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Photo by Gail Harvey, no reproduction without permission
Hurt Lockers It's interesting to me that I was able, without hesitation, to reserve a copy of "The Hurt Locker" the fantastic new film written by journalist Mark Boal and directed by Kathryn Bigelow. Not a pause in the brain, I simply shouted “Yes!” when my partner suggested we rent it.
And yet, fifteen seconds of the trailer for the film "Precious" and I found my whole soul refusing, every time: “I cannot see that, I cannot see that movie. I know it is good, I know the actors are amazing, but no, no, no. It may well finish me off.”
And what does that say, then? I can watch a war movie but I can’t stomach a movie about the battlefield that is being a young woman in an abusive kingdom where few allies exist? I guess I can tell myself the soldiers chose the life we see them living, sort of, whereas the girls and women never do. should chomp on a cigar and get a bigger desk.
But it’s also not that simple, because when I watched "The Hurt Locker" I thought I was going to implode from grief and sorrow and empathy. It is without a doubt one of the best movies about useless war I have ever seen. The war “we” are currently engaged in---thank goodness there is no comparing it to Vietnam, what with the endless years of it, the all-around waste and pointlessness of it. The only difference, as Boal and Bigelow show so powerfully, is that this war is a war of bombs, not firefights and Claymore mines. This is drones and IEDs and worse. Leave it to mankind: I am sure with all our talent and brains, we will come up with worse any day now. It seems to be our passion.
I am clenching myself into readiness to see "Precious," if only because as a woman, I really cannot NOT see it. So while the boys clap through Avatar, I’ll brave a movie I really ought to watch at home when it comes out on DVD. Fellow movie-goers, I apologize in advance.
We rented Deepa Mehta’s “Heaven On Earth” the same week-end, along with “Strange Days” an ‘older film’ directed by Kathryn Bigelow and her now-ex James Cameron [you may have heard of him telling you that you ought to have heard of him in a little flick about blue savages on another planet]. Movie theme: a military war, a marital war [domestic abuse can only ever be seen as a war women wage alone] and a societal war of misplaced values gone awry: no wonder we made soup after it was all over! If you have not seen "Strange Days" and you currently write contemporary fiction or if you paint: see it. There are a couple of seriously bad performances in it, but the story and the insanely powerful direction make it a film that infects your dreamscape. You were warned, imaginarians...
Yes, I know, when the skies are grey and the mist is thick and the grass is poking sloppily hopeful through the slush before getting head-butted by a surprise blizzard, we should be renting comedies. But that’s not how we do things in our house. It’s not that we seek to be depressed but rather that we seek to think and see good films and sorry, there are so few comedies out there of intelligence, you have no choice but to go for the soul-gutters sometimes. The truth tellers, if possible. [They don’t win Golden Globes, did you notice?]
The truth-sellers do not want us to be ‘sad’ and so they reward what consoles them, and hopefully us.
I know that seeing Precious is going to be hard, but after watching something like ‘The Hangover’ for interest sake one night last week, I think I’d rather feel than find out what the sheeple want to think.
Listening to: Black Steel, Tricky & Chasing Pirates, Nora Jones
Reading: beautiful things I can't talk about at the moment
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