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K-19: The Widowmaker (2002)
I have now seen all of Kathryn Bigelow's feature films. She has also directed several episodes of TV shows, including one episode of the 1993 cyberpunk miniseries, Wild Palms, and three episodes of Homicide: Life on the Streets, but I'm not going to track those down at this point. I would be curious to see her short science fiction film with Uma Thurman, "Mission Zero" (2007), but I don't know if it's available anywhere.
K-19: The Widowmaker (say that ten times fast) is based on the true story of the first Soviet nuclear submarine, which was launched in 1961 before it was really ready for prime time and ended up having a major problem with one of its two reactors. This is a Cold War movie, but of course from a post-Cold War perspective. To the extent that it subverts the genre, it is by telling the story from the Soviet perspective, and by depicting the patriotism and heroism of people who considered America the enemy. The politics of the film are actually pretty sophisticated, delving into the strategic reasoning behind some of the bad decisions that were made in the rushed launch of the K-19. The scenes at the climax of the film, showing how the men aboard the submarine reacted to the catastrophe, were almost unbearably intense. I was reduced to tears. I almost turned the damned thing off because I really wasn't in the mood for that kind of brutal intensity.
It's no wonder this movie was a box office flop. Not only does it twit the American audience with its portrayal of Soviet humanity, honor, and heroism, but it's really a pretty grim story. It's interesting that Bigelow's last two films have been military films. She has a reputation as a woman who directs male action films, and the war movie is the ultimate in male action genres. This one seems a lot more straightforward than The Hurt Locker, which is more of a psychological study or character study than a generic war story. I thought K-19: The Widowmaker was a little let down by the two codas at the end, both of which were on the sentimental side. Those scenes perhaps kowtow a bit to Harrison Ford's star persona. He was an executive producer on the film, so it may well have been a vanity project for him. Up until the end, however, I thought he was terrific, and the snarky jokes I've heard about his poor Russian accent were really off the mark.
On a more personal note, this movie made me think of a Russian guy named Oleg who I met when he was working on his PhD in Chemistry here at the UW. His father was one of the firemen who went into the Chernobyl nuclear plant during the meltdown. He died of leukemia a few years later. The bravery of the people who went into that plant is just heartbreaking. It's that kind of bravery that K-19: The Widowmaker is about. Not a movie to throw on when you're looking for distraction from the cares of the world.
So after this tour of her movies, I'm convinced that Bigelow is one of the best American directors working today. It's interesting that I had the impression of her as a studio director, when she actually mostly works independently of the studios. (K-19 was a Paramount production, which may be another reason that it felt a little less personal than her other films.) Anyway, her independence of studio financing is likely another reason that she has made relatively few films -- eight feature films in 27 years, which averages out to one every three-plus years. I think it's because she makes genre films that she seems like a studio director, a Hollywood director, but she often pushes genre in the direction of art, or at least plays with the genre formulas in new ways, recombining genre elements, mixing and matching, undermining.
I've ordered a collection of essays about her called The Cinema of Kathryn Bigelow: Hollywood Transgressor, which I hope will give me more insight into her visual style. I'm still an ignoramus when it comes to the technical aspects of visual style, and it really inhibits my ability to understand why I like somebody's style as much as I like hers.
K-19: The Widowmaker (say that ten times fast) is based on the true story of the first Soviet nuclear submarine, which was launched in 1961 before it was really ready for prime time and ended up having a major problem with one of its two reactors. This is a Cold War movie, but of course from a post-Cold War perspective. To the extent that it subverts the genre, it is by telling the story from the Soviet perspective, and by depicting the patriotism and heroism of people who considered America the enemy. The politics of the film are actually pretty sophisticated, delving into the strategic reasoning behind some of the bad decisions that were made in the rushed launch of the K-19. The scenes at the climax of the film, showing how the men aboard the submarine reacted to the catastrophe, were almost unbearably intense. I was reduced to tears. I almost turned the damned thing off because I really wasn't in the mood for that kind of brutal intensity.
It's no wonder this movie was a box office flop. Not only does it twit the American audience with its portrayal of Soviet humanity, honor, and heroism, but it's really a pretty grim story. It's interesting that Bigelow's last two films have been military films. She has a reputation as a woman who directs male action films, and the war movie is the ultimate in male action genres. This one seems a lot more straightforward than The Hurt Locker, which is more of a psychological study or character study than a generic war story. I thought K-19: The Widowmaker was a little let down by the two codas at the end, both of which were on the sentimental side. Those scenes perhaps kowtow a bit to Harrison Ford's star persona. He was an executive producer on the film, so it may well have been a vanity project for him. Up until the end, however, I thought he was terrific, and the snarky jokes I've heard about his poor Russian accent were really off the mark.
On a more personal note, this movie made me think of a Russian guy named Oleg who I met when he was working on his PhD in Chemistry here at the UW. His father was one of the firemen who went into the Chernobyl nuclear plant during the meltdown. He died of leukemia a few years later. The bravery of the people who went into that plant is just heartbreaking. It's that kind of bravery that K-19: The Widowmaker is about. Not a movie to throw on when you're looking for distraction from the cares of the world.
So after this tour of her movies, I'm convinced that Bigelow is one of the best American directors working today. It's interesting that I had the impression of her as a studio director, when she actually mostly works independently of the studios. (K-19 was a Paramount production, which may be another reason that it felt a little less personal than her other films.) Anyway, her independence of studio financing is likely another reason that she has made relatively few films -- eight feature films in 27 years, which averages out to one every three-plus years. I think it's because she makes genre films that she seems like a studio director, a Hollywood director, but she often pushes genre in the direction of art, or at least plays with the genre formulas in new ways, recombining genre elements, mixing and matching, undermining.
I've ordered a collection of essays about her called The Cinema of Kathryn Bigelow: Hollywood Transgressor, which I hope will give me more insight into her visual style. I'm still an ignoramus when it comes to the technical aspects of visual style, and it really inhibits my ability to understand why I like somebody's style as much as I like hers.