Varieties of Ecstasy
by Giampaolo Bianconi
The Hurt Locker, dir. Katheryn Bigelow (2009)
The Hurt Locker opens with a quotation from a book by the journalist Chris Hedges called War is a Force that Gives us Meaning. “The rush of battle,” Hedges writes, “is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug.” Its relevance to the film’s storyline is obvious: Sergeant First Class William James (Jeremy Renner) is addicted to war; so addicted that, before returning to Iraq, he tells his infant child that war is the only thing he loves. On some level, the film isn’t so different from Iron Man: much of James’ character is defined by his interaction with the clunking, heavy, uncomfortable suit he wears to defuse bombs. When Sergeant J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) wonders if he can wear the suit, James tells him no, of course not. It’s not an issue of masculinity. Sanborn can never wear the suit because James can’t give it away; it has fused with his body, it is part of him. It’s the same reason Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr) reveals his alter-identity at the end of Iron Man: he has become the suit, without any opportunity for separation. Its hardly surprising that, drunk, James wears the helmet to bed.
What makes The Hurt Locker interesting is how it manages to explore the uniqueness of the American occupation of Iraq through its narrative structure. War movies about WWII or Vietnam feature men on missions: they walk across great swaths of terrain, be it rural France or humid jungle. No one does any walking in The Hurt Locker: the EOD team comprised of James, Sanborn, and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) doesn’t have a destination. Everyday they leave to explore, diffuse, and return. They are unfurled and then folded back to base, with food, showers, alcohol, coffee.
The Hurt Locker speaks to the fact that the ‘war film’ itself is so played out that there can’t really be a satisfying plot anymore, only a series of strung together vignettes. The same was true of Sam Mendes’ Jarhead: no narrative could have held the film together; thus the film becomes chiefly interested in the bizarre moments it can bleed out of Gulf War I. Though The Hurt Locker’s masterful use of tension and suspense covers its tracks, it still holds true: every excursion by the EOD team is an opportunity to illustrate something strange, without consideration for the plot.
Despite the rawness of the Iraqi landscape and Baghdad’s cityscape, it is the rawness of America that strikes the truest note in the film. The supermarket—the quintessential symbol of American excess—is portrayed with a funereal bleakness. It might be the most ignored portion of the film, but it’s a potent portrayal of the disconnect soldiers can feel from consumer society—a similar disconnect experienced by soldiers in Europe following WWI. Here, though, the war continues: the film offers no conclusions, and neither do the characters. The war remains; somehow we need it overseas, lest we fold it back onto ourselves.