By Willie Krischke – July 2, 2009

While there have been a plethora of must-see documentaries about the war in Iraq, worthwhile dramas have been few and far between.   (In fact, two of the best, “Stop-Loss” and “In the Valley of Elah,” weren’t actually about the war, but about the after-effects of the war on soldiers’ lives.)  Now comes Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker,”  which may be the first essential war movie to come out of this mess we’re in.   And it succeeds because it doesn’t really bother with “this mess we’re in” it dives wholeheartedly into the realities, the textures, the detritus as well as the fortitude, quiet heroism, and everyday struggle of war.    The soldiers in “The Hurt Locker” don’t have time or energy to pontificate about the virtues of spreading liberty in the desert, or to feel conflicted about the apparent absence of WMDs or potential length of engagement.   They are too busy staying alive.

The focus is on a 3-man bomb squad, which must be one of the ballsiest specialties in the Army.  In a war (or occupation, you choose) littered with random, improvised explosive devices (IEDs, in soldier-speak) hidden in piles of garbage and trunks of cars, the life of a bomb squad is a daily ride of tension and exhilaration.  ”The Hurt Locker” opens with a quote about the addictive properties of war, and watching these men work, one doesn’t doubt it.   Either the pressure breaks you or you eat it up.

At least one of these three men eats it up.   Played by Jeremy Renner, he is the new guy on the squad and the team leader, there to replace his counterpart who didn’t get out of the way of a bomb fast enough.   The other two men on his team,  Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty, are pretty shaken up by the death of their friend and leader, and Renner’s cowboy tactics don’t excite or amuse them.   Geraghty is nervous and insecure; one wonders how this guy ended up on a bomb squad in the first place.    Mackie, on the other hand, is methodical and cautious, trusting that doing things by the book will gain him safe passage home.   When Mackie expresses his dissatisfaction with Renner’s reckless ways, Renner just responds, “Oh, you’ll get the hang of it eventually.”   We learn that Renner has defused more than 800 bombs, and keeps little pieces of them underneath this bed, as mementos.   He is not a normal, well-adjusted human being.  But he is good at his job.   Very good at it.

With her chosen depth of focus, it’s crucial that director Kathryn Bigelow nails what it feels like to be on the ground in a war zone.   There’s no pulling back here to examine what it all means; everything runs situation to situation, from one bomb to the next.   She absolutely masters it; capturing the tension, the exhaustion, the disorientation and the exhilaration of these men at work.   There’s a lot of handheld camera work here, and not a lot of dialogue beyond soldiers relaying info and orders to each other.   And the heat almost feels palpable, as we watch heat waves rise off the sand and trash-littered streets.   At times it reminded me of the mesmerizing and intense “Black Hawk Down,”  and yet it manages to dig a little deeper into its characters than seems possible at first.    The men work hard and play hard, trade barbs and encouragement and sometimes punches, and by the end, they feel terribly real and startlingly different.

“The Hurt Locker” gets sidetracked just a bit with a subplot that feels borrowed straight from “Good Morning Vietnam;” but even this bit of bad judgement doesn’t really derail its tone or pace.  It ends rather poorly; we can see what’s coming from a mile away, but it still feels choppy and improvised. But despite its flaws, “The Hurt Locker” is a movie to see and remember, one we’ll be coming back to in future decades to remind us of what this war was like, and how it was faught: by men, tested to the very limit of their training, psyche and talents, who are just trying to stay alive.

Recommended

• if you liked “Black Hawk Down” and the way it depicts war.
• if you’re tired of Killer Robot action scenes and want to see some real men put their lives on the line.
• if you’ve been waiting for a good war movie to come out of this war.

Not Recommended

• if your favorite war movie is “Good Morning Vietnam.”
• if you don’t like intense and violent combat sequences.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Let the rehabilitation of the Nazis continue.  Hannah Arendt, one of the great philosophers of the 20th century as well as a Holocaust survivor, wrote about the “banality of evil” — that, for the most part, it’s not monsters who commit terrible crimes, but ordinary people.   This is a fact Hollywood has mostly ignored, because it has well served its purposes to make the Nazis into monsters.  But now, for some reason, the tide is turning, and we’re all of a sudden willing to see our enemies as men like us.  I think it started a few years ago with Clint Eastwood’s “Letters from Iwo Jima,”  might’ve been helped a little by “Black Book,” and has really picked up steam this year with “Valkyrie” and “The Reader” both getting plenty of attention – and selling plenty of tickets.   

Let me say right up front that “The Reader” is a heck of a lot better movie than “Valkyrie.”   Where “Valkyrie” felt like it was trying to convince me of something it didn’t quite believe itself, “The Reader” simply poses questions — and good questions, not so much about the guilt or innocence of the German people, but about how to deal with that guilt, how to punish the guilty, and how to recover from such an atrocity.   They are difficult questions, and ones worth considering.  

The movie opens on a Morning After.  Ralph Fiennes plays Michael Berg as an adult, and it quickly becomes clear that he is stuck in a routine of empty relationships, unable to open up or allow anyone in.   We will learn that this is because of the mark made by his first relationship, and the scars he carries.  Yes, it’s a cliche.   But is it meant to be a symbol for the German people, scarred by their love affair with the Nazi party?   Unable to find happiness, doomed to emptiness?   

We flash back to Berg at 15, and witness his illicit affair with a much older woman (Kate Winslet.) This part is, no doubt about it, excessive.  It’s any 15 year old boy’s wet dream, starring a beautiful woman who both takes care of him like a mother and orders him around like a dominatrix, most of the time while wearing nothing.    She orders him to read to her, and then undresses while saying, “that’s enough for today, kid.”   She tells him he doesn’t matter to her, and then admits that he does.   And then, one day, she disappears.   

I hope you will not watch this movie because of the sex;  also, I hope you will not avoid this movie because of the sex.   Not much I can do if you’re in the first camp, except wonder why you read movie reviews in the first place.  But if you’re in the second camp, do this:  rent it, when it comes out, and immediately fast forward to the 36 minute mark.   Everything you need to know about the first part, I’ve already told you; everything really great about “The Reader” happens after that point.   

Because “The Reader” isn’t really a movie about sex; it’s a movie primarily about guilt, and also forgiveness, perhaps, definitely kindness, and, in a way, it’s about the passage of time.    Turns out the Winslet is  a Nazi war criminal — an SS guard at Auschwitz, to be exact.   (The affair happened after World War II but before Nuremberg.)  Berg re-encounters her at her trial years later – he is a law student, and only there to observe.  She is on trial with a group of other guards, and unlike them, is honest about what happened, and the role she played in it.   This is where “the Reader” gets a little tricky — because of her honesty, and a lie she tells to protect her pride, she receives a far harsher sentence than the other women on trial with her.    Be careful, dear reader, in how much sympathy you feel for her at this point.   It is true that an injustice has been done, but it is not in the harshness of her sentence, but the lenience of theirs.    They deserve her sentence, not vice versa.   Her crimes were real, and they were atrocious, and they’re mostly skipped over in “The Reader.”  If you need to be reminded just how horrible Auschwitz is, go back and watch “Schindler’s List.”  She deserves her sentence.

And yet…she is a human being, after all.   She deserves prison, but does she deserve to be treated like a monster?   Kicked, spat on, reviled?   Berg knew her as a woman before he learned she was a criminal, and we, the viewers, have the same experience.   If the real crime of the Nazis was that they treated the Jews like animals, are we any better if we treat the Nazis like monsters?   If Hannah Arendt is right about the banality of evil, then is there a corresponding banality about justice?  Where, and how, does justice play out, and when has someone been punished enough?   

I’ve hardly mentioned her to this point, but Kate Winslett is absolutely astonishing here.   She plays Hannah with intensity, complexity, humanity, and a few other -itys, too, probably.   Without her performance, “The Reader” would fall flat on its face.  With her, it’s Oscar-nominated.   This is, by far, the best performance of her career, and she’d have my vote for “Best Actress,” if I had a vote.  

The rest of the movie is about an act of kindness, and its consequences.   By this point, the questions posed by “The Reader” loom much bigger than the movie posing them.    I’m not sure all the events that take place in the final third really make sense or hold together, but by that time, I’m too taken with the questions to really be bothered by the plot.   This movie exists to ask questions, hard ones, not to move us with its story, and certainly not to feed us answers.   There are few movies like it.   

Recommended

• if you like ambitious movies that ask big questions they can’t really handle
• for fans of ponderous, moody cinema.
• if you are, or anyone you love is, German and wondering how to deal with your people’s past.  
• if you aren’t German, but are still wondering how to deal with your people’s past. 

Not Recommended

• if you only want to see Kate Winslet naked.   Go watch “Titanic.” 
• if you hate moody, ponderous movies.
• if you’re not in the mood for big, hard questions and just want a popcorn movie.  

So last week, I reviewed “Appaloosa,” and focused on the misogyny I found there.   And this week, I watched “The Duchess,” which has to be the most feminist movie to come out this year, and not a bad film, to boot.   Dear reader, what must you be thinking?   That I’ve accepted a grant from the National Organization of Women, or some such group?  I swear to you, I have not.   There’s just not much else playing in the small town where I live (if it were up to me, I would be reviewing “Ghost Town.”   But it played for about 30 seconds at the multiplex and then was gone, gone, gone until DVD) and I’m not about to review a movie about a talking Taco Bell mascot.  I have standards. 

So “The Duchess.”   It’s a movie about sex, and politics, and sexual politics, but really, it’s a movie about oppression.   It is the story of Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, who lived in Georgian England, a period when women were essentially treated as commodities by men, who would not allow them to vote for another hundred years.   It’s important that “The Duchess” gets its period right, as this is the story of a woman in her circumstances, not simply a woman and her circumstances.   But I’m no historian, so I can’t judge the accuracy of this depiction of Georgian England.   All I can say is that the costumes looked fantastic.  

Keira Knightley plays Georgiana, and, as usual, seems quite comfortable in fantastic costumes.   The entire movie is told from her perspective and there are hardly five minutes when she is not onscreen; it takes a certain caliber of actress to maintain that kind of focus, and Knightley does so admirably.   And yet there were certain moments in certain scenes in which she ought to have shined, and only glimmered.   Emma Thompson she isn’t.   Ralph Fiennes (whose name, for some reason I can’t remember, is supposed to be pronounced “Rafe Fines”) plays the Duke of Devonshire, and it’s his performance that led me to see that this could be a movie about more than woman’s rights.   He’s a sexist pig, for sure, but Fiennes plays him with a certain dullness of spirit that reminded me that oppression not only harms the oppressed, but the oppressor as well.   

The Duke and Duchess get married early in the film, and he demands two things of her: loyalty, and a son.   He is distant, aloof; when Knightley complains to her mother (played by Charlotte Rampling, in one of the standout supporting performances in the film,) “he never talks to me,” mother responds “Why, whatever would you talk about?”  and encourages her that, once she bears a son, the sex may not get better, but it will become less frequent.   Alas, both of her first two children are daughters,  and the Duke treats her as if she’s breached a contract.   More and more openly, he turns to other women, including, finally, Knightley’s best friend, Lady Foster (Hayley Atwell) who becomes a surrogate wife, much to Knightley’s chagrin.   Knightley turns to her mother for help, and her mother tells her she must simply be a better wife, and win her husband back.    This is where it struck me just how completely women were treated like commodities in that era.   If I decide I like McDonald’s hamburgers better than Burger King’s, it’s Burger King’s job to win me back, and no claims on BK’s part of betrayal or unfaithfulness make any sense at all.  So it is for Knightley.  

Of course, she’s not all that interested in winning him back, and would rather spend her time with a certain Mr. Grey (Dominick Cooper,) who actually makes her happy.   This is unacceptable to the Duke, who thinks turnabout is anything but fair play.   And, because he is male, a Duke, and the most powerful man in the House of Lords, he is able to –almost effortlessly – back her into a corner where she must choose between her own happiness and the happiness of her children. 

Director Saul Dibb handles a large span of time and a multitude of supporting characters with ease and simplicity, and “The Duchess” is adequately filmed and exquisitely costumed.  Knightley is fine, Fiennes a bit more than fine, but, as is often the case in period pieces, it’s the supporting cast that really shines here.   “The Duchess” is an absorbing and authentically emotional film, and probably will make several Top 10 lists at the end of the year.   

Recommended

• to women, all women, but especially feminists.
• To fans of period drama, and Keira Knightley, and the common conjuction of the two. 

Not Recommended

• If you wanted to see “Appaloosa,” but it was sold out.