Translated material
The picture of the explosion
"Board Lord" Katherine Bigelou claims Oscar
The name of the film in the press and the Internet was interpreted both as “hidden danger” and as “locked up with pain”. But the film was released under the unexpected name "Lord of the storm." We will adhere to it, although the rental of the film in Russia is ridiculous. Even in Moscow, it can only be found in three cinemas. The distributors decided that the story of American sappers in Baghdad would not attract our viewer.
Although the film by Bigelow withstands a comparison with the best American military drama - “Apocalypse Today” Coppola and the “whole -metal shell” of Kubrick (these are certainly not military adventures in the spirit of “save the ordinary Ryan”), he has a strange fate. Actually, this is a film of 2008. It was then that he was shown at the Venetian festival, where he competed, for example, with a “wrestler” - a participant in last year’s “Oscar” battles. Then he received the first high reviews in the world press. But then suddenly disappeared. And only in the summer of 2009 did he get into American rental, which only gives the official right to be nominated for Oscar. But these are details for statistics lovers. Let's move on to the point.
The right to be blown up
The Hurt Locker, shot according to the script for the writer and journalist Mark Bowl, who worked in Baghdad, shows the everyday life of American sappers who every day neutralize bombs. The situation is crazy, because the bomb, but not simple, but a bomb-bomb, a recreation bomb can lurk under every pile of garbage and under the clothes of any smiling counterclaim, and a mobile phone that activates the detonator is in the hands of any, just as openly smiling person from a roadside shop. After at the very beginning of the film, such a smiling person explodes the former leader of the group, who, in fact, is the sapper (the rest - the cover group), a new contractor comes to neutralize the bombs, which proves the roof for a long time. Does not use the help of a robot sater. In a critical situation, protects protective armored boom and headphones for communication with assistants - it is easier for him to work, and in general, “you need to die comfortably”.
It gradually turns out that he is the genius of his profession. He behaves like a star, drives not only assistants, but also bosses. But not because it sets, but because he knows the price of a minute of his work. In another situation, when the vigilance of a partner-coneper is more important, he personally unpackens a bag of juice for him, supplies a tube and bring it to his mouth so that he does not dry out of thirst, not being distracted from the sight. It should be noted that this is one of the most truthful and pretty heroes that I managed to see in the cinema in recent years. You are sincerely amazed when it is called a scumbag in reviews. You are scumbags yourself! If actor Jeremy Renner is not nominated for an Oscar for the best male role (the Golden Globe is no longer nominated), it will be a lead!
Many see one of the advantages of the film in the fact that it is shot as it were, a documentary camera that creates the effect of complete presence. That's what a subtle directorial work means! Yes, Bigelou used mobile digital, like amateur cameras, but in fact the film was shot very aesthetic. In it, as in postmodern westerns, the sleeve shining in the sun slowly rotates in the air to fall, raising a beautiful cloud of dust. But all the details are so worked out (the sniper cannot aim, because the gaze is covered with the haze that rose from behind the heat) that you believe in what is happening. Therefore, some have a deceptive feeling that the film is stylized as a documentary.
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| The collection of Katherine Bigelou has many prizes, but there was not even a nomination for Oscar |
Parallel world
One of the best observations of the “Lord of the Storm”: the world of people's terrorists and suicide bombers with hunks (on the one hand) and American sappers (on the other) is parallel to the real one. Unless, of course, today Iraqi can be called real. The suicide bombers, as the main hero-saper, rightly notes, and they and us. These suicide bombers are as if participants in the game isolated from the rest of the world. The world in the person of Baghdad, or rather, as in the film, in the person of men Baghdad, watches the deadly game with shocking detachment-as a performance or, more precisely, a reality show, which has sat down on a drug. Men do not leave streets, balconies, windows in the radius of the explosion. They look, not afraid to die or for a long time, reconciled with the thought that the death in the new Iraqi situation is still inevitable: not today - so tomorrow, and so suddenly. The desperate efforts of American sappers to neutralize mines and the calm silent contemplation of the Iraqi in the film by Bigelou is, among other things, one of the most convincing statements on the topic "The West is the West, and the East is the East." And the verdict of the Iraqi campaign. It is meaningless, because there are no barriers to these people, countries and nations located on opposite sides, but worldviews, never converge.
In the film, you can find some standard moves of the military dramas. Among the assistants of the protagonist-span is one young intellectual, almost from Yale, and one responsible African American. Colonel, specialist in local dialects, turns out to be a cloud in pants, an idealist, an idiot. Another standard: suddenly everyone falls under fire. Carefully thought out drum military episodes. But believe it or not, all this is not at all annoying, since the fabric of the film is truly just ahead. And the shock episodes are truly struck: the clearance of a supervisoryly mined car, the clearance of the lifted corpse of the Iraqi kid, the hero’s search for the guilty in the murder of this kid (immersing him and us in the unprecedented details of local life, including different attitudes to the Americans from the side of men and angry women), the night chase and a shootout in complete darkness ... Stop! After all, I missed almost the most spectacular long shootout in the desert.
Very Russian cinema
Despite the fact that the film (not that directly) speaks of the meaninglessness of the war in Iraq, and also leads to the obvious conclusion that the human war is disgusting to nature (lame, clearly wounded cat, goats under a shootout), the film cannot be considered anti -war. There is no doubt that Bigelou is against the war. But she thinks with other categories. This film is generally a trick. Bigelou deceives gullible spectators and critics when he puts an epigraph with a phrase that war for some people is a drug. After that, everyone writes that this is a picture of the war as a drug and the main character as a drug addict, who, being in the death zone, experiences a surge of adrenaline.
But the hero is modern Pechorin. The film, in our opinion, is not so much about the war, but about the meaninglessness of the usual rational, dedicated to the family and the money of life (from which the protagonist runs to Iraq). There is no humane goal in ordinary life. On the impasse of existence, since in a situation of mutual death by exploding and clearance the meaning of life also cannot be found.
About Pechorin - not just like that. Although the character of the film Bigelou does not make the impression of the intellectual, his work itself is certainly intellectual. And the fact that next to him as an assistant is the possible graduate of Yle is an extra confirmation of this. Like Pechorin, this hero is a fatalist. Like Pechorin, he does not see other other than in war, reasons and ways to live. Like Pechorin, he is not afraid of death.
This is a film about the war as a very hard and responsible male work. Men all over the world in recent years have not shot such male films that Bigelow shot.
Katherine Bigelou is generally famous for making not female, but very male cinema. It was she who made a picture of the feat of the Soviet submarine “K-19” (and even before the thriller “strange days” amazing in tension, not worse than books and essay Umberto Eco characterizing the essence of the time of postmodernism). But the "lord of the storm" is the most severe of her paintings. Now Bigelou intends to remove the tape “In the hands of the Taliban”, based on the book of the writer David Rode, who spent more than six months captive at the Afghan Taliban. Judging by the "lord of the storm", the film will not only be about the Taliban. He will be about ours. It is worth paying attention to the fact that Bigelou is one of the ex-female James Cameron. So in 2010 we have an unprecedented situation when the ex-husband and wife will fight among themselves for the main Oscar. Unless, of course, their films “Lord of the Storm” and “Avatar” nominate on February 2 - which has little doubts.
About the start of the "Oscar" race - in the material Clooney breaks into the sky