The Hurt Locker: Reality Undistorted

Movie title: The Hurt Locker

One of the best movies on war that brings the hot Mediterranean air and the tension of a war as real as it gets.

Unlike today’s movies that are tuned with high pitched rocky, stimulating music (like war is a video game), where shots are taken from thousands of angles, three-four-five timelines run parallely, The Hurt Locker is an exceptional gem. The movie directed by Kathryn Bigelow is an art first, then a movie, meaning the movie was not distorted from the war experience to give the spectators a video game or whatever vibe.

The Hurt Locker shows the occupation of three American privates who are doing their duty in Iraq. This special squad is responsible for disarming bombs placed by local militants to safeguard the lives of civilians. Any time a bomb can burst up. A sniper can sweep by. The disarming men’s days are as unpredictable as the placements of the bombs.

I simply loved everything about this movie. The camera movement was very quick. The first time I watched the film, I thought it’s a documentary. Because in movies we are habituated to watch the scenes captured calmly, on the other hand, a sudden live telecast is very sudden, you see the cameraman moving the device in many directions, the sounds are coming in unfiltered. Chaos, dust and sweat - that’s war - and that’s what the movie shows. Not a cozy filtered video, but the scene you would watch if it happened right in front of you. The camera moves abruptly just like your head would have moved in that moment to witness something tense. Same thing with the noise.

Another charming thing about the movie is the no-shortcut technique. Say there’s a act where the men are fighting with opponents. Fighting can go on for some time, and it’s normal in movies to summarize the act in five-six scenes. Usually these scenes move quickly and always have different elements to keep the watchers busy. But the specialty of this movie is - the scenes of an act were continuous, no shortcut done. The pauses were recorded. As I said, reality as it is. I loved the scenes where the soldiers had to confront another group. They had been lying in an attacking position for hours, the scenes were few minutes, but detailed enough with enough pauses. You can see the soldiers’ skin matted with sand, a fly or two buzzing around, the perspiration aligning the skin. So beautiful to capture such things! And without a time lapse.

At the end of the movie, I was thinking about these soldiers, what their motivation is for working everyday. Some things we are afraid of, some things we love to do very much. Same for these soldiers. They are afraid of jumping into death everyday. But some of them just love what they do, be it jumping into bombs. It’s the love that motivates the bravest ones.