I watched Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker today, and despite its flaws quite enjoyed the film. One aspect specifically caught my attention, namely the multiple meanings held by both the title of the film and the quotation (”The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug.”) with which it begins.

If you think about it, quite a number of meanings can be derived from these two in relation to the story.

War as an addictive drug
A straightforward interpretation of the quote from the opening titles is that war is addictive: both for the soldiers partaking in it (Sergeant James being the prime example) but also for the nation waging a war (in both psychological and economical terms).

War as a healing drug
However, if you take the phrase “war is a drug” entirely out of any context and consider it alone, as the opening titles in fact do, another potential meaning surfaces in which the military action stands for a medical drug used to cure a specific geopolitical ailment. The troops are there to kill a virus or a bacterial infection. In the case of the Bravo Company this specifically means dismantling explosives so that normality may one day return. As with any medicine, the injection causes the system (in this case Iraq) to go haywire, but it is a faster and often safer method than attempting to correct the problem with time and rest.

Hurt locker as a place of pain
The title, I learn from a slang dictionary, literally refers to a time or place of pain. In the film’s context this is Iraq, where the soldiers serve in active duty, counting down the days until the end of their rotation.

The Middle East as the hurt locker
In a similar vein, the on-going war(s) in the Middle East can be said to “lock in the hurt” by keeping the conflict more or less bound within specific geographical areas so that it does not take place for instance in the US or Europe. In this context, the military is the hurt locker, as it confines the spread of the conflict.

Soldiers locking in their hurt
The soldiers at the centre of the film may be tough, but as the film so well depicts, behind their stone-faced exterior we get glimpses of something else — the hurt and confusion that they feel inside. Specialist Eldridge is the most apparent example of someone locking in his hurt, but the film also offers scenes for both Sergeant James and Sergeant Sanborn to let their hurt pour out (a shower scene and a car scene, respectively).

Sergeant James as the hurt locker
James “locks in the hurt” by dismantling bombs and therefore making it impossible for them to go off. As a result, the potential hurt stays safely inside.

Sergeant James as the hurt locker #2
It may also make sense to think of James as a locker (”someone who locks something”, see above) who has in some manner been irredeemably hurt by the war, and who as a result now cannot function outside of the conflict.

The bombsuit as locking out the hurt
James locks himself into the bombsuit, which in turn helps to lock out the force and hurt released by a bomb. The armoured vehicle and the strongly fortified base from which the Bravo Company operates function similarly, isolated (for the sake of security) from the country and people around them. They keep out the hurt, but prevent any meaningful interaction with the Iraqis.

Reference to the ending
The only bomb that James is unable to fix in the film is the one worn by the suicide bomber who has come to have second thoughts. I don’t think that it is a coincidence that his bombs are secured on his body by strong padlocks.

Don’t believe the poor reviews, Watch Coppola’s Youth Without Youth. It isn’t the greatest movie of all time, but as a cinematic meditation on time, reality and consciousness, it works really well. It is also a fairly beautiful story.

It’s actually a bit like David Lynch, but without the surrealism.

I watched Frost/Nixon yesterday, and followed it with some light research on the film’s historical accuracy. As suspected, quite a bit was invented, rearranged and reinterpreted.

There is one particular topic which jumps out over and over again in the general discussion of the film’s relationship with historical reality: Nixon’s late night phone call to Frost. The question repeatedly asked is whether this phone call really took place. The answer, unsurprisingly, is “no” (see for instance here, here and here).

Now, my research hasn’t been that extensive, but I am surprised that I haven’t seen anyone asking whether the phone call actually took place in the film’s own reality. And I would suggest that it in fact didn’t.

The call is preceded by Caroline about to go down to the hotel’s restaurant to get Frost and herself something to eat. She asks Frost whether he would like fish or a steak, but Frost being in a highly emotional state, she decides that she’ll call him from the restaurant instead.

When the phone finally rings, Frost has made up his mind: it will be neither fish nor steak, but cheeseburgers, and this is what he says into the receiver. However, instead of hearing Caroline’s voice, he gets a rambling Nixon.

After the Nixon call is over, Caroline enters the hotel room bringing cheeseburgers. There are two things to note here. One is that we have not actually been shown Frost telling Caroline that he wants cheeseburgers and not steak or fish, yet she somehow knows that it is cheeseburgers that Frost wants. Even more interestingly, Caroline does not mention that the phone line was busy when she tried to call from the restaurant, which should have been the case had the Nixon call actually taken place.

The way I therefore see it is that it was actually Caroline who called, and Frost due to his exhaustion or desperation or whatever imagined the whole Nixon thing. This also explains why Nixon cannot remember the phone call — it didn’t take place.

This would also make sense considering the way the scene is set up, with Caroline’s coming and going, and the careful references to steaks, fish and cheeseburgers. Her trip to the restaurant would otherwise seem narratively unnecessary, but now it has a clear function. It also explains why at the very end we as the audience are reminded about not only the phone call and the fact that Nixon cannot remember it, but also specifically about the cheeseburgers.

If you interpret the scene in this way, and I don’t say that you absolutely have to, you can perhaps take it as a reference to subjective interpretation of history, and as such see it as the film’s commentary on itself.

The new Indiana Jones film may now have a tentative title. Or, at least according to /Film, Lucasfilm has registered six different titles for the movie:

- Indiana Jones and the City of Gods
- Indiana Jones and the Destroyer of Worlds
- Indiana Jones and the Fourth Corner of the Earth
- Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
- Indiana Jones and the Lost City of Gold
- Indiana Jones and the Quest for the Covenant

There is, of course, no guarantee that any of these will be the actual final title.

A few days ago Wired published an article by Clive Thompson that asked and attempted to answer the question why there are no games that are so bad that they are really fun to play, while there are plenty of movies that are so bad that they are actually good. Thompson argued that this is “because a game isn’t something you watch; it’s something you do. It’s impossible to distance yourself from the badness. It’s not like chuckling while watching an actor screw things up; it’s like being forced to screw up yourself.”

The argument is interesting, but the support offered by Thompson seems to be lacking. Additionally, the way he defines the subject of his piece is somewhat limiting. The article appears to take the view that “bad games” are games with clear design flaws — games where you don’t know (or cannot) proceed at some point, where the AI does not know how to act, or where the world fails to interact with you either realistically or at least predictably. While all these properties certainly make a game bad, I would argue that by limiting one’s definition of a “bad game” to games that suffer from such clear design flaws, one misses a whole range of bad games, including ones that can actually be so bad that they are good.

I would suggest that a “bad movie” defined in the same way in which Thompson defines a “bad game” could in fact rarely be an enjoyable one. Thompson’s definition of a “bad game” is, after all, almost entirely based on its mechanics. Now, for the mechanics of a movie to be poor, for its world to interact with you neither realistically nor predictably, I would imagine the more technical aspects such as lighting, editing, sound and focus to be off. Yet, these things do not a bad movie good make (not for most viewers, anyway). Instead, serious flaws in the technical aspects of a movie simply annoy the audience and make the viewing experience painful.

Instead, I would argue, a “good bad movie” is one whose mechanics, just like the mechanics of a genuine “good movie”, do not stand between the viewer and the story. This is similar to what Thompson notes in connection with bad games — we as the audience do not want a movie to be so bad that it affects the “doing” part of our experience. And although there is certainly somewhat less for one to do in a movie than in a game, the act of viewing a film is certanly not devoid of “doing”.

“Good bad movies” are, therefore, in my view films whose mechanics function well, but where the less mechanical parts of story telling, or indeed the story itself, are poor, while still maintaining the viewer’s interest by in some ways going contradictory to its real purposes. In most cases, this means being funny when trying to be either dead-serious or ultra-cool.

If a “good bad game” is defined in the same way, a number of candidates emerge, some of which have been mentioned by readers of the Wired article (see the comments section). My personal favourite is perhaps the collection of games made from Michael Jackson’s film Moonwalker. Especially the arcade certainly fits the bill in my books — for a rather hilarious review, see here. While the game is in many ways a rather standard beat ‘em up, certain additions like Michael’s Dance Magic abilities, the screaming children, and other similarly (what I take to be) unintentionally funny aspects, for me raise it to the level of a “good bad game”.

Indie film makers get ever more cunning in promoting their flicks. Now J. Neil Schulman, whose previous credits include writing and starring in an episode of the Twilight Zone has decided to sell the distribution rights to his new film Lady Magdalene’s on eBay. The auction starts from $999,999, with shipping costs of $1.

In case you are interested, see the eBay listing.