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Let's Go Ahead and Blame Oliver Stone

by Jonathan Dee, March 16, 2010 9:38 AM
One of the defining features of blogging is the insta-rant — the opinion committed at the speed of typing not just to words but to global distribution, totally outflanking any temperate second thoughts. As someone who usually takes months if not years to declare any piece of writing finished, that idea is sounding pretty cathartic to me right now, and thus I will subject you to my feelings about Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker, which I finally saw last night.

From a compositional point of view, it's stunningly well directed. I'll remember that overhead shot of Jeremy Renner pulling on the wire that produces six unexploded bombs from a pile of street rubble, or the later one of him standing helplessly in the cereal aisle, for a long time. Still, there was something gnawing at me all through the film, and by the time it was over I realized that there is something fundamentally off about not just The Hurt Locker but war movies in general, or at least pretty much every war movie since 1986's Platoon. The fact that Bigelow's characters' lives are in constant danger is treated as an existential dilemma, which it is not. They have traveled to a foreign place where they are so unwelcome that people are constantly trying to kill them: the primary question in these characters' lives, then, would seem to be "Why are they there?" It's not that Bigelow doesn't consider that question worth answering — it's that she doesn't even consider it a question. These men are on a series of "missions," and that is all you need to know. War is invoked not as a conflict involving right or wrong but as a first principle of the characters' existence. Maybe that technique seemed edgy back when Michael Herr wrote Dispatches in 1977, but now it just seems frustratingly lazy. I should say that this has nothing whatsoever to do with whether I (or anyone) supports or opposes the war in Iraq. The don't-ask-don't-tell approach to plot and character that The Hurt Locker relies on to set itself in motion doesn't offend me politically. It offends me as a storyteller.

There! That felt good. And speaking of war, I am off in just a few hours to historic Gettysburg, to read from The Privileges and answer questions and drink with my excellent friend Fred, who is responsible for the whole endeavor. A report from the battlefield later this week.




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3 Responses to "Let's Go Ahead and Blame Oliver Stone"

Perry March 24, 2010 at 08:48 AM
I don't think that the underlying reasons are all that necessary for a story line to be compelling, it can even lend too much narritive to slow a story line when it's not really relevant to the story. However, Mr. Dee, have you spent time in the military? You don't/can't spend too much time thinking of ramifications and underlying cause and effect, you most often just go with "the mission". Overall it captures the experience of living on the edge and facing mortality.

Millicent March 18, 2010 at 10:22 AM
I liked your insta-rant. Thanks for the perspective.

Miss Gretchen March 18, 2010 at 06:50 AM
re: the "insta-rant" -- I'm often the first person to complain about blog comments to your employer The New York Times (and I have done so to Clark Hoyt, your Public Editor) but one great thing about the very intelligent readers of your paper is that they can, in their comments, squelch the less temperate, hastily written, illogical absurdities written by Times columnists: http://community.nytimes.com/comments/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/03/17/the-purists/?sort=recommended I am not, of course, comparing a column to a well-researched piece for the Magazine section. ;-) Powell's Books Blog is, in my mind, something akin to the "slow blogging" movement. When searching for a book, in each result there is a tab where a reader can click on an interview or a blog post the author has made, giving food for thought. The reader might not immediately post the comments which occur in his or her mind, but that doesn't mean that a connection hasn't been made. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilKcXIFi-Rc That reader might use the thoughts of the author as a springboard for more reflection or research, writing those thoughts in his/her own blog months, even years later, while linking to the original author interview or blog post (I am no fan of David Shields-type snippets.) I've seen it happen. (the YouTube video is a connection layered by me in 90s-style irony, since the song's riff is lifted straight from Wire.)

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