Kathryn Bigelow made history Saturday night. She became the first woman to ever win the Director’s Guild Award for Outstanding Direction in a Feature Film. Her movie The Hurt Locker has been dominating the awards circuit for the past few weeks. Although Bigelow has been a critic’s awards favourite, James Cameron was expected to take the win for directing Avatar.
Her win for The Hurt Locker is important for several reasons. It breaks the feeling that directing is a ‘boys club’. Bigelow hasn’t made her career out of directing flimsy romances or period dramas. She has chosen to direct tougher fare- suspense thrillers and action movies, genres which traditionally are done by male directors. The Hurt Locker shows that she knows how to play their game and do it much better than most of them.
Director Kathryn BigelowIt is worth mentioning that The Hurt Locker is an Iraq war film. This makes her win even more substantial. Out of the dozens of Iraq related films that have come out in the last decade, The Hurt Locker is the only one to have achieved any real critical and popular success (by which I don’t mean commercial, rather that audiences have responded well to it).
The Hurt Locker is also the lowest=grossing film of all the movies receiving major awards attention. It was given a poor limited release by Summit Entertainment over the summer. Most people are now discovering it on DVD due to excellent word of mouth. While Avatar has made nearly US$2 billion worldwide, Bigelow’s film has made about US$15 million.
The Academy Awards will be announced Tuesday. Bigelow is once again the frontrunner.
No comments:
Post a Comment