Hurt Locker

(Photos courtesy of Summit Entertainment.)

Kathryn Bigelow's tense, ferociously conceived The Hurt Locker has captured the admiration of film critics and Iraq war specialists and journalists for its emotionally complex, stylistically assured portrait of fractious, messy interplay of three Army bomb-disposal specialists.

It's a welcome return to form for Bigelow, the painter turned director whose kinetic, evocative and highly expressive action films (Near Dark, Point Break, Strange Days) mix gorgeous and fantastic filmmaking with an unorthodox point of view. Mark Boal, the screenwriter and producer, is a journalist who spent time as an embedded journalist in Iraq. Jeremy Renner gives a bravura, exciting performance as the leader of the special unit. He's Will James, a combination badass and merry prankster whose unorthodox work habits carry their own frightening consequences.

Last fall at Toronto, I spoke with Bigelow and Boal together and Renner separately.

(Bigelow and Renner.)

Light Sensitive: In all of your films, there's a single image that conveys the style, tone, mood of the story. In The Hurt Locker, it's the image of the special protective gear the specialist is outfitted in.

Kathryn Bigelow: The bomb suit.

LS: Exactly.

Bigelow: I really looked at it as a necessary equipment of this particular profession. It's based on first hand observations of Mark in the field. It was a matter of trying to realize as much detail and authenticity to maximize as much of the realism as possible. So there weren't any choices made purely for aesthetic reasons. It was pretty pragmatic. The bomb suit is a tool of the trade.

LS: Because of the strong unpopularity of the war, the political implications have tended to eliminate most manner of discussion about what the films are actually about or what they are trying to say. What drove you to want to make this film at this point in your life and career?

Bigelow: The opportunity to work on a project that was both topical and relevant and the first hand observational and richness of the material. I considered this conflict fairly underreported; I myself was very curious with Mark returned from Iraq and rife with stories about these men, who arguably have the most dangerous job in the world, and yet they volunteer for it. I was riveted about it. And also to know more about the improvised-explosive devices [IEDs] that are kind of the signature of this conflict, and finally the opportunity to make a very substantial drama. It was a heady mix.

LS: Your choice of a cinematographer, Barry Ackroyd, is interesting and unconventional, because he's best known for his work with Ken Loach and whatever you think of your film, it's about as far removed from a Loach film as possible.

Bigelow: [Paul Greengrass'] United 93 was the right jumping off point for me. At the same time, [Loach's Palme laureate] The Wind that Shakes the Barley was remarkable, and any cinematographer that shows the kind of range, that dexterity and that facility, it's like finding an actor that has extraordinary range. You realize that anything is possible for him. This is just a great artist who's fearless and you just point him in the direction of the material. He just seizes the opportunity.

Mark Boal: His whole thing was not wanting to know the blocking.

Bigelow: I was very clear in location and what the bomb disarmament and their protocol of containment, 200, 300 meters; Barry loved to discover a center. We used four different camera units within the bomb disarmament location. He loved to discover where the actor would take him as opposed to having it very mechanical and hitting marks.  He loved it.

Boal: He chased it around like he was a documentary.

Bigelow: And characters are revealed through the work.

LS: Having spent time as an embedded journalist, how would you characterize these units emotionally.

Boal: I remember Kathryn saying it was just another day at the office, except their office just happens to be this incredibly exotic world. For these guys they get up in the morning and that's what they do. We wanted to keep that tone.

Bigelow: Almost matter of fact.

Boal: The drudgery of the work. I spent three weeks with them at the end of '04. We really developed the script. A really visceral you are there style. We wanted not to put too much plot into the script because it would fight that filmmaking style; it would almost make it too rich. My job was very easy because I could underwrite in a way, very flat and let the power of her imagery and the power of the actors do all the work.

Bigelow: The power of the circumstances, the power of the conflict. Once you start with that, you've already got this extraordinary template. You don't want to embellish, you want to support.

Boal: There's a reason Hemingway started out as an ambulance driver in the [First World War]. As a writer, war is a rich landscape and so incredibly dramatic and then you have moments when it's trivial. You keep it a low level granular, tight focus on the day to day reality, and you're done, it's epic because what they're doing is epic. You don't have to give it a kind of gloss.

Bigelow: That was an important decision early on, [of depicting] a messiness to combat; it's not art directed, it's not a three act structure. If you want total immersion, you have to adhere to all it implies.

Boal: There's something fairly episodic with their lives.

LS: One critical distinction between Vietnam films and Iraq films is that virtually all of the Vietnam films were made after the end of American military engagement, and all the Iraq films have been produced during the American invasion and occupation. Did that alter the dynamics for you in anyway?

Bigelow: I think it made us very respectful of that fact, but at the same time, we're also mining original material because the previous [works] concerning this particular conflict focused primarily on the reintegration of the soldier into the home front. Some very successfully, like In the Valley of Elah, but action in theater, a glimpse of boots on the ground, you are there experiential look at this conflict hasn't been done.

Boal: At least for me, you have to be somewhat faithful to the idea that there are people are doing this and dying every day, it made it feel in very bad taste to be extremely dramatic or melodramatic. There are some war films I really love, which I looked at after having written this script. There's a certain level of operatic grandeur to them, which is maybe easier to do when the whole thing is said and done. We felt like, this is real stuff, we should just try to tell it like it is. 

LS: Your job is to bring an emotional immediacy to the particular circumstances of these characters' lives. Wearing that bomb suit is like being encased in armor.

Jeremy Renner:  It's almost impossible to capture what it's like to be in the suit without actually being in the suit, because of the weight. You can't visually show what the weight is and the heat, but visually outside, [Kathryn] had all these storyboards and things she was showing me anyway because she's such a painter anyway. She showed me all of these things she observed. Being inside it, I had mixed emotions. It was a difficult place to be, a sort of Zen.

I put on a playlist, say Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata,' and that was in my head when I was in the suit. It became a place of peace amidst all of this chaos. You're not really that safe in the suit. It was peaceful inside the suit even though it was hell.

LS: Your character is a contradiction, an iconoclast who's also very severe and rigorous about his craft.

Renner: I had to learn all of these rules because my character, James, didn't follow any of the rules. I knew how I could break these rules and [do the job properly] without being a maverick cowboy, or irresponsible. I didn't want to play that. The actual guys are all very intense and they're not typical of what you imagine of Army guys.  They're kind of technical, nerdy guys. They put me through the training, or at least part of the training because I don't know if I could do the entire thing.

LS: How did your interaction shape your own performance.

Renner: I was more curious about asking them: what are you looking at, or what are you feeling like. I'm sure they don't get these questions very often. When I got them off base, that's where they told me things and I really got a sense of these people, what drives them. What fuels them to do the things they do. There are three people in the movie that do all the same thing. What fuels them to do the things they do is what makes them specific. That's what I was really able to pull from them.

LS: Filmmaking as a form of battle is probably an overused metaphor, but here it's appropriate.

Renner: Just getting this movie made was a battle. Just shooting it was an absolutely battle. the conditions on everyone were very touch. We all had a moment of near spiritual or emotional breakdown. I look at it now and it was all captured. The film couldn't have been what it was if we didn't shoot in Jordan. It was a difficult thing. We were there three months.

LS: The camaraderie with the actors is very interesting, territorial, intense and competitive, but also a shared perspective of the bleakness of what they're up against.

Renner: There's a way where everybody things we're not supposed to get along. But we all came to depend on each other. We needed each other. We had lovely actors and I was so fortunate to work opposite them. They're smart; they ask a lot of questions and they probe. I think it takes a certain person to be able to work on this particular movie. There's no trailer, no you're just in it, the 'hurt locker,' you know it. There was a certain desire and spirit for everyone to do it. That was the bonding experience.

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