 | THIS STORY HAS BEEN FORMATTED FOR EASY PRINTING |
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 GLOBE EDITORIAL Confronting a world of 'Hurt'THERE ARE a lot of reasons to cheer the Oscars awarded to “The Hurt Locker’’ as best film and Kathryn Bigelow as best director. The movie was rightfully recognized for creating cinematic suspense worthy of Hitchcock, for ushering audiences deep into a vicarious experience of war, and for respecting the danger-addicted mentality of a bomb disposal specialist sweating in his protective gear as he dismantles one home-made explosive device after another - often with the hidden bomb-maker looking on. But “The Hurt Locker’’ is also deserving of its Academy Awards for its landmark depiction of the “asymmetrical’’ warfare of today, in which there is no visible enemy, no hill to charge up, no attack of any sort. All the clichés of the war-movie genre are missing. Combat does not ennoble its warriors. The military is not a microcosm of the great American melting pot. Patriotism is irrelevant to the work of disconnecting the detonator from a bomb. By the same token, all the easy assumptions of even the best anti-war movies are missing from this work. The Iraq war may or may not be a senseless, futile undertaking; the moviemaker passes no judgment. Bigelow and writer Mark Boal seek the source of war not in geopolitics, but in the psyche of man. This is where “The Iliad’’ first found the impulse to make war. Which may be why some folks believe that original poem of war had to be written by a woman.  |
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