War, Economy, History: Politics by Other Media

When Kathryn Bigelow's movie about the Iraq War, The Hurt Locker, swept the Academy Awards, it was a signal triumph for a plucky independent movie on a grave topical subject. Directed by a woman and made in Jordan without the usual cooperation from the Department of Defense, the movie was not released during awards rush at the end of the year but in the summer, ordinarily a time for mindless comedies and action films. Very much an action film itself, it reached out to a mass audience but did not find it, despite a sheaf of excellent reviews. In no way polemical, set in 2004 at a low point in the war, it was full of gripping life-and-death scenes that neither glorified the war as a scene of heroism nor condemned it for the political deception, wretched planning, and wanton loss of life that made those years so disastrous. Instead, like the best World War II movies, it focused on the tensions within a small group of men doing a dangerous but essential job.