‘The Cinema of Kathryn Bigelow’ Clarifies the Distortion

Kathryn Bigelow is one of Hollywood’s most successful female directors. She is notable for her foray into “typically male” genres with films such as Blue Steel (1990) and Point Break (1991). Yet despite her box office success, her work has been relatively under-explored. Her place as an auteur director with a defined set of stylistic signatures and motifs has seldom been discussed within academic circles.

The Wallflower Directors Cuts series explores the most significant international directors, and it is interesting and timely that Kathryn 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 The Cinema of Kathryn Bigelow is to locate Bigelow as a filmmaker who can 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 is long overdue. It arrives when Bigelow’s career is at a rather low point with the disappointing box office and critical reception of The Weight of Water (2000) and K19: The Widowmaker (2002).

Essays in the collection are divided into two sections; “Bigelow’s Moving Canvas” offers a chronological look at her work through 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 Cinema of Kathryn Bigelow, “The Strange Gaze of Kathryn Bigelow”, is dedicated to her 1995 film, Strange Days, arguably her most ambitious and controversial project. This film has gained much academic attention but was poorly received at the box office.

The Cinema of Kathryn Bigelow‘s first section deconstructs Bigelow by looking at her politics, authorship, and 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. This chapter 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 insight into her aesthetic environment and approach to filmmaking.

Robynn J. Stilwell’s “Breaking Sound Barriers: Bigelow’s Soundscapes from The Loveless to Blue Steel” explores the fluid nature of the authorial signature in creating sound for a film. Stilwell argues that Kathryn Bigelow challenges the conventional pairing of director and sound designer, a la Scorsese and Walter Murch. Stilwell proposes that Bigelow is a different kind of auteur who depends on her collaborators. She 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 Kathryn Bigelow’s work, which is discussed in several 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 that Bigelow directs scenes of the rape of another woman and presents such images of exploitation. Others view Strange Days as an absorbing melange of images that challenge 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 explains why Strange Days 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 explores 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 Cinema of Kathryn Bigelow provides a fascinating insight into Bigelow’s work. There is a 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 misunderstood and misrepresented within Hollywood and academia, but who must surely be recognised as a contemporary auteur.

What will happen to Kathryn Bigelow’s career after the recent box office failures remains to be seen, but this welcome and worthy text demonstrates that she remains one of Hollywood’s most contradictory and complicated characters.