Katheryn Bigelow
The Hurt Locker

Iraq, zero years.

Desert, hours of waiting to reach the city. Cities that are ruins, remains of buildings, remains of cars, remains of people, remains of civilization. Foreign soldiers. They see themselves as liberators. Often they are seen as invaders. The heat forces them to cover up, to bundle up. To the point of not being able to distinguish their allies from their enemies. The military uniform becomes uniform with the opponent's uniform, uniform with the desert, and uniform with the sky. Here and there puffs in the sand. Incoming bullets. You need to duck, dodge them, be patient. Aim at the sniper. Move out in a column.

Bomb disposal unit. They call suddenly, by radio, a clearance is needed. Suspected explosive in a car. Reach the parking lot, move away other colleagues, civilians. Be alone. Nothing heroic, no warrior pathos. The patience of a mechanic is needed, explore the car's floor, look under the seats. See if there's a wire more than necessary, follow its path, to the engine. And open the hood, see what's underneath, discover the bomb. Study the defusal. Cut a wire. Wait... 3, 2, 1. You're alive.

Wait for a new call. Hoping it won't delay in coming.

And that it's possible to start again.

Having made a name with films that sing the roughness and virility of borderline lives, from the criminals masked as U.S. presidents in "Point Break" ('91) to the psychotic delusions of "Strange Days" ('95), Kathryn Bigelow knows how to delve deep into the human soul, more than other illustrious colleagues in films more or less recent dedicated to war, from "Jarhead" ('05) to the recent "Brothers" ('09), which have captured, even in a civic and democratic commitment, the dimension of pain, ruin, and defeat.

Bigelow explores the heart of darkness deeper than her colleagues, in some ways masters, even more renowned, during the '70s and '80s, representing war from the soldier's point of view as a gradual perdition into nihilism and madness, where killing became at the same time a suicidal act, seen in now-classic works from "The Deer Hunter" ('78) to "Apocalypse Now" ('79), up to "Full Metal Jacket" ('87).

In her journey, the director comes to outline a more subtle, incisive aspect of war and military life: the addiction to conflict, and its necessity.

"The Hurt Locker" ('08) is in fact, paradoxical as it may seem, not a film about war, its pain, and madness, but a film about the life of those who are continually exposed to risk, death as an ever more concrete eventuality as the days of service pass and the date of discharge approaches without anything happening, ending up adapting to this extreme condition, reaching the point of getting used to it and making the terror of death and the adrenaline felt in challenging it, the very reason for their existence.

It's a film about those who renounce, internally even before as a moral concept, or political ideal, the concept of peace as the absence of disturbance, embracing a conflictual idea of existence, where the maximum spasm of life occurs at the moment life seems to slip away, is questioned by a single, solitary action, the decision of whether to flip a certain switch, cut the red wire or the blue wire.

By describing the souls, more than the war events, in a film where, paradoxically, war is just a backdrop, an environment, a stasis, Bigelow transcends the contingencies of the conflict in Iraq, reduced to a simple pre-text for narration, to outline a universal human condition, that of the man who realizes himself in the arena, whether work-related, sports, interpersonal, rather than in a more or less real form of domestic quiet, separated from the world and his peers.

If the bomb disposal expert knows himself, in the distant desert away from western civilization, challenging a "thing", the bomb in the car — almost a "ghost in the machine" — the common citizen, the civilian who stayed away from the front and the lines of fire, is not that far, in spirit, from the military, when affirming himself in the spasm of goals to achieve, targets to aim for, in a continuous conflict with oneself and others, in a continuous challenge, and nonstop, towards the world, as if this challenge transforms the individual from "vital" to fully "alive".

The theme addressed by the American director and her collaborators is perhaps not new, if we think of the many literary models, classic and not, that describe similar situations: watching the film, I am especially reminded of Ulysses who, having returned from the Trojan War and ten years of sailing in the Mediterranean, defeats the suitors and leaves his wife alone again to head towards the Pillars of Hercules, feeling he realizes his destiny only in the journey, and certainly not in the stop.

Similar discussions could also be had for other archetypes, like Don Quixote, The Mad Roland, literary subjects who, not coincidentally, had militant pasts, or nurtured dreams of a warring, military kind, universalizing the idea of "conflict between oneself and the other" as the main factor of identity, as an existential concept that greatly transcends the mere political-social dimension of war, on which one can — as is obvious — variously dissent, without, however, denying that it constitutes, since man's existence, a common trait of all historical events, a sort of "a priori solution" to individual anxieties and disturbances.

These are the reasons why I consider "The Hurt Locker" one of the most interesting films of recent years, beyond the success it could achieve at the upcoming Oscar "night", where the "battle" between Bigelow and ex-husband James Cameron in the race to secure the most awards has been futilely emphasized.

That this battle over the statues is, in essence, as futile as its news, could also be reflected upon.

Perhaps no one thought of this when the nominations were made: but proposing a battle between woman and man, former life companions, work competitors, aiming for the same success, proponents of opposing languages, as the leitmotif of a human and professional story ends up making the message of "The Hurt Locker" even truer, unveiling the bomb disposal expert that is in most people, the glorious soldier fighting a war without glory and without winners. And also without end.