Variations on ‘the lonely walk’ in the films of Kathryn Bigelow

ABSTRACT

Kathryn Bigelow prioritises spatial relationships in narratives featuring groups of men in high-pressure, threatening situations. Bigelow foregrounds the inner, individual experiences of characters within ensembles and institutions, ‘the lonely walk’ affording a useful way to visualise the action of isolated characters in danger. Bigelow’s use of spatial relationships to convey the inner lives of characters is an unorthodox mode for action films. In Point Break, this aesthetic/formal approach is associated with philosophy, psychology, and judicial law. Bigelow stages the plot, of an FBI agent getting drawn into the lifestyle of bank robbers, in a series of face-offs leading towards transcendence of the laws that define most cops-and-robbers films. K-19: The Widowmaker, an adaptation of a real-life Soviet submarine disaster, also contains a face-off between men with contrasting philosophies. Again, Bigelow accentuates individual action, as each man faces his own walk towards radiation poisoning. In The Hurt Locker, the central character and his harrowing missions are defined by his rogue single-mindedness. He is an impenetrable action hero, but under Bigelow’s direction, that status is one that occurs from the inside out. Finally, in historical drama Detroit, Bigelow’s attention to individual volition shifts to characters that lack freedom and equal treatment.

KEYWORDS:

• Lonely walk
• K-19: The Widowmaker
• The Hurt Locker
• Detroit
• Point Break

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. This documentary appears as a featurette on the ‘Pure Adrenaline Edition’ DVD for Point Break.

2. Both spectatorial identification, and also the way in which the ideology of the narrative and of Bigelow as a filmmaker align with his perspective of escaping the system.

3. The sequence prefigures the underwater cinematography that appears in Terrence Malick’s middle period, in works such as The Thin Red Line (1998) and The New World (2005).

4. The Dramatics, an American vocal group, formed in Detroit in the early 1960s.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Thomas Britt

Thomas Britt is Professor in the Film and Video Studies Program at George Mason University. He oversees the screenwriting concentration and teaches several classes, including TV Writing, Global Horror Film and the Ethics of Film and Video and has received the University’s Teaching Excellence Award. His essays have been published in several edited volumes, most recently Isn’t it Ironic?: Irony in Contemporary Popular Culture and The Routledge History of Death since 1800.