Explosive views

James Luxford

• Last Updated: November 04. 2009 7:16PM UAE / November 4. 2009 3:16PM GMT

Kathryn Bigelow says that a positive response from soldiers has been the most gratifying aspect of making The Hurt Locker. Alberto Pizzoli / AFP

Her name may not be as instantly recognisable as Tarantino or Scorsese, but Kathryn Bigelow has built a good reputation within the film industry for her strong, if sporadic, body of work. Directing her debut feature The Loveless in 1982, she would gain a cult following five years later for Near Dark, a serious vampire film which seems far ahead of its time, considering the current trend for vampire movies (“it’s an immortal subject matter, no pun intended,” she says).

In 1991 she made her most successful film, Point Break, starring Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze, and collaborated with her ex-husband James Cameron on 1995’s Strange Days. Her latest film, The Hurt Locker, is her first in seven years since directing K19: The Widowmaker, and is based on the experiences of the journalist Mark Boal, who spent time with an Iraq-based bomb-disposal squad in 2004. The film is set in that time period, and follows the reckless Sergeant First Class William James (Jeremy Renner), who takes command of an Explosive Ordinance Disposal unit (EOD) in the US Army’s Bravo company, and the trials they face as they face their last few weeks of duty.

As one would imagine, shooting a film about the conflict threw up many issues. “I think the real signifying difference between this and other films I’ve made is the realism and the responsibility. I mean this is a conflict that’s still going on,” Bigelow says, and it is this current subject matter that affected the first decision – where to shoot. “At one point we discussed shooting in Iraq, but I think somebody said something about snipers being there if we crossed the border, so it was a decision that was not debated for long.” The production ended up shooting on the border of the country, in Jordan. With the location secured, another problem came over the shoot in the form of a heat wave. “The average temperature when we were filming was about 100 degrees so that was probably the single most challenging aspect of the film,” she recalls.

But Bigelow was impressed with how her cast made it through. “One of the more punishing elements was the heat,” she says. “The bomb suit was not a creation of the art department, it was a real bomb suit. It was Kevlar and ceramic plates, and weighed about 100lb. Fortunately, Jeremy was not only extremely talented, he also has formidable resilience, so he pulled it off, thank goodness.”

Sound – from the rumble of car engines to devastating explosions – was also crucial. “We knew that in some respect sound would play a more important part in the film than the score. Music is naturally rhythmic and rhythm creates a certain pattern, which can defuse tension. If you take that away, it’s like having an unfamiliar face,” Bigelow says.

The cast is a mixture of young actors, household names, and fortunate positioning for the production also meant that Iraqi actors could also play parts in the film. “Our casting director was looking in Jordan and knew that in Oman at the time there were approximately three quarters of a million Iraqi refugees” she recalls. “Some of them were actually actors. In fact, the gentleman who plays a big part at the end of the film was a fairly well-known actor in Baghdad before the occupation. That was one of the true surprises. We knew, architecturally speaking, that we had what we wanted, but something like that was really gratifying.”

Making an apolitical film about any conflict would be hard enough, but Bigelow faced a particularly difficult task. “I think the humanity was what was most important,” Bigelow says of The Hurt Locker. “To look at the individual and how he copes with an almost unimaginably risky situation. Rather than say this is a ‘non-political’ movie, I would say its ‘non-partisan’. It’s not Republican politics, it’s not Democrat politics. I think that’s important because this war has become so politicised. For me, the ‘take away’ from this movie is to remind you that while we’re having this interview, on this lovely day in this beautiful city, that there are men and women right now taking that lonely walk. Regardless of if you feel they should or should not be there, it’s just a reminder that they are risking their lives.”

Indeed, the film has been lauded for its focus on the individuals, rather than the conflict that surrounds them. For Bigelow, creating a dialogue with the audience as to what the characters’ lives were like was of the utmost importance. “You put the audience into the boots of the soldiers. You give them a day in the life of a bomb tech in Baghdad 2004.”

To do this effectively, required Bigelow and her team to investigate the technology used to create bombs at that time. In doing so, it became clear that a counter-technology was forming. As much as the army’s technology progressed, the more the tools of the bomb makers’ trade simplified. “I think that was what was so surprising to me was the simplicity of the bomb making,” the director says. “You can defeat extraordinary military machines with a garage door opener and a plastic wristwatch.”

Despite these alarming realities, the director’s enthusiasm for the project never waned. “To unpack this rich and abstract material – our research, Mark’s experiences as a reporter – and give it some specificity was very exciting for me,” she says. “It’s a conflict that was so opaque, so underreported, at least in the States, and to tell this story with so much first-hand interaction was amazing. We’re now working on something that Mark is writing that is set in South America.”

It is a harsh reality that female directors still face a struggle to be noticed by the studios, but Bigelow is reluctant to be drawn on whether she feels the pressure of being a successful female director in a male-dominated medium. “I don’t know. I don’t think of film, or filmmaking in particular, as being gender-specific. Subjects can be thought of as gender-specific, I suppose, but not the process of filmmaking. There has to be someone there to say ‘action’ and someone there to say ‘cut’. I don’t see gender as a huge factor in the process. I’ve been asked this question all day, and I still can’t come up with a definitive answer – or a good one.”

One debate she will enter into is the state of Hollywood and the quality of films being made. “I certainly think when this worldwide economic recession happened, the independent film industry suffered,” she says. “You’ve got one type of big-budget movie, which is your Transformers or Spider-Man, and then you have your independents, which are just struggling, and drama, which is also suffering. There’s nothing wrong with these bigger films existing, that just can’t be all there is. I just hope that the independent world recovers quickly.”

She also believes that the economy has an impact, not only on the films that are greenlit, but the choices that are made once filmmaking has begun.

“No one’s taking any chances any more,” she shrugs. “I think that as the industry gets more corporate, it also gets more risk-averse. Risk is a pretty healthy place to be, dramatically speaking.” Does she see this pattern changing? “I don’t know, I hope so. But as long as the big summer movies keep having record openings, that will always be the safer choice, whereas independent film will always be the risk they are reluctant to take.”

The Hurt Locker found a distributor thanks to its tremendous reception at film festivals around the world, most notably the Venice Film Festival, where it had its premiere and Bigelow herself won four awards, as well as being nominated for the prestigious Golden Lion.

The greatest reward for the filmmaker, however, was the feedback received from real-life soldiers. “We have received feedback from many sources, and it’s been very positive,” she says. “I’ve had soldiers come up to me and say they did two tours of duty in the same time period as the film and it’s exactly like that. That’s been the most gratifying part of this whole experience.”