Welcome to Movies That Changed My Life – a weekly column in which I take a look at a film from cinema’s storied history that changed the way I look at movies.
Why We Fight: The Hurt Locker and All Quiet on the Western Front
The Hurt Locker just got released on DVD and Blu-Ray, which is very good news for any of you who missed it in the theater. When James Cameron accepted the Golden Globe for best director he was all flummoxed because he expected his ex-wife, Kathryn Bigelow, to win for her direction of The Hurt Locker. She should have. Mark Boal, the journalist turned screenwriter who shepherded the project, probably should have won best original screenplay. If you haven’t seen The Hurt Locker, and you’re wondering what the best movie of the year is, rent it. Now.
I generally have a hard time with political movies – and war movies are always political. Maybe I’d better say that I have a hard time with movies that can be summarized in one sentence. Sentences like “War is bad.” War is bad. We know that. Why make a movie about it? Bigelow and
Boal go for something different, using sublimely suspenseful sequences to present a rigorous study of Sergeant First Class William James, the leader of a bomb squad tasked to dispose of improvised explosive devices in Baghdad. The movie doesn’t offer sermons or easy moralizing, but through its tight focus on the work of Sergeant James, it does show what the glory and grime and work and camaraderie of being a soldier can do to the human spirit.
The Hurt Locker is a relentlessly contemporary movie and I remember thinking to myself that this is exactly the kind of thing old movies don’t do: reveal war as a psychological and spiritual struggle that changes people forever.
Right? Wrong.
Case in point: 1930’s All Quiet on the Western Front.
Like The Hurt Locker, All Quiet tells the story of one soldier, Paul Baumer, on his journey from a naïve nationalist to a worn vet.
The startling trench warfare set pieces match any war sequence this side of the Omaha Beach invasion at the top of Saving Private Ryan. Director Lewis Milestone intended to shoot the movie as a silent film, but he ended up breaking radical new ground in sound film; creating one of the first great sound mixes in the history of film. The very notion of a sound mix – layering and blending tracks as opposed to a musical composition laid on top of the film – was very new, and All Quiet pounded home the fact that sound can make a movie.
There’s an amazing scene in the middle of the movie where Baumer and some of his buddies end up with some French women. In one of the few comic sequences the soldiers seduce these women, despite the language barrier, and hanky panky ensues. Milestone holds a shot of the empty common room of the French house while we listen to Baumer opening his heart this momentary lover. The combination of the empty space, the intimacy of Baumer’s words, and the knowledge that the woman he’s with can’t understand what he’s saying create an overwhelming moment made possible only through the advent of the talkie.
Oh, one more thing. The movie’s about Germans. The whole story is told from the perspective of the German side during World War I. Paul Baumer’s movement from naïve nationalist to world-weary veteran became all the more poignant in the lead-up to World War II. At one point a beleaguered Baumer tells some young countrymen “It’s dirty and painful to die for one’s country,” a line that can still stop thought.
Okay, so last week and this week were pretty heavy. So next week?
A romantic comedy.
Check out last week’s Movies that Changed My Life here
