Friday Minute
No. 36 | February 19, 2010

Women Behind the Camera I

Our theme this week
Women directors of notable films from 2009

Featured this week
Monday         —   Lone Scherfig
Tuesday         —   Nora Ephron
Wednesday    —   Claire Denis
Thursday        —   Anne Fletcher

Kathryn Bigelow

The essentials
Notable 2009 film:  The Hurt Locker; nominated for 9 Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director; nominated for 3 Golden Globes; won DGA Award (first woman to win).

“This is the most incredible moment of my life,” Bigelow said, winning the DGA Award a few weeks ago.  Wonder what she’ll say if she wins the Oscar next month.  It’s a good bet too that she’ll do it—only six times in six decades has the DGA winner not won Best Director.  Three women had been nominated in the past—Lina Wertmüller, Jane Campion, and Sofia Coppola—but Bigelow could be the first woman to win the Academy Award for directing.  Bigelow, nonetheless, would prefer to downplay her gender, shunning the “woman” description in her occupational title.  “I suppose I like to think of myself as a filmmaker.”

She’s right.  The sex of the person behind the camera shouldn’t be a big deal.  The exclusive men’s club nature of past directors’ awards, however, makes Bigelow a noteworthy figure.  There needs to be a first before there’s a second, a third, or a tenth.  Her success, and others’, will make it easier to see ”women directors” as just directors who happen to be women. 

There’s nothing in Bigelow’s work that says “this film was directed by a woman.”  Except, perhaps, that she sees men—especially men who like danger (one of her favorite subjects)—with a certain clarity that it may be hard for men themselves to have.  Point Break(1991) features a thrill-seeking gang of surfers and a scene with Keanu Reaves’s undercover cop jumping from a plane without a parachute.  (There’s also a group known as the Ex-Presidents, who rob banks while wearing masks of Presidents Reagan, Carter, Nixon, and Johnson.  It’s a clever visual, not to mention, a sly political comment.)  Set in an L.A. on the verge of apocalypse, Strange Days (1995), with Ralph Fiennes and Angela Bassett, has an ex-cop who relives better days with his ex-girlfriend by playing ”SQUID” recordings that connect directly to the memory center of his brain.  (The SQUID experience is not unlike an avatar’s.  James Cameron co-wrote the script.)  K-19:  The Widowmaker (2003) is about the men on a Soviet submarine’s ill-fated maiden voyage.

“War’s dirty little secret is that some men love it.  I’m trying to unpack why, to look at what it means to be a hero in the context of 21st-century combat.”  That’s Bigelow on The Hurt Locker.  Her focus again is men, three soldiers in a bomb squad.  The leader is a staff sergeant who doesn’t shirk from danger, but instead revels in it, bravely and recklessly.  The film’s opening quotation provides an explanation:  ”war is a drug.”  (More on The Hurt Locker here.)

Beyond the final credits
Kathryn Bigelow was married to James Cameron twenty years ago.  Both are up for the directing Oscar this year. It was Bigelow’s only marriage, the third of five for Cameron.  Three of Cameron’s wives had worked on films he directed (Gale Anne Hurd, Linda Hamilton, and Suzy Amis), though not Bigelow.  Cameron, on the other hand, has collaborated (writing, producing) on two of Bigelow’s films:  Point Break and Strange Days.

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The Hurt Locker (2009)
Kathryn Bigelow, director

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Interview with Kathryn Bigelow

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Quote of Note
Thelma:  Good morning everybody, this is a robbery.  Now if nobody loses their head, nobody will lose their head.  Now Simon says everybody lay down on the floor, except you, sir.  You’ll have a story to tell your friends, or a tag on your toe, it’s your decision.  Now you take this bag and empty the cash register into it.
Store Clerk:  Yes, ma’am.
Thelma:  Let’s see who wins a prize for keeping their cool.  Now you, sir, lay back down, thank you.  Can we get a couple of Wild Turkeys too?
Store Clerk:  Sure, ma’am.
Thelma:  Thank you, now everybody just stay down on the floor until I leave.  Thank you for your cooperation and have a good day.
—Thelma (Geena Davis), Thelma and Louise (1991)

…58…59…60.