Kathryn Bigelow: Danger Is the Drug

The first five films of the first woman to win the Oscar for Best Director explore the allure of self-destruction.

This is the first installment of First Five, a paid subscriber-only monthly feature that examines the first five movies of acclaimed filmmakers.

In her Oscar-winning 2009 movie The Hurt Locker, director Kathryn Bigelow starts the movie off with a quote from American journalist, activist, and author Chris Hedges:

“The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug.”

While this quote is useful for understanding the motives of the film’s lead character, bomb disposal expert Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner), the addiction to the rush also applies to Bigelow’s first five movies: The Loveless (co-directed with Monty Montgomery), Near Dark, Blue Steel, Point Break, and Strange Days. One of the ways Bigelow has been so successful as a filmmaker is that she knows how to dance along the line of compulsion and self-destruction. She features characters who know the sensible decision and choose to walk a more dangerous path whether it’s out of love, fear, or heartbreak. For Bigelow, what’s compelling isn’t necessarily competency (although her characters typically need to be sharp enough to survive until the next rush), but that someone might throw everything away for what’s dangerous. What makes Bigelow unique is in not giving her viewers a power trip but showing them so much power that they’re both excited and afraid of losing control. In a Kathryn Bigelow film, excitement doesn’t come from theatrics, but from coming so close to the edge that you may fall into the abyss.

The Loveless (1981)

Willem Dafoe as Vance in The Loveless | Image via Atlantic Releasing

The Loveless does a great job of setting the tone for Bigelow’s overarching theme; a film that’s not really plot-driven as much as it’s about the vibe of a motorcycle gang riding into town. Starring Willem Dafoe in his first credited screen performance, the film’s prologue—where Dafoe’s biker Vance fixes a tire for a broken-down motorist only to then steal her money as well as kiss and grope her—almost renders the film in miniature. We can see how hot Vance is when he takes his leather jacket off to fix the tire, but do we really want him? How much control would we cede to this man? How close can we get to this guy before things become combustible? The Loveless skillfully shows the threat and allure that Vance and his gang have in relation to the small town, and it’s to Bigelow and Montgomery’s credit that they’re able to hold that tension for the whole picture.

Near Dark (1987)

Bill Paxton as Severen in Near Dark | Image via De Laurentiis Entertainment Group

In some ways, Near Dark feels like the more refined and concentrated version of The Loveless. You still have the outsiders riding into town to disrupt the supposed domesticity with the promise of freedom, but the ideas and storytelling are much tighter here. Bigelow skillfully blends horror and western tropes to tell the story of a guy who presents the rugged individualism of the cowboy, and yet shows how that figure ultimately yearns not for the frontier but for the comfort of the home front. The vampires, representing ultimate freedom in almost everything they do and the people they harm, are both alluring and yet destructive to themselves and others. They’re “free” in the same way that wild animals are free, and Bigelow wisely questions what that reckless individualism means when it comes into contact with domesticity.