The “gorgeous” movie that inspired Kathryn Bigelow’s greatest triumph
When it comes to female filmmakers, few have been more influential in the history of cinema than Kathryn Bigelow. The director of such classic movies as Point Break, Strange Days and The Hurt Locker, Bigelow made her mark by becoming the first-ever female filmmaker to win an Oscar for ‘Best Director’, paving the way for the likes of Jane Campion and Chloé Zhao, who have since also won the award.
Emerging to fame in the early 1980s, Bigelow announced herself with her debut feature film, The Loveless, in 1981, helming a colourful motorcycle drama starring the beloved Willem Dafoe in the lead role. Later came the cult favourite Near Dark, starring Bill Paxton, a horror flick that told the story of a young man from a small town who joins a group of vampires after he mistakenly becomes a blood-sucker himself.
Yet, it wouldn’t be until the 1990s that Bigelow would truly hit her form, releasing the extraordinary action flick Point Break in 1991 and the underrated sci-fi Strange Days four years later. There’s no question, however, that her greatest career achievement to date would come in 2008 when she released her ‘Best Picture’ winner, The Hurt Locker, the story about a bomb disposal expert during the Iraq war.
An intense and emotional tale told in the backdrop of a catastrophic war, Bigelow’s film was inspired by her own appreciation for epic stories from the history of cinema.
Speaking about her favourite movies of all time, Bigelow got onto the topic of the iconic David Lean movie Lawrence of Arabia, starring Peter O’Toole, Alec Guinness, and Jack Hawkins. Appreciated as one of the greatest films of all time, Bigelow was inspired by the film’s historical elements and grand approach to cinematography, capturing the beauty and vast emptiness of the Jordan desert.
“I’m constantly looking at this film for its sheer magnificence, scale, and scope,” she stated, adding that the 1962 film “brought us to Jordan and made that the location of choice for The Hurt Locker”.
Continuing, she explained that she “visited Wadi Rum, which is the desert in which they shot Lawrence of Arabia…If you see this desert, first of all, it’s gorgeous, it’s beautiful. But it’s a very forbidding landscape, not one you would imagine would be very film-friendly; these beautiful, magnificent, extraordinary kind of red rock buttes that rise out of this red sand”.
But this wasn’t the only film that inspired Bigelow’s ‘Best Picture’ winner. She stated in her favourites list that the 1969 Sam Peckinpah film The Wild Bunch also gave her ideas regarding pace and editing, copying the film’s quick-cuts and dynamic cinematography. “Peckinpah for his muscularity, his immediacy, his sheer genius in his storytelling and characters,” she says of the filmmaker, picking his iconic western flick for her favourites list.
Take a look at an iconic moment from Lawrence of Arabia that inspired Bigelow’s ‘Best Picture’ winning classic below.
