A Strange Gaze
Kathryn Bigelow is one of Hollywood's most successful female directors,
notable for her foray into "typically male" genres with films such as
Blue Steel and Point Break, and yet despite her box
office success, her work has been relatively under-explored and her
place as an auteur director with a defined set of stylistic signatures
and motifs has been seldom discussed within academic circles.
The Wallflower Directors Cuts series explores the most
significant international directors and it is interesting and timely
that Bigelow should be considered as such. She is, after all, one of
the few female directors to have broken into Hollywood and carved out a
successful career. One of the key objectives of this book is to locate
Bigelow as a filmmaker who is able to transcend the industrial and
commercial constraints of Hollywood cinema to individually author her
films in innovative and transgressive ways. The publication of The
Cinema of Kathryn Bigelow: Hollywood Transgressor is long overdue,
but arrives at a time when Bigelow's career is at a rather low point
with the disappointing box office and critical reception of The
Weight of Water and K19: The Widowmaker.
Essays in the collection are divided into two sections; 'Bigelow's
Moving Canvas' offers a chronological look at her work by way of themes
and motifs and posits her as an important contemporary auteur. There is
a distinct focus on gender identities and the blurring of genre
conventions which, it is argued, is present within all of her work,
even Point Break, an overtly commercial and accessible film. The
second section of the book -- 'The Strange Gaze of Kathryn Bigelow' --
is dedicated to Strange Days, arguably her most ambitious and
controversial project. This is a film that has gained much academic
attention, but was poorly received at the box office.
The first section of the book deconstructs Bigelow by looking at her
politics, authorship, and her status within New Hollywood. Gavin
Smith's interview with Bigelow is perhaps the most fascinating. Here
she emerges as an extremely skilled technician who recognises the
influence of her art background and provides an absorbing overview of
how this is evident within her work. Her discussion of the development
of the use of the Steadicam further proves her technical accomplishment
and provides an insight into her aesthetic environment and approach to
the filmmaking process.
Robynn J Stilwell's 'Breaking Sound Barriers: Bigelow's Soundscapes
from The Loveless to Blue Steel', an exploration of the
fluid nature of the authorial signature in creating sound for a film,
argues that Bigelow offers a challenge to the conventional pairing of
director and sound designer a la Scorsese and Walter Murch. What
Stilwell proposes is that Bigelow is a different kind of auteur, in
that she depends on her collaborators and selects them for their
idiosyncrasies, thus creating a body of work with varying approaches to
the soundscape.
A self-conscious toying with genre is present within Bigelow's work and
this is discussed at length in a number of essays in the collection.
Sean Redmond's 'All That is Male Melts into Air: Bigelow on the Edge of
Point Break' addresses this and provides a lucid explanation of why
Point Break, a film that many critics view as Bigelow's least
politically motivated film, should be viewed as a subversive text which
plays with gender, identity and hegemonic values.
The essays on Strange Days provide an overview of a film that to
some was morally reprehensible, in light of the fact that Bigelow could
direct scenes of the rape of another woman and present such images of
exploitation, and to others was an absorbing melange of images which
presented a challenge to our culture of voyeurism.
Romi Stepovich's introductory essay, 'Strange Days: A Case History of
Production and Distribution Practices in Hollywood', neatly
contextualises the remaining essays and offers an explanation of why
the film failed at the box office. There is an emphasis on her
relationship with James Cameron and his subsequent influence on her
work in Christina Lane's 'The Strange Days of Kathryn Bigelow and James
Cameron', which offers an overview of their relationship and an
exploration of the film's themes. This essay somehow tempers her sense
of authorship and lessens the emergent picture of Bigelow as a maverick
director, unafraid to make typically male films in a male dominated
arena. It must be noted, however, that she was already a director with
some standing long before Cameron arrived.
Will Brooker's essay provides an interesting, if slight, analysis of
web discussion boards and fans' reception of the box office failure of
Strange Days. 'Rescuing Strange Days: Fan Reaction to a
Critical and Commercial Failure' provides some insight into the cult
appropriation of the film and its misrepresentation in terms of author,
given James Cameron's input.
The wide range of essays in the collection offers a fascinating insight
into Bigelow's work. There is a clearly structured and logical approach
to the material for those wishing to investigate her work further
although the intended readership is most certainly academic. What
emerges from this important and squarely theoretical text is a picture
of a director whose intentions are often distorted, who is clearly
misunderstood and misrepresented within Hollywood and academia, but who
must surely be recognised as a contemporary auteur. This book is long
overdue. What will happen to Bigelow's career after the recent box
office failures remains to be seen, but what is evident in this welcome
and worthy text is that Bigelow remains one of Hollywood's most
contradictory and complicated characters.
— 15 April 2003
