to have quite a warped perspective on life. Sad.
“David” (I bet $16 I know who this really is) has an interesting point. One that I don’t agree with, but definitely interesting. I can only assume that most of the people who thought The Hurt Locker glorifies war decided that before even seeing the movie. (Probably because Jeremy Renner’s an attractive man who has to represent that ‘cool guy’ lead role. This isn’t A Bond moive, people.)
PS. Wasn’t Jeremy Renner’s baby a boy in the movie?